Chairman Shin Dong-bin of Lotte Group is scheduled to tour five countries in Southeast Asia for about a week, accompanied by a number of key executives of the group to assess their global strategies, making stops in such countries as India, Pakistan, Myanmar, Vietnam, and Indonesia.

The schedule is not firmed up yet, but the chairman and his top executives will leave the weekend of Feb. 11 to visit those major countries in the Southeast Asian region, as some of those countries already have Lotte operations or are in the process of opening them soon.

The chairman's entourage may include Presidents Shin Hun of Lotte Department Store; Noh Byung-yong of Lotte Mart; Soh Jin-sae of Lotte Super and Korea-Seven; Kim Yong-soo of Lotte Confectionary; and Huh Soo-young of Honam Petrochemical Co., about 10 heads of the group's affiliates with many of them newly appointed.

The projected tour will be the first one for the chairman, excluding Japan, and also the first tour for a number of new affiliate CEOs who emerged after the recent personnel shakeup of the group.

In the personnel moves of Feb. 4, seven CEOs were replaced and 20 members of the group's top management were reassigned, which was seen as the chairman putting his own men in the right positions to consolidate his power and put his stamp on the management of the group, according to industry sources.

The group will focus on distribution, food, and chemical businesses in those countries in particular and see firsthand how its retail operations in Vietnam are doing as well as the construction of Lotte Center in Hanoi. They will also check up on the confectionary business operations in India and Pakistan to weigh Lotte's long-term presence in those countries.

The group will also check on the progress of a huge petrochemical complex that it plans to build with an investment of up to $5 billion. Chairman Shin called on Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono last year to get the Indonesian government's assurance of its support for the huge project.

 The chairman and his entourage will also visit Myanmar, although the group currently has nothing going on in the country. The group does, however, aim to set up its presence in the country, which recently opened up to foreign investment after decades of harsh military rule. The group might set up food, retail, and hotel businesses down the road when the time is right. The Myanmar tour is likened to a workshop tour since the traveling group will discuss the business environment in each country and exchange ideas with each other and the chairman will mingle with the executives and want to know about their ideas in relation to running each affiliate.

Shin will have a firm grip on the strategies to run the group by sector following the trip, especially its global strategies.

The group has been in pursuit of its 2020 Vision to boost its annual sales to 200 trillion won by 2020 and to be among the top 10 business groups in Asia, which has been urged by the chairman in recent years mainly through globalization of its main business lines including marts, department stores, chemicals, construction, food, and others. He often made overseas trips to see how Lotte businesses were doing in recent years.

The group opened the six-storey Gimpo Airport Lotte Mall on Dec. 9, which is the largest shopping mall in Korea, built on a land with a total space of over 314,000 square meters or about four football fields. The facility also has a department store, toy store, hotel, theater, a digital park, a theme park, and a huge parking lot with room for 5,000 cars.  nw