Rapid Appointment Following Former President Ha Seok-ju's Resignation
Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin Also Directly Injects Support into Construction
On the morning of the 23rd, Lotte Construction held a board meeting and announced that Park Hyun-chul, head of the Management Improvement Office at Lotte Holdings, has been appointed as the new CEO.
The newly appointed CEO, Park Hyun-chul, joined Lotte Construction in 1985 and has served as the head of the Lotte Policy Headquarters Operations Team and CEO of Lotte Property & Development. During his tenure at Lotte Property & Development, he successfully completed the Lotte World Tower project.
Lotte Construction stated, "We expect Park’s outstanding risk management and business restructuring capabilities to bring new changes to Lotte Construction."
The former CEO, Ha Seok-ju, abruptly resigned as Lotte Construction’s financial difficulties became apparent. His original term was scheduled to expire in March next year.
Ha Seok-ju worked in various departments such as finance, human resources, and housing business at Lotte Construction for 20 years. Since his appointment as CEO in 2017, he has led numerous large-scale domestic and international projects and launched the high-end residential brand LE-EL.
The construction industry views Ha’s resignation as closely related to the recent financial difficulties caused by Lotte Construction’s real estate project financing (PF) issues.
Lotte Construction has recently faced a liquidity crisis due to the Legoland default incident and has been receiving financial support from affiliated companies.
On the 18th of last month, Lotte Construction conducted a paid-in capital increase worth 200 billion KRW and borrowed 500 billion KRW from Lotte Chemical in the same month. This month, it agreed to borrow 300 billion KRW and 100 billion KRW for three months from Lotte Fine Chemical and Lotte Homeshopping, respectively.
On the 18th of this month, it borrowed a total of 350 billion KRW from Hana Bank and Standard Chartered Bank Korea.
On the 19th, Shin Dong-bin, chairman of Lotte Group, also injected about 1.1 billion KRW of his personal funds into Lotte Construction through a paid-in capital increase.
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