Prevention better than cure: GS chief

GS Group chairman Huh Chang-soo on Wednesday requested executive officials to boost their readiness against risk factors in this time of economic turmoil.

“We have to build up diverse strategies and scenarios to respond promptly to the ever-changing business environment. And we should carry out the plans aggressively,” he said at a third-quarter meeting with some 150 ranking officials.

The 63-year-old chief of the nation’s seventh-largest business group said the current global crisis is “unprecedented” as all financial and consumer sectors both in advanced and developing economies are suffering at the same time. 

“Depending on who will best deal with the current situation, their fate could be largely different in the coming months. We should prepare ourselves further,” he said.

Huh proposed establishing an exclusive task force team that would oversee the whole process of the group’s risk management, saying, “Prevention is better than cure.”

“Risk management should be conducted with a broad perspective. Problems can get bigger without CEOs or other departments understanding the exact situation,” he said.

“It is necessary to develop an enterprise-wide system that monitors the situation of individual sectors according to the group’s risk-management goal.”

Huh recently made visits to research and development facilities, production lines and other workplaces of the group’s major affiliates here and abroad to encourage employees.

By Lee Ji-yoon (jylee@heraldcorp.com)