Sempio Foods turns to holding company system

[THE INVESTOR] Sempio Foods has announced that it will split the company into a holding company Sempio and an operating company Sempio Foods. The holding company will be listed again.

In accordance with the regulation that bans heading both holding company and operating company, Park Jin-seon, who has been co-CEO alongside his father Park Seung-bok, resigned from the post. 

As the eldest son and the largest shareholder of the company, Jin-seon has been the de facto manager of Sempio and will take charge of the food business while his father will oversee the holding company as the sole CEO.

Sempio Foods has been actively seeking to adopt a holding company system since February and both holding and operating companies are slated to be listed on Aug. 9.

This move, however, might face an obstacle as Fair Trade Commission announced it will pass a revised bill that will increase the asset requirement to 500 billion won from the current 100 billion won. As of 2015, however, Sempio’s total asset was 83.7 billion won and the industry expects it to meet the requirement by raising capital via investment in kind.

By Huang You-mee (glamazon@heraldcorp.com)