As the founding family of Hanmi Group (Song Young-sook, Lim Joo-hyun, and Lim Jong-hoon) formed a "family alliance," reshaping Hanmi Group's equity landscape, incumbent largest shareholder Shin Dong-kuk, chair of Hanyang Precision Co., moved to counter by additionally buying Hanmi Science equity worth 170 billion won.
According to the Financial Supervisory Service's electronic disclosure system on the 8th, Shin disclosed the previous day that he plans to buy 3,604,799 Hanmi Science common shares over the counter for 172,743,240,000 won.
The transaction will take place from Aug. 7 to 11, with an acquisition unit price of 47,920 won per share. The seven sellers include Hong Ji-yoon, spouse of Lim Jong-yoon, chair of Cori Group and the eldest son of the founder of Hanmi Group.
Once this transaction is completed, Shin's Hanmi Science equity stake will rise from 22.88% to 28.15%. Including the 6.95% equity held by Hanyang Precision Co., the Shin side's equity stake expands to about 35.1%.
This disclosure announces the transaction plan under the stock purchase agreement Shin signed on the 7th with Hong Ji-yoon and six others.
Shin's additional equity purchase came in tandem with recent changes in Hanmi Group's governance structure.
Shin's over-the-counter purchase plan came right after Lim Jong-hoon, CEO of Hanmi Fine Chemical and the founder's second son, decided to transfer his 2.5% Hanmi Science equity to allies of Chair Song Young-sook of Hanmi Group and Vice Chair Lim Joo-hyun.
As CEO Lim Jong-hoon said he would "carry on the founder's wishes together with my mother and sister" and joined the family alliance, the market assessed that the founder family's friendly equity would overtake the Shin side—but Shin Dong-kuk has countered again by purchasing equity.
Shin is a junior from the hometown (Tongjin-eup, Gimpo, Gyeonggi) and a high school alumnus of the late founder of Hanmi Pharmaceutical, Lim Sung-ki. Their relationship, which began at a hometown gathering, is said to have deepened through efforts such as jointly establishing a scholarship foundation.
After the founder, the late Chair Lim Sung-ki, passed away in 2020, Shin steadily bought Hanmi Science equity during the process of securing funds for inheritance taxes and became the largest shareholder. He later joined hands with the brothers, then formed a so-called "four-party alliance" with Chair Song Young-sook and Vice Chair Lim Joo-hyun, becoming a central axis in Hanmi Group's management control dispute.
The industry expects that the course of future shareholder agreements and additional equity changes will significantly affect Hanmi Group's governance structure.