이 기사는 2022년 03월 10일 08:08 thebell 에 표출된 기사입니다.

Kim Dong-kwan, president and chief executive officer of Hanwha Solutions and head of corporate strategy at Hanwha Corp, will join the board of Hanwha Corp, bolstering his position in key affiliates of Hanwha Group.

Hanwha Corp will seek shareholder approval for Kim’s appointment to its board at an annual general meeting scheduled for March 29, according to a filing on Monday.

Kim’s joining the board will increase the number of the company’s inside directors from four to five. This would force Hanwha Corp to add one more outside director to its board, bringing the total number of its board members to 11, because South Korean law mandates that a firm’s board of directors comprises a majority of outside directors.

Hanwha Corp, Hanwha Group’s de facto holding company, operates through defense, industrial machinery and trade sectors, which are the core businesses of the family-controlled conglomerate.

Kim, the eldest son of the conglomerate’s chairman Kim Seung-youn, is also expected to be promoted to co-CEO of Hanwha Corp at a board meeting that will be held after the upcoming annual general meeting. All of the four other inside directors of Hanwha Corp – Keum Chun-su, Kim Seung-mo, Ok Kyung-seok and Kim Maeng-yoon – comprise the company’s co-CEOs.

Hanwha Corp’s corporate strategy team, led by Kim, was created in 2020. It has been rapidly expanded in recent years to nine executives including Kim and two executive vice presidents, a change in line with the conglomerate’s drive to speed up its succession plans.

The corporate strategy team is younger than other divisions within Hanwha Corp, with seven of its nine executives born in the 1970s.

Kim, born in 1983, also serves as a director on the boards of Hanwha Solutions and Hanwha Aerospace.

Kim’s appointment to Hanwha Corp’s board of directors is to “put emphasis on the management’s responsibility amid increased uncertainty in a post-pandemic era,” an official at Hanwha Corp said, adding that Kim will lead strategy development and implementation for the group’s new businesses such as aerospace. (Reporting by Eun-a Jo)