The last remaining Hyundai Mobis executive director to resign
Chung Mong-koo, the honorary chairman of Hyundai Motor Group, is planning to drop the last remaining registered director of Hyundai Mobis in the group. Accordingly, Honorary Chairman Chung is expected to formally withdraw from the group’s management.
According to the business community on the 21st, Honorary Chairman Chung is scheduled to resign from the position of registered director at the Hyundai Mobis shareholders’ meeting held on the 24th of next month.
Honorary Chairman Chung, the executive director of Hyundai Mobis, will expire next March. Jae-gye-seo believes that the honorary chairman Chung has already stepped back from the group’s management as the eldest son, Eui-sun Eui-sun, the chairman of Hyundai Motor Group.
Honorary Chairman Chung is expected to completely withdraw from the front line of management of the group by dropping down the last remaining registered director positions after the Hyundai Mobis general meeting.
Earlier, Honorary Chairman Chung stepped down from the directorship of Hyundai Steel in 2014 and the director of Hyundai E&C in 2018.
Honorary Chairman Chung handed over the chairmanship of the board of directors to Eui-seon Eui-seon, then senior vice chairman of the group, after 21 years at the board of directors held immediately after the shareholders’ meeting of Hyundai Motor Company in March last year.
Since then, Honorary Chairman Chung retained only the positions of unregistered executives of Hyundai Motor Company and registered director of Hyundai Mobis. In October of last year, he passed the position of chairman of the group to his son and was elected as honorary chairman. At that time, Honorary Chairman Chung also resigned as CEO of Hyundai Mobis.
However, some of the business community believes that even if Honorary Chairman Chung resigns this time, there is a possibility to retain the positions of non-registered executives of Hyundai Motor Company and Hyundai Mobis.
It is expected that there will be virtually no impact from the resignation of the registered director of Hyundai Mobis by Chung’s honorary chairman. This is because Chairman Jeong, the eldest son, has already taken over the group baton and steadily converts the group into a future mobility solution company.
In September 2018, Chairman Chung served as the Group’s Senior Vice Chairman and led the group as a whole on behalf of Honorary Chairman Chung.
Chairman Chung is known to have visited Honorary Chairman Chung, who is hospitalized even before and after his appointment in October last year, to discuss the management of the group. Chairman Chung is expected to continue to lead the group by seeking advice from Honorary Chairman Chung.
Born in 1938, Honorary Chairman Chung led the company for over 20 years, leaving the keywords’quality management’ and’field management’. It secured core technologies by establishing Namyang Research Center, the core of group research and development (R&D). He was also the first Korean to be dedicated to the Automotive Hall of Fame.
On the other hand, honorary Chairman Chung, Seo-won Choi (previously renamed Choi Soon-sil), did not appear on the official stone statue after attending the National Assembly’s National Assembly investigation to investigate the truth of the Gukjeong Nongdan Gate in 2016. It is known that he did not even attend the board of directors when he entered his 80s.
In mid-July of last year, he was admitted to Asan Hospital in Seoul for diverticulitis of the colon, and at one time there was a problem with health. Honorary Chairman Chung is known to have been treated for inflammation and recovered health, and was discharged from the hospital at the end of November last year after 4 months of hospitalization and stayed at his home in Hannam-dong.
On the other hand, Hyundai Mobis recommended Ko Young-seok, head of the R&D Planning and Operation Dept., to the position of the executive director, whose honorary chairman Chung resigned from this shareholders’ meeting. This is the first time that Hyundai Mobis has recommended a senior executive as an internal director. It is interpreted with the purpose of considering professionalism rather than position.
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