Im Il-soon, CEO of Homeplus, who announced his intention to resign. Photo homeplus
Im Il-soon, CEO of Homeplus, the first female CEO in the Korean hypermarket industry, will resign after three years and three months of taking office.
According to Homeplus on the 7th, CEO Lim announced his intention to resign during an executive video conference on the morning of that day. Afterwards, in a message to the employees, he said, “I decided to withdraw from the CEO position of the CEO for personal reasons,” and “I will work until the middle of next week.” Representative Lim announced his intention to resign from the second half of last year, but it is reported that MBK Partners, the major shareholder, has held back the issue and recently accepted it.
CEO Lim, who has served as Chief Financial Officer (CFO) at Costco and Buy the Way since 1998, joined Homeplus in November 2015 as head of the finance division. After that, in May 2017, he became the head of the management support division (COO, senior vice president) and was promoted to president and CEO in October. In 2019, CEO Lim also attracted attention by converting about 15,000 contract workers to full-time employees. It was the largest in Korea. Currently, 99% of all Homeplus employees are regular workers.
Some say that the difficult environment surrounding the hypermarket may have affected Lim’s resignation. Homeplus recorded a net loss of 53.2 billion won in the fiscal year 2019. Operating profit also decreased from 3209 billion won in 2016 to 109.1 billion won in 2018.
A senior Homeplus official said, “As a professional manager with deep insights on the distribution business and excellent in strategy and execution, he transformed Homeplus into a future distribution company.” The situation has been completed.”
Homeplus plans to minimize the management gap by executing business strategies centered on the head of the business unit for a while after resigning from CEO Lim. At the same time, it is known that he is in contact with a number of candidates who have the ability and experience in online and offline distribution channels as a new CEO.
Reporter Jang Joo-young [email protected]