“What’s all this commotion again?”
Ilhyeon Group Chairman Tak-hyeon Lee looked at Seong-ho Kim and Sang-jong Lee, who’d come into the study, with a displeased gaze.
Worked up, Sang-jong Lee pointed a finger at Seong-ho Kim and said,
“Do you have any idea what this fellow’s just done, Fath— no, Chairman?”
Tak-hyeon Lee looked at Sang-jong Lee with a furrowed brow and pointed a finger at the sofa.
“I’ve heard, so I know. So stop making a scene, sit down, and talk.”
Having told them to sit, Tak-hyeon Lee rose from his seat and moved over to the sofa.
Then, with Sang-jong Lee and Seong-ho Kim seated to either side of him, he flicked his chin at Sang-jong Lee, telling him to speak.
Sang-jong Lee gleefully rattled off the relevant account, and once he’d heard it all, Chairman Tak-hyeon Lee looked at Seong-ho Kim and asked,
“So — you conveyed to the Jisan Group a refusal to acquire Jisan Cement. What’s the reason? Was Jisan Cement a place riddled with enough problems that it couldn’t be acquired?”
To the question Tak-hyeon Lee had thrown at Seong-ho Kim, Sang-jong Lee answered first.
“As if. Jisan Cement is the number-three outfit in the cement industry. It’s not the kind of place that’d have problems.”
“Did I ask you?!”
Tak-hyeon Lee bellowed at Sang-jong Lee and glared.
Unable to meet that gaze head-on, Sang-jong Lee bowed his head.
Tak-hyeon Lee regarded Sang-jong Lee for a while, then turned his head and asked Seong-ho Kim again.
“I hear you went along on the due-diligence visit too. What problem did you find, that you sent a refusal to acquire?”
At Tak-hyeon Lee’s question, Seong-ho Kim, calm and composed, began giving the answer he’d prepared.
“I conveyed the refusal in order to gain the upper hand in negotiations.”
“To gain the upper hand — so there wasn’t a problem after all? How does an intent to refuse become an upper hand?!”
At that, Sang-jong Lee, who’d been hanging his head, jerked it up and bellowed at Seong-ho Kim.
At the sight of Sang-jong Lee, Tak-hyeon Lee squeezed his eyes shut.
That a man who was supposed to be president of Ilhyeon Construction was this hot-blooded and quick to boil, unable to govern his own temper, grated on him.
Quick to catch why Tak-hyeon Lee had shut his eyes, Seong-ho Kim let a faint smile show and opened his mouth.
“The ones in a hurry are them.”
“How do you judge whether they’re in a hurry or not from the single fact that they counter-proposed asking whether we wouldn’t buy Jisan Cement?! You just—”
“Be quiet, would you.”
Tak-hyeon Lee, who’d shut his eyes, opened them and cut off Sang-jong Lee’s words.
Sang-jong Lee, as if wronged, said to Tak-hyeon Lee,
“Father. No — Chairman. You know how badly Ilhyeon Construction needs Jisan Cement, don’t you? If we acquire Jisan Cement, we can supply cement to construction sites reliably. And if that happens, we can adjust construction timelines however we want, too. Jisan Cement is a place we absolutely have to acquire.”
Ordinarily, Sang-jong Lee would have ducked his head at Tak-hyeon Lee’s words and read the room — but this time was different.
Since it concerned his own company, Ilhyeon Construction, he was terribly anxious.
Jisan Cement was a commodity so essential to Ilhyeon Construction that he wouldn’t stop even at the words of the Tak-hyeon Lee he ordinarily feared.
Tak-hyeon Lee knew Sang-jong Lee’s thinking, too.
So, without scolding Sang-jong Lee any further, he turned his head to Seong-ho Kim.
“Now answer. What do you mean, they’re in a hurry?”
“When I went to Jisan Cement for due diligence, I saw something interesting.”
“Something interesting?”
“Not just the president of Jisan Cement, but the employees too — every one of their work uniforms was clean. As if they were wearing clothes fresh out of the package.”
“The work uniforms were clean?”
Tak-hyeon Lee knit his brow.
Because Tak-hyeon Lee, too, knew that clean work uniforms on cement-company employees meant something was wrong.
“Lime dust isn’t something you can just brush off, is it?”
“Exactly. And it was strange that the cement plant was quiet, too.”
“Quiet? How could it be? The noise from the grinding process in a cement plant is loud enough to cause hearing loss — are you telling me plant operations had actually stopped?”
At the work uniforms free of lime dust and the quiet plant, Tak-hyeon Lee showed his puzzlement.
Because the sight of things that didn’t go together at all, seen at Jisan Cement, felt strange to him no matter how he looked at it.
Sang-jong Lee shook his head at Tak-hyeon Lee’s reaction, insisting it couldn’t be.
“There’s no way. We’re being supplied cement from Jisan Cement even now — how could the plant have stopped?”
“Even if the plant has stopped, there are ways to supply cement. They could supply from existing leftover inventory, or take it in from somewhere else and supply it.”
“What kind of nonsense is that? Take in another company’s cement and supply it to us? You think that makes sense?”
Sang-jong Lee rebuked Seong-ho Kim as if it were preposterous.
But Tak-hyeon Lee heard it differently.
“Right. As for ways to supply — you can make as many of those as you like.”
“Father.”
Sang-jong Lee had called him “Father” rather than “Chairman,” but Tak-hyeon Lee didn’t scold him, too busy mulling over Seong-ho Kim’s account.
That was how deep a thought Seong-ho Kim’s words had lodged in Tak-hyeon Lee.
Seong-ho Kim went on speaking to the seemingly thought-sunk Tak-hyeon Lee.
“In any case, the mood on their side isn’t ordinary. In a situation like that, I saw no reason for us to be the first to put a figure on the table. If we wait, Jisan will get antsy and end up begging us to buy, if anything. I figured we could acquire it at an even lower price than now at that point, so I conveyed the refusal.”
“And if somewhere else snatches it up in the meantime?”
When Sang-jong Lee threw out the question, Seong-ho Kim showed a moment’s deliberation, then shook his head.
“There’s no chance of that. And even if such a case did arise, at the very least they’d ask us first. This whole thing started with them making the acquisition offer, after all.”
At his words, Tak-hyeon Lee nodded.
When Sang-jong Lee saw Tak-hyeon Lee acknowledging Seong-ho Kim’s words, he couldn’t hold back and jabbed a finger at Seong-ho Kim, shouting.
“You… someone like you, grubbing away in Ilhyeon Distribution’s sales floor… what do you know that you’re running your mouth, running your mouth like this?!”
Having shouted at Seong-ho Kim emotionally, Sang-jong Lee pleaded with Tak-hyeon Lee.
“We absolutely have to acquire Jisan Cement, Chairman. I mean it. We have to have it.”
Tak-hyeon Lee, who’d sunk into thought for a moment, gazed blankly at the pleading Sang-jong Lee.
Seong-ho Kim knew perfectly well why Sang-jong Lee was clinging to Jisan Cement like this.
So he brought up something all the more likely to make Sang-jong Lee’s insides burst just to hear it.
“If it comes to it, it might be wise to consider giving up on the acquisition entirely.”
“Give up? Have you lost your mind?”
Ignoring Sang-jong Lee’s words, Seong-ho Kim looked at Tak-hyeon Lee and continued.
“If the plant has been stopped and the employees haven’t been working for a while, there may be some other problem we don’t know about.”
“Like Hi-Dot-Com, you mean?”
“Yes. Precisely so.”
At Tak-hyeon Lee’s words, Seong-ho Kim nodded, and Sang-jong Lee ground his teeth.
But Sang-jong Lee could plead no further with Tak-hyeon Lee.
Because before Sang-jong Lee could even open his mouth, Tak-hyeon Lee had already wrapped it up.
“I understand what you mean. Proceed just as you’ve been doing. And don’t forget to come report to me now and then.”
“Yes. Understood.”
Standing quietly behind Tak-hyeon Lee and listening, Chief Secretary Do-beom Hwang came to see that Tak-hyeon Lee’s trust in Seong-ho Kim had built up — a little, but built up nonetheless.
Because otherwise, he wouldn’t have told Seong-ho Kim to come and report to him.
And that also meant that his trust in Sang-jong Lee had been shaved down in inverse proportion to Seong-ho Kim’s.
‘It’s not even been a few days since he came into the house… Pyeongchang-dong’s in for some turbulence.’
Do-beom Hwang quietly shook his head, thinking that a noisy state of affairs was likely to unfold from here on, centered on Seong-ho Kim.
Just as Seong-ho Kim had anticipated, no sooner had they conveyed the intent that the Jisan Cement acquisition seemed difficult than the Jisan Group’s side came rushing over.
“What… huff, huff… what on earth do you mean? The acquisition is difficult?”
The Jisan Group’s representative, unable even to catch his breath, asked Gyeong-deuk Lee, deputy head of the Strategic Planning Office.
“Weren’t you positive about it until just recently?”
“Positive, yes, we were.”
Director Gyeong-deuk Lee gave a shrug, shot a glance at Seong-ho Kim and the others seated on the Ilhyeon side, and said,
“But when our own people in charge say it’s difficult, what can I do? Please understand.”
“What exactly? What is it that’s difficult?”
The Jisan representative asked Gyeong-deuk Lee.
Gyeong-deuk Lee turned his head to look at Team 2 Leader Ki-seok Yun, and Team Leader Ki-seok Yun straightened his posture and said,
“As you know, this isn’t some penny-ante acquisition, is it? It’s a contract where the total is a hundred eighty billion won and close to a hundred billion has to be executed for the down payment alone, so we can’t help but be cautious.”
“So you’re saying the acquisition price is the problem?”
“Well…”
When Ki-seok Yun let his words trail off, the Jisan Group’s representative said in a much-softened voice,
“If that’s it, why didn’t you say so sooner? Here we were, startled, thinking you’d lost interest in acquiring at all.”
The Jisan representative let out a short breath as if a great weight had lifted, and smiled faintly.
“If a hundred eighty billion won is burdensome, we’re willing to come down to a hundred sixty billion. But the down payment we’ll need you to meet at a hundred billion.”
“You’ll bring the total down by twenty billion won? In that case…”
At the words down by twenty billion won, Ki-seok Yun was about to blurt out that it sounded good.
Just then, Seong-ho Kim, seated beside him, grasped Team Leader Ki-seok Yun’s hand to stop his words.
When Team Leader Ki-seok Yun turned his head with a what-is-it look, Seong-ho Kim opened his mouth in his stead.
“We understand Jisan’s position. We’ll take your position fully into account, discuss it, and get you an answer as quickly as we can.”
The Jisan representative gazed quietly at Seong-ho Kim.
Then he sent Director Gyeong-deuk Lee and Team Leader Ki-seok Yun a look that seemed to ask who the man who’d just spoken was.
Director Gyeong-deuk Lee introduced Seong-ho Kim to the Jisan representative with a smile.
“This is Assistant Manager Seong-ho Kim, newly joined to Team 2, which is handling the Jisan Cement matter this time. Do say hello.”
“Assistant manager? How could a mere assistant manager…”
The Jisan representative looked at Director Gyeong-deuk Lee with a gaze that asked what this situation was — a nobody assistant manager not only butting into the talks but trying to wrap them up.
At that look, Director Gyeong-deuk Lee smiled and introduced Seong-ho Kim again.
“You’re aware our chairman’s youngest daughter got married recently, yes?”
“I’m aware, but…”
“This Assistant Manager Kim here is the chairman’s youngest son-in-law.”
“Ah! The one from the rum—”
The representative let his words trail off without saying what the rumor was.
Seong-ho Kim felt he could tell exactly what the rumor was just from the representative’s expression.
And since it was a familiar matter from his past life, he smiled and said, as if it were nothing,
“Then we’ll be in touch as quickly as possible.”
The Jisan Group representative rose from his seat, unable to say anything further.
Because no matter that the man was a mere assistant manager, when Chairman Tak-hyeon Lee’s son-in-law says he’ll be in touch, so please head back, one couldn’t very well keep holding one’s seat.
The Jisan people exchanged greetings with Seong-ho Kim and the others, and talked among themselves as they left.
“What do we do? The way the Ilhyeon Group son-in-law is coming at this, aren’t these acquisition talks going to fall apart?”
The representative sorted his thoughts for a moment, then opened his mouth.
“Let’s go to Ilhyeon Construction.”
“Ilhyeon Construction?”
“Yes. Let’s meet the president of Ilhyeon Construction, Sang-jong Lee, directly and talk. No matter how the son-in-law blocks it, if the son steps up saying he’ll do it, even Chairman Tak-hyeon Lee won’t be able to help it.”
Looking down at the base of the building through the Strategic Planning Office window, Seong-ho Kim watched the Jisan people’s steps and felt he knew exactly where they were headed.
Never knowing that that very place was the direction Seong-ho Kim wanted, the Jisan Group people carried their steps straight to Ilhyeon Construction.
(End of Chapter 10)