[Edaily Kim Hyung-wook Jeong Yun-ji ] Speculation has arisen that Hoban Group may have become the largest shareholder of HANJINKAL—the holding company of the Hanjin Group—by purchasing additional shares, thereby overtaking the faction led by Hanjin Group Chairman Walter Cho. While an immediate change in management control is unlikely given the friendly stakes held by Chairman Walter Cho’s faction, tensions between the two sides are expected to escalate once Hoban is confirmed as the largest shareholder.

According to business circles on the 2nd, Hoban Group filed a business combination report with the Fair Trade Commission last month. The group determined that its stake had surpassed the combined stake held by Chairman Cho and his related parties following recent additional on-market purchases of HANJINKAL shares through affiliates such as Hoban Construction.

Under the Fair Trade Act, if a company of a certain size holds 15% or more of a listed company’s shares and then makes additional purchases to become the largest shareholder for the first time, it must file a business combination report.

The change in the largest shareholder has not yet been finalized. Since Hoban has been steadily buying HANJINKAL shares since 2022 and had already become the second-largest shareholder by a narrow margin, it is also possible that the ownership stakes have been reversed depending on the scale of recent on-market purchases. According to a disclosure from this past July, Hoban’s stake in HANJINKAL stood at 20.15%, a difference of 0.42 percentage points from the combined stake held by Chairman Cho and his affiliates (20.57%) at that time.

However, on the same day, Chairman Cho announced that, with the aim of strengthening responsible management, he would purchase 325,000 shares of HANJINKAL for 37.05 billion won on December 3. This will increase Chairman Cho’s personal stake from 5.75% to 6.23%, a rise of 0.48 percentage points.

In addition, other major shareholders—including the Korea Development Bank (10.58%), which supported KoreanAirLines’s acquisition of Asiana Airlines, LX Pantos (3.83%), and GS Retail (1.50%)—are also classified as holding stakes favorable to the current management. Even when these stakes are simply added to Chairman Cho’s stake, the total exceeds a majority (51.38%). In addition, Japan Airlines (JAL)—which has not disclosed its stake but revealed that it had acquired HANJINKAL shares when it announced a strategic partnership with KoreanAirLines last September—is also considered a friendly shareholder.

Hoban has also never officially expressed an intention to participate in management. At HANJINKAL’s annual general meeting this past March, Chairman Cho’s reappointment as an inside director was approved with 93.77% of the vote, and Hoban also cast a vote in favor. A Hoban Group official stated on the same day regarding the purchase of HANJINKAL shares that it was “solely for investment purposes.”

However, if Hoban is confirmed as the largest shareholder, tensions between the two sides could escalate. If Hoban Group nominates its own candidates at next March’s annual general meeting—when the terms of the three independent directors recommended by the Korea Development Bank (KDB) expire—a proxy battle could ensue over the appointment of their successors. Furthermore, the ownership structure among major shareholders could change depending on who acquires the 10.58% stake that KDB, a state-owned bank, invested in HANJINKAL in 2020 to support the restructuring of the aviation industry, and how that stake is sold in the future.