Son Tae-seung, First Move After Reappointment, Visits COVID Support Site... "Leading Efforts to Save Affected Businesses"

Son Tae-seung (second from left), Chairman of Woori Financial Group, and Kwon Kwang-seok (third from left), the newly appointed President of Woori Bank, visited the Namdaemun Market branch on the 25th to listen to the stories of small business owners at Namdaemun Market who are struggling due to the COVID-19 crisis.

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Hyo-jin] Sohn Tae-seung, Chairman of Woori Financial Group, has begun a new three-year term with on-site activities responding to the novel coronavirus infection (COVID-19).

On the morning of the 25th, after his reappointment was confirmed at the regular shareholders' meeting, Chairman Sohn visited a branch located in Namdaemun Market, Seoul, as his first schedule. This visit was made considering the urgent situation, where nearly 300 small business owners in this area applied for emergency loans totaling approximately 10 billion KRW related to COVID-19 damages.

He was accompanied by Kwon Kwang-seok, newly inaugurated President of Woori Bank the day before. Chairman Sohn stated, "The shareholders' support for my reappointment at the general meeting is sufficient in form," and reportedly ordered that all separate inauguration-related events be omitted.

Subsequently, Chairman Sohn held an emergency meeting of the Group's Emergency Management Committee via video conference in response to the COVID-19 situation. During the meeting, he said, "Currently, it is a time when emergency management is needed not only for disaster crisis response to COVID-19 but for overall group management," and announced, "We will expand and reorganize the existing committees into three divisions: COVID-19 Response Team, Management Risk Response Team, and Livelihood Finance Support Team."

On the 24th, at the Emergency Economic Meeting presided over by President Moon Jae-in, it was decided to inject corporate relief emergency funds through the 'Financial Market Stabilization Plan.' Chairman Sohn encouraged Woori Financial, which has strengths in corporate finance, to take the lead in saving COVID-19-affected companies, including small and medium-sized enterprises, small business owners, as well as mid-sized and large corporations.

Chairman Sohn also urged subsidiaries to establish close cooperation systems with the holding company and requested, "While maintaining vigilance in disaster crisis response to COVID-19, we must also prepare scenarios in advance for the worst management environment for each group company, assuming a long-term economic recession caused by COVID-19," and asked all group companies to thoroughly prepare plans according to the crisis management stages of 'Response-Recovery-Growth.'"

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.