IT and Real Estate Self-Made Success Stories... More 'Group Heads = Founders' Than Before

4 out of 10 Large Business Groups Have Founders as Heads

Among the top 10 domestic conglomerates, 4 have founders as their heads.

This is interpreted as a result of the rapid growth of IT (Information Technology), construction, and bio conglomerates, which have been massively incorporated into the large business groups.

On the 20th, Leaders Index, a corporate analysis research institute, analyzed the status of heads among 72 conglomerates with owners, out of large business groups with assets exceeding 5 trillion won based on the Fair Trade Commission's criteria, and found that 41.7% (30 groups) of the conglomerates have founders as their heads.

This is a 16.1 percentage point increase compared to 25.6% (11 out of 43 groups) in 2012.

The number of founder-generation heads increased as IT conglomerates such as Kakao, Naver, Netmarble, Nexon, Dunamu, Krafton, and construction conglomerates such as Jungheung Construction, SM, Hoban Construction, and Daebang Construction were included in the large business groups.

In 2012, the conglomerates with founders as heads were Lotte (Shin Kyuk-ho), STX (Kang Duk-soo), LS (Koo Tae-hoe), Dongbu (the predecessor of DB, Kim Joon-ki), Booyoung (Lee Joong-geun), Woongjin (Yoon Seok-geum), Mirae Asset (Park Hyun-joo), Daesung (Kim Young-dae), Taeyoung (Yoon Se-young), Korea Electric Wire (Seol Yoon-sik), and E-Land (Park Sung-soo), totaling 11 groups.

During the same period, the proportion of second-generation founders among heads decreased from 60.5% to 36.1%, while the proportion of third-generation founders increased from 14.0% to 19.4%.

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