POSCO Pepper Committee narrows shortlist to 12... Final candidates to be announced next week

Reflecting Advisory Panel Opinions to the Maximum
Vision, Strategy, and Leadership Evaluation
"Qualifying through Face-to-Face Assessment"

The number of candidates for the next chairman of the POSCO Group has been narrowed down from 18 to 12.

The POSCO Holdings CEO Candidate Recommendation Committee announced on the 24th, during its 7th meeting, that it selected a 'shortlist' of chairman candidates consisting of 5 internal candidates and 7 external candidates. Among the previously selected 'longlist,' 1 internal candidate and 5 external candidates were excluded.

The CEO Recommendation Committee explained, "This is the result of additional screening that maximally reflected the opinions of the CEO Candidate Advisory Panel." The CEO Candidate Advisory Panel, composed of five external experts in fields such as industry, law, and management, conducted a review over the past week based on all the longlist candidates' self-introduction letters and reputation inquiry reports received from the Recommendation Committee.

After conducting in-depth evaluations of these candidates, the CEO Recommendation Committee plans to narrow down the candidates to around five at the meeting on the 31st and publicly disclose the list (finalists) for the first time. Subsequently, through intensive face-to-face evaluations, the committee will select one final chairman candidate in February. After a resolution by the board of directors, the candidate will be submitted to the shareholders' meeting for approval.

Entrance door of POSCO building, Yeoksam-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul. Photo by Younghan Heo younghan@

The CEO Recommendation Committee will conduct face-to-face evaluations by directly interviewing the candidates, exchanging questions and answers. They will thoroughly review each candidate’s future vision and the strategies to achieve it, leadership qualities including managerial capabilities, respect for shareholders, and communication skills both internally and externally.

The CEO Recommendation Committee stated, "We will do our best to ensure that the selection of the next chairman candidate of POSCO Group, a global company representing Korea, is conducted fairly," adding, "We are striving to faithfully meet the expectations of the company, shareholders, stakeholders, and ultimately the public."

Last December 19, the Recommendation Committee announced five qualification criteria for the chairman candidate pool: management capability, industry expertise, global competence, leadership, and integrity & ethics. On December 21, they also presented 12 detailed guidelines. These include ▲Management capability (vision and value proposition, strategic thinking/decision-making, innovation leadership and crisis response), ▲Industry expertise (insight into the group’s core industries and discovery of business opportunities, understanding of future new technologies), ▲Global competence (understanding of global environments and cultures, establishment and operation of global business strategies), ▲Leadership (talent development, communication skills), and ▲Integrity & Ethics (business ethics and compliance, harmony with social values).

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