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Korean photographers scooped a rare sighting of the famously camera-shy investor Warren Lichtenstein, head of U.S. hedge fund Steel Partners, when he attended a board meeting of the nation's largest tobacco maker KT&G in Seoul on Wednesday. Lichtenstein is known as the ¡°faceless investor¡± for shunning photographers for the last 10 years of doing business in the U.S., Japan and elsewhere.
The elevator on the 18th floor of KT&G's headquarters in Dogokdong, Seoul, opened to a blizzard of flashlights at 8:10 a.m., when dozens of reporters reflexively triggered their cameras. What they snapped, however, was a 190 cm tall foreigner and two Koreans. Confirming that the man was not Lichtenstein, reporters put their cameras down and the three people headed for the meeting room. Just then, they spotted another man behind the foreigner. The slight, 160 cm tall man had wavy brown hair and wore a dark blue suit. The man who with his partner, the billionaire Carl Icahn, had made headlines for months with his hostile takeover bid of KT&G, had finally been spotted.
After founding Steel Partners in 1993, Lichtenstein gained an international reputation with dozens of mergers and acquisitions in the U.S. and Japan. He joined hands with corporate raider Carl Icahn to take over KT&G early this year, to a battle cry of "Improve shareholder value." In a partial victory, he was elected as an outside director in a general meeting last month.
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In a rare sighting, the U.S. investor Warren Lichtenstein leaves a board meeting of KT&G Corp at the firm¡¯s headquarters in Seoul on Wednesday.
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Lichtenstein had reportedly asked for the press to be kept away, but KT&G said the problem was beyond its remit. The meeting closed at 11:30 a.m. With the narrow hallway crowded with some 80 reporters, Lichtenstein, surrounded by five or six aides, emerged from a door opposite to the one reporters had expected. When the flashlights went off, he tried to hide behind a surprisingly drab briefcase, but it was too little, too late. There was a brief scuffle with security when reporters eager for a picture crossed the line.
KT&G CEO Kwak Young-kyoon told reporters a plan to sell KT&G's stake in the Buy The Way convenience store chain, which is worth some W40 billion (US$40 million), ¡°was reported to the board of directors." He added Lichtenstein agreed with most points on the agenda and made no special suggestions.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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