2024-09-21
| “Private equity fund’s hostile M&A will undermine long-term interests of Korea Zinc… We pledge our utmost support for current management” |
Greetings shareholders and stakeholders of Korea Zinc. We are the outside directors of the Company, namely Yong-Rak Sung, Do-Hyun Kim, Bo-Young Kim, Min-Ho Lee, Dae-Won Seo, Soon-Beom Kwon, and Deok-Nam Hwang. As outside directors of Korea Zinc, we are proudly committed to serving the interests of, and enhancing value for, all shareholders of Korea Zinc, not just certain major shareholders, based on our expertise spanning the public sector, legal field, and academia. Furthermore, we can attest that Company management has hitherto maintained sound operations under the diligent oversight and monitoring of outside directors. Upon the unanticipated tender offer of Young Poong, a shareholder of the Company, together with a private equity fund, we rigorously deliberated on the offer from the standpoint of shareholder interests. Our conclusion is that we unanimously and emphatically object to the uninvited offer. The offer threatens to undermine the value of Korea Zinc as a private equity fund’s hostile takeover attempt of an integral Korean company that holds the largest share in the global market for non-ferrous metals – a key industry driving the Korean economy – which remains at the core of the raw material market for the rechargeable battery supply chain.
(1 Legal and academic circles have consistently defined an attempted M&A without discussion with the incumbent board
as a hostile M&A campaign. The argument that this tender offer is not hostile is misleadin)
