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| Hyundai Card Vice Chairman and CEO Chung Tae-young speaks during the Da Vinci Motel event at Hyundai Card Space in Seoul in this 2019 file photo. Courtesy of Hyundai Card |
By Park Jae-hyuk
Hyundai Card Vice Chairman and CEO Chung Tae-young implied that he may one day hand over leadership of the company to a digital expert who may have no financial industry experience.
"If financial firms should only be led by financial experts, tech firms by engineers, press by journalists, universities by professors and fashion companies by designers, are these the right principles in this era of innovation where boundaries are disappearing?" he wrote on Facebook, Saturday.
"I've always felt uncomfortable with the word expert. Such individuals have a good understanding of their fields, but are not related to things like designing the future. Elon Musk was not a car expert, and Jeff Bezos was not a retail expert."
His remarks came in response to the credit card unit of Hyundai Motor Group revising bylaws on its governance structure last Wednesday.
The revised rules enable people without experience in the financial sector to be appointed as the card firm's CEO, if the board of directors recognizes them for their talents and abilities.
Until now, the position of CEO was only open to candidates who had worked as department leaders at financial companies or their affiliates for more than five years or served as executives of such companies for more than three years.
Hyundai Card said it decided to lower hurdles for specialists in various sectors to join the company, so that it can better cope with the changing business environment in terms of digitization, mobility and eco-friendliness.
Before the recent revision, the company amended bylaws on its governance structure in December 2019 to calling on its chief executive to nurture candidates for his successor. This raised speculation at the time that Chung might step down when his term ends in March this year.
However, he is able to lead the company until March 2024, following Hyundai Motor Group's reshuffle last December which was carried out under the leadership of Chung Euisun, who became the group's chairman last October as the successor to his father, Chung Mong-koo.
The Hyundai Card CEO was one of the two vice chairmen who were allowed to retain their seats in the previous reshuffle. He is a brother-in-law of the group chairman as he is married to Chung Myung-yi, Chung Mong-koo's second-oldest daughter and an executive of Hyundai Commercial.
Some observers interpret Hyundai Card's recent revision of its bylaws as an attempt to consolidate the incumbent CEO's control, considering the ambiguity in the recognition by the board of directors and Chung's position as the board chairman.
Chung will be 63 years old when his term ends in 2024. He has served as the Hyundai Card CEO since 2003.
