Bloomberg – Days after a March negotiating session to buy San Francisco’s Citicorp Center building for $370 million, Park Hyeon Joo is in the air on a Korean Air flight bound for Seoul, sipping a glass of red wine. He’s not celebrating.
Park, founder and chairman of Seoul-based Mirae Asset Financial Group, the biggest mutual fund company in South Korea, has just given up on his plan to open a branch of Mirae in Los Angeles despite its large Korean-American community.
He’s seen firsthand the swoon in U.S. markets triggered by the subprime mortgage crisis. Recalling the flight, he says he took out his laptop and spent the next three hours writing a somber memo to his 16,900 employees.
