Scavengers and scratchers of value
When Rothschild Inc says it is married to its work in Korea it's more than a figurative claim. After a solid five months in Seoul, Chin Pak, one of a three-member team posted from New York for a long-term work-out at the Halla group, finally got a break, for a honeymoon with a Korean woman he met on the job.
Rothschild's hands-on approach from within Halla's own head office is getting noticed in Korea among clients and government officials increasingly contemptuous of the suitcase-banking approach of many of its competitors. It is also getting results, claims Rothschild Recovery Fund LLP (RRF) chairman Wilbur Ross, overseeing activities from New York.
Friends in high places
When Rothschild established the RRF as a global sovereign bond vulture fund in late 1997, one of its first investments was paper issued by the parastatal Korean Development Bank. As KDB bonds rebounded when Korea staved off default in late December, the fund made plenty of money and Rothschild found it had plenty of friends at government level, who in turn gave it useful contacts at the highest level to the private sector, says Ross.