The Seoul headquarters of the Financial Products and services Commission, South Korea’s top financial regulator. Photo Credit: Seoul Institute
Cyber investigation Hybe has replied to the reportedly imminent spurious-shopping and selling prices against Chairman Bang Si-hyuk, affirming that its “IPO used to be conducted in stout compliance with licensed pointers and regulations.”
The K-pop giant addressed the excellent-publicized field in a assertion equipped to DMN. We’ve been keeping the overarching financial-regulator investigation (moreover a associated-however-certain police probe) for the better segment of a yr now.
Long yarn immediate, the Hybe founder Bang allegedly “misled” merchants earlier than his firm’s 2020 IPO by affirming that a public itemizing wasn’t in the cards. That alleged misrepresentation reportedly prompted the concerned entities to promote their holdings to personal equities.
Within the meantime, Bang had allegedly inked revenue-sharing agreements with all and sundry of these private equities – entire with an alleged clause compelling him to pay lend a hand their investments with curiosity if the IPO didn’t attain by a obvious date.
Pointless to teach, that IPO did materialize sooner than then. And Bang reportedly pocketed 30% of the personal equities’ submit-public Hybe stock profits, or roughly $300 million. (The associated sellers also averted lock-up requirements that snappy averted insiders and execs from cashing in on shares, per studies.)
Unsurprisingly, the alleged huge selloff is acknowledged to maintain despatched shares tumbling for other merchants, and Hybe reportedly didn’t reveal the revenue-sharing scheme in regulatory filings.
It’s by incompatibility backdrop that the FSC’s Capital Market Investigation Evaluate Committee reportedly determined right by procedure of a July 9th assembly to pass forward with prices under the Capital Markets Act, we broke down the previous day.
As described by BusinessKorea, the understanding used to be relayed to the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), which is technically segment of the Financial Products and services Commission as correctly. The SFC’s next assembly, scheduled for July 16th, will take care of the Bang investigation, per the the same source.
It presumably doesn’t want asserting, however the come isn’t precisely obvious for Hybe, which, alongside with other leading K-pop avid gamers, is grappling with the commercial rise of fictional bands moreover.
That acknowledged, the skilled home of BTS and Katseye advised us that it’s “absolutely cooperating” with the investigations, and Bang stays in space as chairman.
“We feel sorry about any pain introduced about by the most modern studies associated to our IPO job,” Hybe acknowledged to DMN. “HYBE is absolutely cooperating with the local authorities, including the financial regulators and the police, by submitting associated materials and providing detailed explanations as segment of the real fact-discovering efforts. We can rob the specified time to entirely expose that the IPO used to be conducted in stout compliance with licensed pointers and regulations.”
All advised, Hybe shares (KRX: 352820) are down 4% right by procedure of the previous 5 shopping and selling days at $199.87/₩274,500 a pop – though that worth soundless marks a 44% boost from July 2024.
