up investing in Samsung BioLogics, one of Samsung’s hot new businesses.
After hours of deliberations, the panel cast its vote in favor of the
merger: Eight voted in favor of the merger and four against it. The exact
reasons for the decision were a mystery even to those inside the pension
service. It made little sense, when the pension service knew it was going to
lose money on the merger.
As per standard procedure, the NPS informed the press that it was not
disclosing the results of its vote until well after the shareholder vote at
Samsung headquarters the following week. It was a nail-biting decision.
The pension service could easily swing the vote for or against Samsung.
“Construction? It’s not looking good as an industry,” said Kim Seon-
jeong, a former Samsung financial executive who became head investment
officer of the pension service from 2008 to 2010. “It wasn’t looking good
when I was at the NPS, and it’s not looking good now either.”
Four days before the vote.
Samsung C&T put up a website called “Vulture Man” to argue its side
of the merger question. Samsung’s website slide show depicted a vulture,
presumably a caricature of Paul Singer, whose sadistic practices consisted
of plotting and preying on the poor and the disenfranchised around the
world. In one cartoon, he descended on the Congo, where he watched a
soldier point his assault rifle at a gaunt, crying child before running off with
a profit.
Soon Vulture Man was splashed all over English-speaking media.
“The depiction of Jews as untrustworthy animals with huge beaks has an
unfortunate history that hasn’t ended well for anyone involved,” commented
the Observer on the Samsung slide show. “This 1937 depiction on the cover
of Der Sturmer bears an uncomfortable resemblance to the image viewable
today on Samsung’s official website.”
When the cartoons hit the English-speaking media world, Samsung
pulled its advertising from the website that called “Jewish money...ruthless
and merciless,” took down the Vulture Man website, and unequivocally
condemned anti-Semitism.
“I think it’s a shame this element of anti-Semitism crept into what is a
business dispute,” Paul Singer said at a business panel in New York. “I
don’t think the Korean people are anti-Semitic.”
It was three days until the vote.