April 24, 2024

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E-Land Park, the E-Land Group affiliate that runs hotels and resorts, announced Oct. 2 that it had appointed Yoon Sung-dae as CEO in a move to improve its financial stability.

According to the company, 38-year-old Yoon joined E-Land in 2006 and most recently served as the company’s chief financial officer. The Korean retail giant hopes the former CFO will draw on his finance background and play a crucial role in improving its affiliate’s financial stability.

The company also added that it had decided to raise around 60 billion won ($50.16 million) by issuing new shares. E-Land World and E-Land Retail will be injecting 30.6 billion and 29.4 billion won, respectively, into this paid-in capital increase. 

E-Land Park CEO Yoon Sung-dae

E-Land added that, with this new capital, it expects Yoon to be able to improve E-Land Park’s financial structure this year. Its target is for its debt ratio to drop to around 210 percent by the end of this year, from 398 percent at the end of 2018.

E-Land has made aggressive efforts to change the hotel affiliate’s financial structure this year. In April, the company spun off its food and dining unit. Industry sources say this was done to raise funds from financial investors.

Before it got spun off, the dining unit’s profits had compensated for E-Land Park’s money-losing hotel and resort business.

Last year, E-Land Park turned to the black, posting around 3.6 billion won in profit due to the improved performance of its dining unit, which posted around 8 billion won in profit. E-Land Park’s sales last year reached 475.9 billion won, and sales by its restaurant unit accounted for around 82.7 percent of that.

By Song Seung-hyun (ssh@heraldcorp.com)