Built governance for SNU's revenue-generating businesses.
Problem
After devoting my first year as Planning Director to the tax law overhaul, I found a new problem as the second year began. The whole point of the incorporation was that the university could actively create its own resources, yet the efforts to generate new resources had fallen short, and most of the revenue businesses we ran were losing money. It was disheartening that, as before the incorporation, university finances still depended solely on government grants and donations.
Process
I resolved to build a new foundation that would let Seoul National University carry out its revenue businesses systematically and aggressively. The basic idea was a holding structure outside the university, which is a non-profit organization, free under commercial law to run businesses. That is, SNU would own one hundred percent of a holding company, and the holding company would oversee and manage the subsidiary companies that run the various revenue businesses. The subsidiaries planned at the time included SNU Ventures, a real estate management company, and an animal hospital. In the end, after a year of preparation, SNU Holdings and its first subsidiary, SNU Ventures, were founded.
I thought that on this level of pay and conditions, SNU would no longer be able to bring in world-class faculty in five or ten years, and that building our own revenue base had become urgent.
Result
During the six months after founding, I served as CEO and focused on establishing basic corporate governance. I persuaded Kwon Oh-hyun, then Vice Chairman of Samsung Electronics, to chair the seven-member board, and appointed Seo Dong-gyu, former head of Samil PwC's M&A practice, as incoming CEO. As a mid-term step toward integrating SNU TechnoHoldings, an industry-academia foundation subsidiary, into SNU Ventures, we had SNU Ventures operate without a separate CEO, its role held concurrently by the TechnoHoldings chief.