The younger son of Hanmi's founding family has sold a 2.5% stake — roughly ₩82.07 billion ($59.9 million) worth of shares — to a fund aligned with his mother and sister, nudging the founder-family camp's friendly holdings to 31.05%, past top shareholder Shin Dong-kuk's 29.83%, for the first time. The move is symbolically decisive, but a shareholder pact with roughly a year left to run means it changes the scoreboard, not yet the outcome.
What happened
On July 2, holding company Hanmi Science (008930.KS, the listed parent of the Hanmi pharmaceutical group) disclosed that Lim Jong-hoon — the founder's second son and CEO of group affiliate Hanmi Fine Chemical — would sell 2.5% of the company, or 1,709,788 shares, in an off-market block. Private-equity firm Nau IB Capital is buying the stake through its "Nau IB No. 22 Fund" at ₩48,000 ($35) per share, for a total of ₩82.07 billion ($59.9 million), according to Chosun Biz. The buyer is described as aligned with Hanmi Group Chair Song Young-sook and Vice Chair Lim Ju-hyun — Lim Jong-hoon's mother and sister (Chosun Biz).
The sale cuts Lim Jong-hoon's 5.09% Hanmi Science stake by roughly half. More importantly for the control map: after the transfer, friendly holdings around Chair Song, Vice Chair Lim and the second son's family total about 31.05%, edging past the roughly 29.83% commanded by Shin Dong-kuk, chairman of Hanyang Precision and Hanmi Science's single largest shareholder (Chosun Biz). Shin's bloc breaks down as a 22.88% personal stake plus 6.95% held through Hanyang Precision, per Seoul Economic Daily.
Why the flip may not move the vote yet
The founding-family camp is now ahead on friendly shares, but the four parties — Song and Lim, Shin, and PE house Ladefense Partners — remain bound by a four-party shareholder agreement (signed in December 2024 and reported by Seoul Economic Daily to have roughly a year left as of mid-2026) that requires joint exercise of voting rights on major decisions. While that pact holds, neither side can independently force a proxy showdown. The stake shift therefore reshapes negotiating leverage inside the alliance rather than delivering immediate board control.
It lands, however, against visible cracks. The mother-daughter side and Ladefense have filed a ₩60 billion ($43.8 million) penalty-clause lawsuit against Shin, alleging he breached the shareholders' agreement by issuing exchangeable bonds against his shares and then buying more stock — in their view a covert bid to expand control; Shin counters it was ordinary financing and not a breach, according to Chosun Biz. A separate flashpoint is a scrapped Banpo "senior care" development in Seoul, a project Chosun Biz reports is a central issue in the same suit. Seoul Economic Daily has also reported the allies clashing over the reappointment of Hanmi Pharmaceutical CEO Park Jae-hyun.
The precedent, and the irony
Hanmi's governance war predates the current alliance. At Hanmi Science's March 28, 2024 annual meeting, the founder's two sons defeated a proposed merger with chemicals maker OCI that had been championed by Chair Song and Vice Chair Lim; all five board nominees put forward by sons Lim Jong-yoon and Lim Jong-hoon were elected while the chair's six candidates were voted down, and OCI subsequently abandoned the deal (The Korea Times; KED Global). The current step reverses that alignment: the same Lim Jong-hoon who fought his mother in 2024 has now moved his shares toward her camp, stating he acted to "carry on my father's management philosophy" alongside Chair Song and Vice Chair Lim (Chosun Biz). Shin, for his part, had reportedly sought about ₩300 billion ($219 million) to buy Lim Jong-hoon's full 5.09% stake before that plan fell through (Seoul Economic Daily), and in February he bought out elder son Lim Jong-yoon's personal and related-entity Hanmi Science holdings (Chosun Biz).
The operating business keeps moving
The boardroom drama sits atop a company still transacting. On June 30, Hanmi Pharmaceutical (128940.KS) closed its acquisition of Canada's Aptose Biosciences through subsidiary HS North America Ltd., paying C$2.41 per share in cash — a 28% premium to Aptose's 30-day volume-weighted average price of C$1.88 — to secure tuspetinib, an oral kinase inhibitor in development for acute myeloid leukemia; Aptose's TSX delisting was expected on or about July 3 (GlobeNewswire). Hanmi had backed Aptose with more than US$41 million in debt facilities ahead of the deal, according to allsci.com.
The open question
The next hard signal is the court's ruling in the ₩60 billion penalty suit — an outcome that could either cement or fracture the four-party pact before its remaining term runs out. Until then, the founding family's fresh edge in friendly shares is a positional gain inside an alliance still contractually obliged to vote as one.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Currency conversions use an approximate rate of 1 USD = 1,370 KRW.
