The selection of the next president of Shinhyup Bank has failed to conclude. A vote was held between the current president and Lee Hyung-joo, head of the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU), but no candidate secured the four votes needed for a final recommendation.
According to the financial sector, the bank's presidential recommendation committee met at 1:30 p.m. to discuss the selection of the next president but did not reach a conclusion.
The committee consists of five members: three appointed by the government and two by the Shinhyup Federation. To be recommended as a final candidate, a candidate must receive the agreement of at least four out of the five committee members. This structure means that support from either the government or the federation alone is insufficient to finalize a candidate.
Reports indicate that the current president received three votes while Lee received two. However, the Shinhyup side did not officially confirm the specific vote counts for each candidate. Since neither candidate met the requirement of four votes, the selection process will continue at the next meeting.
The committee plans to hold another meeting to discuss the selection of candidates, although a specific date has not yet been set. It remains to be seen whether they will vote again on the existing candidates or proceed with additional procedures.
This delay in selecting the president due to disagreements among committee members is not unprecedented. In 2017, after two rounds of reapplication, former president Lee Dong-bin was ultimately selected. In 2020, the first application round failed to yield a candidate, leading to a reapplication process that resulted in Kim Jin-kyun, then the senior vice president, being appointed.
In 2022, the committee also failed to select a final candidate in the first application round. They restructured the candidate pool to include additional applicants and, after interviews and meetings, ultimately selected former president Kang Shin-sook as the final candidate. The requirement for four out of five votes has consistently been a variable in the selection process.
The key question for the next meeting will be whether the committee can reach a consensus. If no candidate secures four votes, the discussions may repeat or lead to a reapplication process, potentially prolonging the selection timeline.
Depending on the final outcome, the record for the selection of the Shinhyup Bank president could be rewritten. If the current president is successfully reelected, he would become the first president to serve consecutive terms since the bank was established as a separate entity from the Shinhyup Federation in 2016.
Conversely, if Lee is selected as the final candidate, he would be the first current senior official from the Financial Services Commission to lead Shinhyup Bank, marking the first time in nine years that a bureaucrat has held the position since the departure of former president Lee Won-tae, who was from the Ministry of Finance and Economy.
* This article has been translated by AI.
Copyright ⓒ Aju Press All rights reserved.