On May 7th, a HYBE employee shared an article about the conflict between HYBE and Min Hee-jin, CEO of label ADOR, on Blind. It was also the day when CEO Min Hee-jin applied for an injunction against HYBE at the Seoul Central District Court to prohibit the exercise of voting rights.
Facing the crisis of being removed from the CEO position, Min Hee-jin is struggling to prevent HYBE from holding a shareholders’ meeting and exercising their voting rights. She filed an application to postpone the date of the shareholders’ meeting with the Western District Court on April 29th but the court rejected it.
In this regard, the HYBE employee pointed out, “You criticized others for cheating but you are the one who’s cheating”, adding “You asked for a face-off at the press conference but then showed but then applied for an extension of the audit, and now you’re trying to prevent the exercise the voting rights?”. In fact, Min Hee-jin refused to submit information assets in response to HYBE’s audit request.
It was belatedly known that Min Hee-jin asked HYBE to raise the put option for her 18% stake in ADOR from 13 times to 30 times. HYBE offered 100 billion won, but Min Hee-jin demanded about 30 times more (around 30 billion won), insisting that it reflects the production value of new talents.
In addition, Min Hee-jin asked HYBE to give her the authority to exercise the exclusive contract of NewJeans independently. In the entertainment industry, the artists are the company’s property rights, it is impossible for a CEO or a specific executive to own and exercise the exclusive contract right alone. The board of directors should decide whether to terminate an artist’s exclusive contract or not.
Min Hee-jin previously claimed that her purpose was not money, however, there are now several accusations against her claim, such as her demand for a large sum of money for a new boy group that has not even debuted yet and her request for the right to terminate NewJeans’s exclusive contract.
