Min Hee-jin and Adore’s ‘de-hive’ incident, protecting New Jeans is also key

Min Hee-jin, CEO of Adore, and Adore executives broke up with the Hive. This situation, so-called ‘Min Hee-jin’s Rebellion’, is expected to be a long-term war, and protecting New Jeans, a group belonging to Adore, is also key.

On the 22nd, Hive exercised its right to audit Representative Min and two vice-representatives and sent a questionnaire. In order to seize management rights from Hive and become independent, Hive’s management stole Hive’s financial and contract information through a former Hive executive who recently moved to Adore’s vice president, and persuaded them to sell it to investors friendly to Adore. It is believed that such actions have continued, and it has also been reported that a general shareholders’ meeting was called for the resignation of CEO Min Hee-jin.

In particular, Hive confirmed at least three documents while checking Adore’s computerized data. The document in question was written on the 23rd of last month by Mr. A, a close associate of Adore CEO Min Hee-jin. Under the title ‘Agenda’, it included ‘economic planning’, ‘agreement on contract changes’, and ‘plan 1 and 2 for attracting external investors’. etc. were included. In the section titled ‘Summary of plan 1 and 2 to attract external investors’, the name of the internal person in charge is also listed along with the section ‘How can G·P survive?’ Hive sees G as the Singapore Investment Corporation (GIC) and P as the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund (PIF).

According to the interim audit results announced by Hive on the 25th, one of the audit subjects submitted information assets containing plans to seize management rights and contacts with external investors as evidence during the investigation, and also admitted to writing documents to attack Hive for this purpose. According to the face-to-face investigation and the conversation transcripts included in the submitted information assets, the CEO of Adore instructed executives to prepare a way to pressure Hive to sell its shares of Adore.

There were also conversations such as “Let’s bring in global funds and make a deal with Hive,” “Critical appeal for everything Hive does,” and “Think of ways to harass Hive.” The conversation log also contained action plans such as ‘preparing for public opinion in May’ and ‘making Adore an empty shell and taking him out.’ Hive also obtained a statement from the audit subject that “The wording ‘ultimately exiting Hive’ is a transcription of what the CEO of Adore said.”

After the exercise of Hive’s right to audit, Representative Min refuted this incident through media interviews and statements. He said, “I raised the issue of ‘Ayelit’s New Genes copy incident’. Hive and Belif Lab did not admit their mistake and were busy making excuses, delaying a specific response and wasting time.” Then, Hive suddenly made a statement on the 22nd. “We have notified them that they will take steps to suspend and dismiss CEO Min,” he explained.