Yesterday (22nd), Hive, which began a surprise audit of Adore, the agency of the girl group New Jeans, announced that it had found a document containing the intention to 'exit from the headquarters' and a plan to sell stocks to an overseas fund.
Attention is being paid to whether this document can serve as physical evidence of the 'stealing of management rights' that Hive raised as a justification for an audit.
According to an industry insider, there were at least three documents that Hive found while securing Adore's computer assets the day before.
This is a work diary written by Mr. A, a close associate of CEO Min Hee-jin, on the 23rd and 29th of last month.
In this document, there is a section called 'How to survive' under the section 'Summary of plan 1 and 2 of attracting external investors', and it is known that the initials referring to the Singapore Investment Board and Saudi Arabian Sovereign Wealth Fund are written there.
Hive's interpretation is that it sought to sell a portion of Hive's shares of Adore to these institutions.
This document also included the sentence 'How to sell Hive' and the name of the person in charge. Hive understands that this is an intention to sell Hive's current 80% stake in Adore.
In the document dated the 29th, it is known that under the heading 'Goal', contents such as 'Ultimately get out' and 'No one can touch us' were written.
Some believe that the intensifying internal conflict was influenced by differences in opinions on the level of compensation between CEO Min and Hive following the ‘New Genes success story’.
However, there is also a more fundamental analysis that Hive, which has established a 'multi-label system' and debuted a large number of new groups in a short period of time, is facing a new challenge.
In addition to the fact that some label representatives may pursue independent activities, the similarity of content brought about by the multi-label system may be a problem that must be solved.
The day before, CEO Min issued a statement refuting the suspicion of an attempt to seize management rights, calling it “an outrageous media play” and “a legitimate protest to protect the cultural achievements of our artist, New Genes.”
Hive is expected to speed up the convening of an extraordinary shareholders' meeting to replace Adore's management.
(Reporter: Kim Min-jeong / Video Editing: Kim Soo-young / Production: Digital News Editorial Department)
