Ousted brother seeks return to power amid Lotte Group chair’s jailing

Shin Dong-bin and Shin Dong-joo

With the Lotte Group chairman behind bars, his estranged older brother is once again staging a comeback through a shareholder vote at Lotte Holdings, a move that could open a new front in the bitter sibling dispute over control of South Korea’s fifth-largest conglomerate.

According to industry sources on Sunday, the Tokyo-based Lotte Holdings will hold a shareholder meeting at the end of this month to put to a vote proposals set forth by the elder brother Shin Dong-joo to remove his brother Shin Dong-bin from the board and reinstate himself as a board director.

In February, Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin was sentenced to two and a half years in prison on charges of bribing a confidante of the impeached President Park Geun-hye. He immediately stepped down from his post as chairman of Lotte Holdings Japan but remained on the board. Shin Dong-joo has since continuously called out for his brother’s prompt dismissal from the company.

The elder Shin was stripped of his title as vice chairman at the Japanese holding entity in 2015. He has since staged four shareholder meetings to reclaim his position but all to little avail. But he appears to have mounted another effort as this would be the company's first shareholder meeting to be held in his brother's absence.

Shin Dong-joo still wields significant control over Lotte Holdings Japan through his majority stake in an asset management firm, which holds the largest 28.1 percent interest in the holding company. Lotte Group, however, maintained that remaining shareholders continue to show strong support for the chairman.

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