Lotte's Shin Dong-bin visiting Vietnam to attend groundbreaking

Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin [LOTTE]

Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin will visit Vietnam for his first overseas business trip after receiving a presidential pardon on Liberation Day on Aug. 15.

Shin, who is currently in Japan, will depart for Vietnam at the end of this month to attend a groundbreaking ceremony set for Sept. 2. The Thu Thiem Eco Smart City project is led by Lotte E&C in Ho Chi Minh City.

The project is a large commercial complex with a total floor area of 680,000 square meters (7.3 million square feet), 1.5 times the size of COEX mall in Seoul. It will have a shopping mall with five basement floors and 60 floors above ground, with offices, hotels and apartments. The project will cost $900 million.

Lotte has recently been expanding its business in Vietnam and Indonesia. Lotte Mart, Lotte Hotel, Lotte Duty Free and Lotte Property & Development are all currently operating businesses in the country.

In Indonesia, a petrochemical complex construction project by Lotte Chemical is in progress. It is building a petrochemical complex in Cilegon, Indonesia, a project costing $3.9 billion.

Lotte is exiting China. At a board meeting last month, Lotte Shopping decided to sell the Lotte Department Store branch in Chengdu, China. Lotte entered China in 2008 and once had five Lotte Department Store branches and 119 Lotte Marts, but failed to recover from Chinese retaliation after a U.S. missile system was placed in Korea.

In June, Shin visited Hungary and Ireland and decided to increase the production scale of anode foil in order to heighten Lotte’s presence in the European electric vehicle market.

BY BAEK IL-HYUN [lim.jeongwon@joongang.co.kr]