KB Financial begins search for next chairman, with final candidate set for Sept. 11

KB Financial's chairman candidate recommendation committee convened Monday morning to launch the management succession process for selecting the group's next chairman. The committee plans to finalize a single candidate on Sept. 11.

According to KB Financial, the committee adopted detailed rules governing the criteria and procedures for selecting the final chairman candidate and narrowed a preliminary long list of 20 names to 12 — six internal and six external candidates. The final candidate will be chosen through at least three additional committee sessions.

Earlier, the committee held two meetings in April to establish and publicly disclose detailed eligibility criteria for the chairmanship, and confirmed a long list of 20 candidates — 10 internal and 10 external — based on first-half figures this year.

The committee also held informal discussions among its members on succession procedures and convened a shareholder meeting on May 15 — attended exclusively by committee members — to gather shareholder views on the qualities and competencies expected of the next chairman and on the succession process itself.

On July 3, the committee will meet to reduce the 12-person long list to a short list of six. After roughly two months of preparation, it will conduct first-round interviews and evaluations on Aug. 27 to pare the short list to three. External candidates on the short list who wish to remain anonymous will have their identities protected.

On Sept. 11, the three remaining candidates will undergo in-depth second-round interviews. The committee plans to hold a vote that day to select the single final candidate.

If the final candidate passes the qualification checks required under relevant laws and regulations, the committee and board of directors will formally recommend the appointment on Oct. 2, with an extraordinary shareholders' meeting to be held in November to officially elect the new chairman.

A notable feature of this succession process is that it was launched more than a month earlier than in 2023 — five months before the current chairman's term expires. Chairman Yang Jong-hee's term runs through Nov. 20.

The committee also extended the period from the start of the succession process to the selection of the final candidate to three months, allowing more time for thorough evaluation and vetting.

Procedures to ensure fair competition between internal and external candidates have also been expanded compared with past practice. Measures carried over from before include in-depth reference checks for external candidates, sufficient provision of internal information to external candidates, two rounds of interviews, and longer interview time for external candidates relative to internal ones.

In addition, the committee will provide roughly two months of preparation time between the short-list selection and the actual interviews, creating conditions in which external candidates can compete on more equal footing with internal ones. Separate preliminary meetings between committee members and external candidates are also planned.

The moves appear to reflect awareness of efforts by financial regulators, who set up a task force earlier this year to advance corporate governance at financial firms, including building a more transparent CEO succession system. The authorities are expected to announce governance reform measures as early as this month, including rules that would limit financial holding company CEOs to a single term renewal, capping total tenure at six years.

Jo Hwa-jun, chair of the recommendation committee, said the process would be conducted "with greater transparency and fairness in line with the financial sector's governance advancement drive currently being led by the financial authorities," adding that the committee would "do its utmost to ensure the best-qualified person capable of enhancing shareholder value and leading KB Financial Group's sustainable growth is selected."