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To: Don Green who wrote (61908)	11/27/2000 3:59:43 PM
From: Don Green	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 93625

Hyundai Electronics to raise $2.9 billion to ease debt By The Associated Press Special to CNET News.com November 27, 2000, 9:45 a.m. PT SEOUL, South Korea--Hyundai Electronics Industries, one of the world's leading computer-chip makers, said last week it was experiencing serious financial difficulty and unveiled a plan to raise $2.9 billion by the end of 2001 to reduce debt. Hyundai Electronics was the latest affiliate of South Korea's largest conglomerate, Hyundai, to acknowledge a debt crisis. Hyundai's woes coincided with spreading economic concerns. The South Korean won dipped to its lowest level in more than a year last week, despite the government's appeal for market calm. Over the past 10 months, the country's main stock price index has fallen by half to a little more than 500. The Hyundai chipmaker said in a statement that it will secure a $842 million syndicated loan to be managed by Citibank of the United States. It said it will also issue $1.1 billion in corporate bonds, sell $442 million in assets and securities and secure $418 million through sales of bonds held by overseas units and $124 million in fresh loans from creditor banks. Hyundai Electronics is struggling with $9.7 billion in debt, a large portion of it incurred when it took over the semiconductor operation of LG, a South Korean conglomerate, in a government-sponsored industry shakeout last year. Under an economic-reform program spawned by the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis, South Korea has prompted its bloated conglomerates to merge some of their spreading operations to focus on a few strategic sectors. Hyundai Electronics has focused on making computer memory chips. But in recent months, the price of dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips, a key export of Hyundai, has plummeted, cutting into company revenue. Semiconductors are the latest sector where South Korea's massive conglomerates poured billions of dollars to expand facilities for mass production and exports. U.S. competitors have complained of dumping and supply gluts exacerbated by Hyundai and Samsung Electronics of South Korea. Hyundai provides 13 percent of the world's computer memory chips. With a 17.2-percent market share, Samsung Electronics is the world's largest supplier of memory chips. Hyundai Electronics also said that other Hyundai affiliates will sell their stakes in the company to separate it from the conglomerate by the first quarter of next year. The government is urging conglomerates to end cross-holdings among affiliates to make them independent and prevent an affiliate's financial trouble from spreading to the whole conglomerate.