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Asiana Airlines want to speed up its merger with Korean Air, so it has set up a task force team that will work on its integration with Korean Air, the flagship air carrier of South Korea. The team is said to be headed by the budget airlines’ interim chief executive officer, Won Yoo Seok.
Asiana Airlines’ main aim for the formation of a team which it named the Corporate Merger Task Force, is to have a group that will focus and dedicate its time and resources to receive approval from the remaining foreign anti-trust regulators that have yet to issue their “go-ahead” signal for Korean Air to acquire Asiana Airlines.
The Korean budget airline said on Monday, March 27, that with its vice president and interim CEO’s leadership, the task force was launched. The team will solely work on anything related to the merger of Asiana Airlines and Korean Air. It is also expected to address all the challenges that the deal will face along the way or throughout the process of the M&A.
Korea Joongang Daily mentioned that Asiana’s newly-formed merger task force consists of 42 members, and it includes seven company executives. Previously, this team was said to have been led by a strategic planning department head, and it was restructured and expanded with the interim CEO taking over the role as its leader.
“With the extension of review by foreign competition authorities, the amount of requested materials are becoming massive,” Asiana Air said in a statement. “To enhance our capacity to respond to these reviews, we have implemented a task force operating system centered on the acting duties of the CEO, and also bolstered our practical workforce.”
Meanwhile, the Corporate Merger Task Force will be working on scaling up the works to gain approval from the remaining countries, which are Japan, the United States, and the European Union. They have yet to reach decisions regarding Asiana Airlines and Korean Air’s merger.
Out of the 14 countries that needed to issue their approval, 11 have already concluded their review and agreed. The review of the competition authorities has been going on since 2021.
The UE is said to have made progress and is already in the second phase of the review and is now expected to release its decision for the proposed merger by Aug. 3.
Photo by: John McArthur/Unsplash
