Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
About a month ago it was revealed that the mess between SM Entertainment‘s stakeholders and Lee Soo Man‘s Like Planning had returned, with the news that SME was again considering cutting ties with LSM’s company. Well, lo-and-behold, they’ve actually done it.
SM Entertainment announced Friday that it will sever ties with its chief producer Lee Soo-man at the end of this year. SM said its board of directors convened a meeting and decided to terminate a production license contract with Like Planning, a music production company owned by Lee, on Dec. 31, earlier than scheduled.
LSM still retains 18.73% of SME’s stock, and as mentioned before, SME has funneled close to $100 million to Like Planning in total. Nothing shady there, I’m sure.
Back in 2018 it was revealed that SME was paying the company millions a year for “producing” and there were suspicions it was a way paying LSM directly from company coffers. The company denied this at the time, and they did the same a year later in 2019 when it was brought up again. Of course none of this mattered for the most part, but SME was forced to respond after major stakeholders called for transparency, and they eventually appeared to give into demands but really just said they would think about it. At the time, the stock price bled because of it, but one had to assume that was of little concern for LSM compared to having millions in cash flow annually.
So anyway, this is just a bit of an update on the controversy surrounding Like Planning since the saga seems to finally be concluded.
