Most people think the way capital takes over a foreign company is simple: just buy enough shares. After the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, Samsung was a clear example — yet even then, American capital never fully took control. Thirty years later, the playbook has been upgraded. It is no longer just about buying stocks.
Let’s look at the full path through Samsung and SK Hynix. These two Korean companies control the most critical part of the AI industry — HBM (think of it as the “heart” of AI chips). Without it, even the most expensive AI chips cannot run. Together they hold nearly 80% of the global market. In theory, an asset this important should stay firmly in Korean hands. Capital, however, is taking a quieter and far more thorough route.
Step 1: Wash the shares out of local hands first
In 2024, when HBM was in severe shortage and Samsung and Hynix were making record profits, their stock prices suddenly plunged 40%. Wall Street quietly bought during that period. Almost no one noticed.
Then in 2025, global media suddenly began shouting in unison: “AI memory is the golden decade,” “Missing Hynix is like missing Nvidia in its early days.” Ordinary Korean office workers, retirees, and newly married couples poured in. Many borrowed heavily from banks and brokers — in simple terms, they had 1 million of their own money but borrowed enough to buy as if they had 2 million or more.
When prices fell, those who borrowed could not hold on. In just half a year, Korea’s major banks had already lent out 85% of their entire annual lending capacity. Retail investors could no longer borrow to cover losses. They were forced to sell their shares at rock-bottom prices to repay the debt. 300,000 accounts were wiped out. 1.2 million people were left with debts.
The real goal of this step was never simply to crash the stock price. It was to force the shares that had been scattered among ordinary Koreans back onto the market through panic and forced liquidation. American capital slowly picked them up at the bottom.
Note that the 1997 crisis already proved that simply holding shares is not enough to truly control a company. That is why U.S. holdings were deliberately spread across hundreds of funds, each owning less than 5%. Real voting power still sat with the Korean founding families, who held more than 20% in concentrated blocks. On the surface, the companies remained Korean-controlled.
But capital had completed the first step: it had stripped the chips out of local hands.
Step 2: Move the “pricing power” to its own home ground
Owning the shares is still not enough. The more important question is: who gets to decide how much the company is actually worth?
In July 2026, SK Hynix listed in the United States. By then its share price had already fallen 43%, and the Korean won had depreciated 30% against the dollar. Americans could buy the stock at roughly a 60% discount.
Previously the stock could only be traded in Korea, so its price was set by Korean money. Korean retail investors buying $65 billion in a whole year was already their limit. The U.S. stock market, by contrast, turns over $200 billion in a single day. Once global capital starts trading the same stock in the United States, the price is decided where the trading volume is deepest.
A simple analogy: Imagine you used to sell fruit in your own neighborhood wet market. You and the local residents set the price. Now the same fruit is sold in the city’s largest supermarket. The price is set by the supermarket and the entire city’s buyers. Even if you are still the farmer, you have to follow the supermarket’s lead.
That is the transfer of pricing power. From now on, when Hynix wants to raise new capital, issue new shares, or borrow money, it must watch the reaction of the U.S. market. Capital does not need to buy the entire company. It only needs the place where the price is discovered to be its own home ground.
Step 3: Physically move the factories and production capacity
Once the shares and the pricing power are in hand, the final step is to move the actual production lines onto its own soil.
The United States put a clear choice on the table using subsidies and tariffs: Want to keep selling chips to the world? Either build factories in the U.S., take the subsidies and tax breaks, or face a 100% tariff. A 100% tariff means your chips instantly become twice as expensive and no one will buy them. Samsung went to Texas. Hynix went to Indiana.
Once the factories are on the ground, the subsidies become new leverage. Intel has already shown how this works: it received billions in government subsidies to build plants. When construction was only halfway done, the government suddenly said, “Give us a portion of the company’s shares so we become a shareholder.” Refuse? The subsidies would be cancelled and the half-finished factories would become ruins. In the end, Intel signed.
When the real factories, equipment, and workers are all on American soil, even the strongest technology becomes increasingly constrained by American rules. At that point, the company’s nominal nationality no longer matters much.
The real method capital uses
Capital does not take foreign core assets through a single forced acquisition overnight. It works through three progressive layers:
- Use market swings and leverage to wash the shares out of local retail investors’ hands;
- Through a U.S. listing and a deeper market, move pricing power to its own home ground;
- Use subsidies and tariffs to physically relocate factories and production capacity onto its own soil.
Koreans still hold the surface-level voting rights. Americans already hold the real control over price and future production capacity. This is capital operating at a higher dimension — it does not rush to change the company name. It simply peels away control, layer by layer.
The next company or country that holds critical technology and keeps capital awake at night — will it walk the same path? Worth watching closely.
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