Sang-yul Lee Featured in Practising Law Institute’s In Brief
“Sang-yul Lee: In Hotel Acquisitions, Dealing With Existing Employees is as Critical as the Bricks and Mortar”

Sang-yul Lee was featured in the January 31, 2008 issue of Practising Law Institute’s newsletter In Brief. Practising Law Institute asked Sang-yul, “How do parties to an existing hotel acquisition deal with the number one intangible of a hotel—that is the numerous employees that run the place?”

Sang-yul noted, “Owning and operating a hotel is a labor-intensive endeavor,” and “with the limited exception of a flag hotel’s 24/7 reservations system, none of these jobs can be outsourced to an off-site vendor.” Further, he states that most large hotels, “especially those in metropolitan areas, traditionally have been unionized,” which for the buyer means that successorship becomes an issue in the context of the purchase and “entails mostly union bargaining and contractual obligations.” Sang-yul observes that “a buyer’s failure to adequately address human resources issues will play a vital role in the success of the purchase or acquisition,” and “studies suggest that specialized legal counsel and senior human resources personnel should be tapped to help facilitate the process of acquiring, developing or converting a hotel property.”