GRAVITY Co., Ltd.

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GRAVITY Co., Ltd.

Type of Company	Public (NASDAQ: GRVY)
Founded	April 2000
Headquarters	Seoul, Republic of Korea
Key people	Ryu, Il Young, Chairman & CEO Kwon, James O., CFO Kim, Jung Ryool, Executive Director
Industry	Software & Programming
Website	Gravity Co., Ltd. Korean

GRAVITY Co., Ltd. (also known as Gravity Corporation) NASDAQ: GRVY (Korean:그라비티 주식회사) is a South Korean videogame corporation primarily known for the development of the MMORPG Ragnarok Online.

1 History
2 Litigation
3 Game titles
- 3.1 Published
- 3.2 In development
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] History

The corporation started as a small business in Shinsa-dong, Kangnam-ku, Seoul, South Korea and has expanded to an international corporate interest with a semi-independent subsidiary division located in Los Angeles, California known as Gravity Interactive, Inc. which handles the international version of the game (referred to as "International Ragnarok Online" or "iRO"). On 12 February 2005, Gravity Corporation made their Initial Public Offering and traded $108 million US dollars on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol GRVY.

The company has had a rather turbulent history initially involving internal political conflicts between CEO (Kim Hakkyu, who eventually left the company) and company president Kim Jungryool (who later assumed control as CEO), but has since stablised and expanded operations to all of north and south-east Asia through supervised partnerships with native corporate entities. However, while Gravity Corporation's flagship product Ragnarok Online is considered a success in Asia, operations are not as well developed in Europe and the United States in comparison to similar products marketed and developed there.

On August 30, 2005, Jung Ryool Kim, the controlling shareholder, sold his 52% stake and set plans to quit as a director. The buyers of his shares were Ezer and Techno Groove of Japan, a pair of technology ventures controlled by Il Young Ryu and Taizo and Masayoshi Son. After becoming the new majority shareholder, on September 13, 2005, Il Young Ryu was named by Gravity as its new chairman and joint chief executive. Il Young Ryu is also the founder of Area Network Limited and the CEO of Internet Japan.

[edit] Litigation

In 2006, two U.S. based hedge funds created a committee for "fair treatment of minority shareholders" which initiated litigation charging that the majority shareholders and officers have violated their fiduciary obligations.

The funds, Moon Capital Management and Ramius Capital Group, both headquartered in New York City, demanded that Gravity call an extraordinary general meeting of the shareholders to give them a chance to vote Il Young Ryu out of office. Their demands were in time successful, and a meeting was scheduled for December 26.