South Korean conglomerate Lotte Group is conceding defeat for its Lotte Mart business in China, with plans to sell stores there after heavy losses brought on by diplomatic tensions between Seoul and Beijing, The Wall Street Journal reports. Lotte said it has selected Goldman Sachs to manage a sale that marks the latest setback for South Korean companies hit by boycotts and bans in China, amid anger over the deployment of a US-made missile-defense system in South Korea. The sale plan is still in its preliminary stages. A Lotte spokeswoman said the company hasn’t decided on whether to sell its entire hypermart and supermarket business or individual stores in China. A spokesman at Goldman Sachs in Seoul declined to comment. South Korea’s government identified last year a golf course owned by Lotte as a site for the missile-defense system, which put the country’s fifth-largest conglomerate in the center of a fraught geopolitical dispute. The battery was installed in April.
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