Buyout Billionaire Kim in Court to Fight Arrest Warrant (1)

One of the richest people in South Korea, Michael ByungJu Kim, was in court Tuesday as prosecutors seek to take the private equity billionaire into custody as part of a probe into his firm’s management of beleaguered supermarket chain Homeplus.

Kim, the co-founder and chairman of MBK Partners Ltd., is one of four people whom prosecutors are seeking to detain on charges including fraud. The authorities are probing possible wrongdoing in how Homeplus went from being South Korea’s second-largest retail chain to distressed court receivership.

A grim-faced Kim walked into the court building, local media footage showed, shortly ...