Lee Jae-yong to tighten control of Samsung as director
Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong / Korea Times file
Printing business to be sold to Hewlett-Packard
By Yoon Sung-won
Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong will take greater control and responsibility in management as a registered executive director on the board, the company said Monday.
The board announced that they have decided to hold an extraordinary shareholders’ meeting to appoint Lee as a registered director of Samsung Electronics.
The decision has been made under an urgent need for strategic decision-making on aggressive investments and new growth engines from a long-term perspective, the company said.
“We have agreed that we cannot postpone the vice chairman’s appointment as registered director and his official participation in management as we need to keep pushing for aggressive and swift investments for future growth and business restructuring to strengthen our core competitiveness and corporate culture innovation amid rapid changes in the IT industry,” the directors said in a statement, Monday.
The board also recognized Lee’s leadership capabilities.
“The vice chairman has accumulated years experience in business management as chief operating officer,” the board said. “He has demonstrated his capability and talent as a leader while accomplishing a performance turnaround and business restructuring even under a difficult management environment with Chairman Lee Kun-hee hospitalized for the last two years.”
If the planned appointment passes an extraordinary shareholders’ meeting next month, Samsung Electronics CFO Lee Sang-hoon will resign from his director position to maintain the board’s quota.
Samsung Electronics’ board has four inside and five outside directors.
Meanwhile, the company also said it will sell its printing business to Hewlett-Packard (HP).
The meeting of shareholders in October will also determine a plan to divide the printing business as a separate subsidiary on Nov. 1 and to sell off the separated subsidiary to the world’s top printing company within a year, Samsung said. It will continue to sell printers under the Samsung brand on behalf of HP in the Korean market.
“Samsung Electronics will concentrate its capabilities on its key businesses through preemptive business restructuring while HP will be able to solidify its status as the world’s leading printing company,” Samsung said.
The company said its printing business unit posted 2 trillion won in sales last year. It operates an office in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, a sales post in China and 50 overseas retail bases.