Samsung heir prompted to vice chairman

Lee Jay-yong

Samsung Group promoted Lee Jay-yong, the only son of the group leader Lee Kun-hee, to vice chairman of Samsung Electronics, its flagship affiliate, Wednesday.

The promotion comes two years after the 44-year-old chief operating officer (COO) was promoted to president at the world’s largest manufacturer of computer memory chips and smartphones. The Harvard-educated Lee joined Samsung in 1991.

“Although Jay-yong was promoted, he will retain the current COO position. The new vice chairman will expand his influence on Samsung’s key businesses,’’ said Rhee In-yong, chief communications officer, in a briefing to local reporters at Samsung headquarters.

Market watchers said the promotion to vice chairman, a position that is held by six others at Samsung, comes at a time when the conglomerate is accelerating efforts to transfer management control to the younger Lee from his 70-year-old father.

However, Rhee contradicted this, saying that the promotion did not mean that Samsung was speeding up a power transition. “Because Chairman Lee is very active, it’s not correct to say that we are speeding up efforts to transfer power.’’

The junior Lee is the grandson of Samsung founder Lee Byung-chull. A total of 17 top-level executives were promoted. Seven executives were promoted to president, while eight senior executives were transferred to other business units without title changes.
Samsung Life Insurance CEO Park Keun-hee was promoted to vice chairman.

Samsung Electronics’ marketing chief at its handset division Lee Don-joo, and the company’s media solution center chief Hong Won-pyo, were promoted to president.

“The promotion of Lee Don-joo and Hong means the company will give more authority to the handset and software development divisions. Amid the deepening fight with Apple, we need to apply more fine-tuned strategies by giving more power to our handset-related divisions,’’ said another Samsung executive.

The company said it will announce its year-end reshuffle on mid-tier executives this week. <The Korea Times/Kim Yoo-chul>