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Samsung group chairman Lee Kun-hee has died
- dereg 6y agoWhat a brutal way to go. It has been widely speculated that he has been in a vegetative state since 2014, kept on life support to give the company time to restructure its assets and consolidate power under Lee Kun-Hee's son, Lee Jae-yong, so that their family's power persists even in the wake of paying South Korea's enormous wealth taxes. Samsung undoubtedly played a key role in South Korea's economic ascendance, but Lee Kun-Hee will leave behind a complicated legacy of industrialization mixed with corruption and hyper-crony capitalism.
- sillysaurusx 6y agoDoes anyone have any more info? The article only says that he died, and then nothing else. It’s two sentences long. Whoever he was, he at least deserves a summary of his achievements.
- stanrivers 6y ago"Lee passed away on Sunday with his family by his side, the company said in a statement, without mentioning the cause of death. He had surgery in 2014 after a heart attack and was treated for lung cancer in the late 1990s." Bloomberg - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-25/samsung-electronics-says-chairman-lee-kun-hee-has-died https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-25/samsung-e...
- stanrivers 6y ago"Lee, who told employees to “change everything except your wife and children” during his drive to foster innovation and challenge rivals such as Sony Corp., was South Korea’s richest person. He had an estimated net worth of $20.7 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Samsung, the biggest of South Korea’s family-run industrial groups, known as chaebol, has been led by his only son since the heart attack. “Chairman Lee was a true visionary who transformed Samsung into the world-leading innovator and industrial powerhouse from a local business,” the company said. “His legacy will be everlasting.” Named one of the world’s 100 most influential people by Time magazine in 2005, Lee began overhauling Samsung Electronics after he saw the company’s products gathering dust in a Los Angeles electronics store, according to “The Lee Kun Hee Story,” a 2010 biography by Lee Kyung-sik. The Suwon, South Korea-based company had become known for cheap, low-quality electronics gear and was in the “second phase of cancer,” sending out 6,000 people to fix products made by 30,000 employees, Lee said in 1993, according to the biography."
- edgyquant 6y agoIt’s likely because he’s been assumed dead for years and most major publications have covered his story expecting him to die any day now (if he wasn’t already) over the last couple years.
- someperson 6y agoAs per elsewhere in thread: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/24/obituaries/lee-kun-hee-dies-samsung.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/24/obituaries/lee-kun-hee-di...
- notyetcrazymimi 6y agohttps://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/24/obituaries/lee-kun-hee-dies-samsung.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/24/obituaries/lee-kun-hee-di...
- neonate 6y agohttps://archive.is/0bEcU https://archive.is/0bEcU
- atombender 6y agoNot working for me, but this one is: https://beta.trimread.com/articles/45951 https://beta.trimread.com/articles/45951
- someperson 6y agoMuch more detailed article. Thanks!
- someperson 6y ago> In 1995, as part of the emphasis on quality, he visited a Samsung plant in the town of Gumi after a batch of cellphones was found to be defective. > [...] > Together they watched as $50 million worth of phones, fax machines and other inventory was smashed to bits and set ablaze. The employees wept. Interesting, in a documentary (puff piece) by Singapore-based news organisation CNA, I heard a near identical story about faulty fridges made by the China-based manufacturer Haier [1] being smashed by their workers in a similar way in 1984 after an order by CEO Zhang Ruimin: https://youtu.be/WK7mxBy1fNw?t=594 https://youtu.be/WK7mxBy1fNw?t=594 Sounds like it's a a common strategy for low-quality manufacturers trying to improve themselves (other than Kaizen / The Toyota Way)
- fakedang 6y agoNgl, heard a similar story about Konosuke Matsushita at Panasonic. I think it's a cultural thing, but why would Haier do it in the 1980s, I don't know. Chinese products were known as being shit well into the 00s.
- alexpetralia 6y agoThis reminds me of this tweet: https://twitter.com/oniontaker/status/1214540491577942017 https://twitter.com/oniontaker/status/1214540491577942017
- stanrivers 6y agoWow - "Enter Korean tax code. Korea has 50% inheritance tax on assets above $2.5m. When Lee Gunhee dies, his family will owe the government $7b. The family will have to sell personal stakes of Samsung-controlled assets, weakening the strong, complex investment structure they built." That's pretty impactful in terms of potentially forcing the family to sell off control, isn't it?
- Anon1096 6y agoWhat happens if they aren't able to sell off the assets at a high enough price to pay the inheritance tax? Does the amount owed scale with how much the assets are actually able to fetch in a mass sell-off like this?
- H8crilA 6y agoThere is absolutely no problem with liquidating a $7B slice of equity in a matter of weeks (probably even days). People don't appreciate just how enormous the capital markets are.
- LudwigNagasena 6y agoIf it is a single stock it may still affect the price. That’s why big sell-offs are usually done over a long period of time, like weeks. People also don’t appreciate just how small the capital markets are and how much they rely on market makers.
- H8crilA 6y agoWeeks because you may need an actual human broker to find you counterparties.
- skynica 6y agoAccordingly to my Korean colleagues, he has been in a coma since 2014 and has been just the chairman in name. There are no pictures of him after 2014.
- AmericanChopper 6y agoAccording to many he’s been dead since then, and his heir has just been trying to keep it all hidden because SK’s inheritance taxes could threaten the family’s majority stake in the business.
- H8crilA 6y agoSo is this the heir "buying the dip"? Staging the death at the moment in which the inheritance is likely to have the lowest market value?
- xwdv 6y agoPrecisely.
- AmericanChopper 6y agoRegardless of what you think of the conspiracy theory, they've had quite a long time to plan what they do next, so you'd presume they had something figured out.
- peteretep 6y agoIn the UK if you get a (sizeable, asset) gift from someone and they die within a certain number of years you then need to pay inheritance tax on it. Could be the same mechanism here? Date has passed so turn off the ventilator or whatever?
- jsnk 6y agoIt's quite amazing how some pieces of conspiracy is so readily accepted while some others are vehemently denied to the point where people are sent to jail over it.
- hatsunearu 6y agoMan's got an army of skeletons inside his closet, but Lee Kun-hee is undoubtedly a legend.
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- tsjq 6y agoOkay. Whattabout that inheritance tax situation?
- throwaway201025 6y agoAs a Samsung employee, I'm a bit worried if there could be a governance dispute. Due to the Samsung Group not having a holding company, and the high amount of the inheritance tax in South Korea, the current major stockholder Lee Jaeyong, who is the son of Lee Kunhee, may have some difficulties maintaining the current governance. I hope this does not lead the company to a crisis.
- tsjq 6y agoIs there a possibility of SK govt becoming a significant shareholder in Samsung,and thereby getting seats in the board?
- gnufx 6y agoGiven the speculation, someone should mention Douglas Adams' concept of "spending a year dead for tax reasons" in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.