Samsung group chairman Lee Kun-hee has died

https://www.reuters.com/article/samsung-electronics-chairman/samsung-group-chairman-lee-kun-hee-died-says-samsung-idUSS6N2H600D

by josephh • 6 years ago

149 63 6 years ago

reuters.com

sillysaurusx• 6 years ago

Does 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.

stanrivers4• 6 years 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-e...

stanrivers4• 6 years 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• 6 years ago

It’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.

someperson3• 6 years ago

As per elsewhere in thread: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/24/obituaries/lee-kun-hee-di...

notyetcrazymimi• 6 years ago

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/24/obituaries/lee-kun-hee-di...

neonate• 6 years ago

https://archive.is/0bEcU

atombender• 6 years ago

Not working for me, but this one is: https://beta.trimread.com/articles/45951

someperson3• 6 years ago

Much more detailed article. Thanks!

someperson3• 6 years 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

Sounds like it's a a common strategy for low-quality manufacturers trying to improve themselves (other than Kaizen / The Toyota Way)

fakedang• 6 years ago

Ngl, 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• 6 years ago

This reminds me of this tweet:

https://twitter.com/oniontaker/status/1214540491577942017

stanrivers4• 6 years ago

Wow - "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• 6 years ago

What 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?

dereg2• 6 years ago

I don't think that's the right way to think about this situation. The fact that Lee Kun-Hee is dead means that the family's efforts to restructure the company, consolidate power, and offshore assets is complete. Elliot Management called out Samsung five years ago for malfeasance but their efforts were stymied by a government led by the former disgraced president, Park Geun Hye.

maest• 6 years ago

I'd expect them to be able to finance paying the taxes with an equity collateralised loan. If not the entire tax bill, at least a big chunk of it.

plorkyeran2• 6 years ago

If the theory is true, then the fact that they're announcing his death now means that they've finally put themselves in a position where they can pay the tax bill without giving up control of Samsung.

JoshTko• 6 years ago

50% Inheritance tax would do wonders in the US. Honestly if you want the best people at the top then no one should start with a billion dollar advantage.

klenwell• 6 years ago

Or you could have the unintended consequence of zombie executives wandering the earth until it's in their family's economic interest to declare them dead and bury them in the ground.

unishark• 6 years ago

I believe in the US it's around 40 percent for billionaires.

adventured• 6 years ago

50% Inheritance tax would do wonders in the US.

The US is already at 40%. The Feds want 40% of anything over $11.58 million when you die.

Going to 50% isn't going to do wonders.

If you wanted to severely adjust the wealth inequality caused by the extreme wealth of the top 0.01%, you'd want a 80% or 90% rate.

Increasingly the US Senate is rich enough it'd never be allowed to become law.

eznzt• 6 years ago

On the other hand the government should not just steal half a family's wealth just because a guy died.

smnrchrds• 6 years ago

It's to any source corroborating that whistleblowers were disappearing and ending up dead?

_nqj4• 6 years ago

Accordingly 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.

AmericanChopper2• 6 years ago

According 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.

H8crilA5• 6 years ago

So 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?

jsnk• 6 years ago

It'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.

lostlogin2• 6 years ago

It’s a rumour that would have been easy to disprove if he was well.

lostlogin2• 6 years ago

Yikes - I looked and there are rumours from 2015 that this was the case. https://www.koreaobserver.com/lee-kun-hee-dead-alive-health-...

dereg2• 6 years ago

What 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.

xwdv2• 6 years ago

One could only hope to be so useful even when nearly dead.

dmos62• 6 years ago

That might be a type of usefulness that some of us could do without.

hatsunearu• 6 years ago

Man's got an army of skeletons inside his closet, but Lee Kun-hee is undoubtedly a legend.

tsjq2• 6 years ago

Okay. Whattabout that inheritance tax situation?

throwaway201025• 6 years ago

As 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.

tsjq2• 6 years ago

Is there a possibility of SK govt becoming a significant shareholder in Samsung,and thereby getting seats in the board?

gnufx• 6 years ago

Given the speculation, someone should mention Douglas Adams' concept of "spending a year dead for tax reasons" in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Samsung group chairman Lee Kun-hee has died

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