Lee Kun-hee, who remodeled Samsung from a primarily native South Korean enterprise into one of many world’s largest know-how teams, died on Sunday on the age of 78.
Lee had remained out of the general public eye since struggling a coronary heart assault in 2014, along with his 52-year-old son Lee Jae-yong formally taking on administration of the sprawling South Korean know-how group.
However the elder Lee is credited with turning Samsung right into a world chief in sectors starting from know-how and development to transport and cell phones.
“Chairman Lee was a real visionary who remodeled Samsung into the world-leading innovator and industrial powerhouse from an area enterprise,” Samsung mentioned on Sunday. “His legacy will likely be eternal.”
Lee was identified merely as “the chairman” among the many firm’s staff and barely seen amongst its workers. However for 26 years, the publicity-shy South Korean held unchallenged authority over the group.
Lee’s huge wealth and connections to South Korean elite led some to deem him the nation’s strongest man, with extra enduring affect than presidents. A string of lawsuits provoked issues about how he wielded this energy. He was convicted a number of instances for crimes associated to the succession course of however was pardoned by various the nation’s former presidents.
But even Lee’s critics are inclined to respect his achievements at Samsung, which pulled away from Hyundai to turn into the most important of South Korea’s chaebol, or industrial teams, by a large margin. The corporate is the most important maker of reminiscence chips, smartphones and digital shows, Samsung C&T constructed the world’s tallest constructing in Dubai and Samsung Heavy Industries is the world’s third-largest shipbuilder by gross sales. Different subsidiaries’ vary from theme parks to insurance coverage.
It’s for the transformation of Samsung Electronics, nevertheless, that Lee will likely be most remembered. Samsung was a minor participant within the international know-how business when he took the helm in December 1987, succeeding Lee Byung-chull, his father and the group’s founder.
Lee’s college training in Japan and the US targeted on economics and enterprise, however he labored to grasp the science of semiconductors, giving him the boldness to authorise main investments within the discipline. Inside 5 years, Samsung was the world’s largest producer of reminiscence chips underpinned by billions of {dollars} of annual funding, even throughout downturns.
Regardless of this success, buyers all over the world continued to view Samsung’s shopper electronics as poorly designed and undesirable. Lee’s aggressive interventions to alter this notion have now turn into legend.
Essentially the most well-known got here in 1995, after the humiliation of discovering that Samsung cell phones he had given as items didn’t work. Two thousand Samsung staff at a cellphone manufacturing manufacturing unit south of Seoul had been instructed to don headbands marked “high quality first” and collect exterior. Hundreds of telephones and different digital units — with an estimated whole worth of $50m — had been incinerated on a bonfire and the ashes had been pulverised by a bulldozer.
Regardless of Lee’s admonitions to executives to “change every little thing however your spouse and youngsters”, the outcomes of the standard drive took years to materialise. However from early this century, Samsung started to win substantial international market share in shopper electronics with a extra dependable and engaging vary of merchandise, backed by an enormous improve in advertising expenditure. In 2006, it grew to become the world’s largest tv producer by unit gross sales, having capitalised on the rise of flatscreen units quicker than rivals akin to Sony.
Lee’s transformation of Samsung was additionally seen as instrumental in South Korea’s financial transformation within the 20th century. “He was the very best enterprise chief that had not solely developed Samsung right into a first-class international participant but in addition positioned South Korea amongst superior economies,” mentioned the Federation of Korean Industries, a foyer group for large companies.
Lee’s venture was badly disrupted by a scandal that started in 2007, after Samsung’s former basic counsel alleged huge bribery and corruption on the firm. Lee resigned from Samsung in 2008, earlier than being convicted of tax evasion and breach of belief. However he was cleared of bribery and a presidential pardon opened the door for him to return in March 2010.
The saga added to controversy over Lee’s skill to exert management over all Samsung corporations by a posh net of cross-shareholdings, even if his solely formal place was chairman of Samsung Electronics. Even this was successfully an honorary title, by no means having been accepted by shareholders. However present and former executives insist that this unorthodox governance system helped Samsung’s speedy rise.
Now and again, Lee would journey to the corporate’s headquarters early within the morning to ship exhortations to executives. Usually, he most well-liked to work from his mansion within the upmarket district of Hannam, receiving guests there or in a close-by constructing. One former government remembers colleagues abstaining from ingesting water within the morning earlier than a marathon assembly with Lee, figuring out that consolation breaks had been out of the query.
As soon as Lee decided, Samsung moved with spectacular velocity. “It’s an organisation filled with people who find themselves able to rush in direction of the entrance line and sacrifice themselves at an order of a commanding officer,” a Sony government admiringly advised a Korean author, as Samsung roared previous the once-dominant Japanese firm. “Chairman Kun-hee Lee is the commander-in-chief.”
That fleet-footedness was seen most clearly as Samsung recovered from an preliminary failure to identify the potential of smartphones. Lower than two years after being written off as an also-ran, Samsung overtook Apple in 2011 to turn into the worldwide chief by unit gross sales.
Lee was born on January 9 1942. His success in enterprise contrasted along with his poor well being for the final decade of his life and he was dogged by household trauma, together with the suicide of his youngest daughter in New York in 2005. Lee’s relationship along with his two older brothers disintegrated after he was most well-liked to them for the Samsung chairmanship, and so they sued him for a part of his inheritance in an unsuccessful lawsuit.
Lee’s work to switch management to the subsequent era has additionally triggered authorized issues. His efforts to make sure the switch of property to his son Jae-yong had been a key issue behind the 2007-09 corruption scandal. However the latter nonetheless took over management, though he has been engulfed in protracted authorized wrangling over alleged wrongdoing within the succession course of. The youthful Lee has denied any wrongdoing, saying it was a “regular” succession course of.
Most analysts say he’ll discover it virtually inconceivable to supervise development matching that of the previous twenty years. That could be a tribute, of kinds, to his father’s report.
— to www.ft.com
The post Lee Kun-hee, Samsung family patriarch, 1942-2020 appeared first on Correct Success.
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