Son of Samsung Chairman Lee Promoted

Lee Jae-yong, the eldest son of Samsung Group Chairman Lee Kun-hee and managing director of Samsung Electronics, was promoted to senior managing director.

A total of 472 Samsung executives got promotions, including senior managing director Joo Woo-sik, the head of the IR (investor relations) Team at Samsung Electronics, who was raised to vice president.

The Samsung Group announced a president-level personnel shift on January 16 and regular executive shift under the vice president-level yesterday.

The number of people who got promoted this time is the biggest ever for the company, surpassing 455 in 2005 and 452 in 2006. By positions, 30 vice presidents got promotions, 54 senior managing directors, 182 managing directors and 206 assistant managing directors.

So far, it was expected that Lee Jae-yong would advance to vice-president, two levels higher than his current position, but he only took a step up, to senior managing director.

Regarding the matter, a Samsung official explained, “As far as I know, it is Samsung’s style not to give a special promotion whenever possible, and this case was no exception.”

In the personnel shift this time, a total of 206 people in the technology department such as research and development division (44 percent of all people got promoted) gained promotions as part of the company’s effort to lay the foundation for developing new technologies.

Among those who became vice presidents, 12 were former technical workers and 8 were former staff from the sales force, which shows that specialties in each field with wide experience in field works got promotions.

In addition, the company created an environment for knowledge management by promoting 66 with doctorate degrees and 119 with master’s degrees.

Samsung now has 224 executives with doctoral degree (14 percent), 386 with master’s degrees (24 percent) and 1,015 with bachelor’s degrees (62 percent).

Among those who advanced this time were 152 (32 percent) who graduated from local universities and 70 (15 percent) who graduated from foreign universities.

Besides, three employees in their thirties, including chief of Samsung Electronics Roh Tae-moon (38), general manager at Samsung Card Lee Jae-yong (39) and general manager at Samsung Electronics Kang Yoon-jae (38) were promoted to executives. General manager Kang Yoon-jae, who was born earlier than Roh Tae-moon, became Samsung’s youngest executive.

Managing director at Cheil Communications Choi In-ah also became Samsung’s first female senior managing director. General manager at Samsung Card Lee In-jae was promoted to assistant managing director. This allows Samsung to continue its tradition of producing a female executive every year.

An official at Samsung noted, “In spite of a difficult situation, affiliated companies performed very well, recording net profit of more than 10 trillion won for five consecutive years. That’s why the company promoted many,” and added that Samsung’s principle “high performance is rewarded appropriately” was invariably applied this time as well.

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