Samsung Group conducts largest personnel shake-up

Samsung Group, which has posted a record performance despite the global economic downturn, carried out a personnel reshuffle Wednesday involving 490 executives, the biggest in the conglomerate`s history.

Compared to last year, 110 more executives were promoted in the latest reshuffle mainly because of the principle of performance-based promotion, experts say. Samsung Electronics, the flagship company of the group, posted record-high performance this year.

In addition, the group focused on a generational shift to create a “young” Samsung by appointing three 30-something executives who are not relatives of the conglomerate’s chairman. This is in line with the group’s full-fledged effort to introduce the third generation of the controlling Lee family into management, experts said.

In the latest reshuffle, the second daughter of Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Kun-hee, Seo-hyun, who is executive director of Cheil Industries and Cheil Worldwide, and her husband Kim Jae-yeol, executive director of Cheil Industries, were promoted to vice president.

Lee Seo-hyun, who graduated from Seoul Arts High School and Parsons School of Design in the U.S., was appointed vice president after being promoted to executive director last year.

After two reshuffles this month, all of Lee Kun-hee’s five children and sons-in-law excluding Yim Woo-jae, the husband of the chairman’s eldest daughter Lee Boo-jin and executive director of Samsung Electro-Mechanics, have been promoted to president or vice president. Lee Boo-jin was promoted to president of the Shilla Hotel and Samsung Everland Friday.

The chairman left electronics and finance, the main businesses of the group, in the hands of his eldest son Lee Jae-yong, president of Samsung Electronics; service and distribution lines such as Shilla and Everland with Lee Boo-jin; and fashion and advertising with Lee Seo-hyun.

The late Samsung Group founder Lee Byung-chull had also transferred his conglomerate’s electronics, distribution and food businesses to his children before his death.

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