Samsung plans to invest $205 billion in three years, hire 40,000

Samsung Group has unveiled a 240-trillion won ($205-billion) expansion that will entail hiring 40,000 people over three years, a sprawling investment blueprint intended to build the South Korean conglomerate’s lead in next-generation technologies.
 
Samsung Electronics and affiliates such as Samsung Biologics aim to lead research and spending in areas from telecommunications and robotics to corporate acquisitions. The country’s largest conglomerate is setting aside 180 trillion won for its home country alone and now aims to hire another 10,000 people over the period, on top of 30,000 new jobs already planned, the group said in a statement. Samsung Electronics’ shares finished Tuesday 3.1 per cent higher.
 
The envisioned spending includes expenditures outlined previously, such as Samsung Electronics’ long-term goal of investing $151 billion through 2030 to delve deeper into advanced chipmaking. But the announcement comes days after Samsung scion Jay Y. Lee walked out of jail. The conglomerate’s de facto leader, who was serving a sentence on graft charges, won release on parole just months ahead of South Korea’s presidential election.
 
Lee, 53, was sent back to jail for a second time in January, after he was convicted of using bribery to win support for his formal succession at the conglomerate. The billionaire had served six of the 18 months he had been expected to spend behind bars during his second stint, on top of the year he was incarcerated before his initial release in 2018.
 
In the months after his imprisonment, a supply crunch in the global semiconductor industry and Samsung’s role in facilitating a Covid-19 vaccine deal with the US fanned calls from business leaders and politicians to free Lee. Still, activists have criticized the decision, saying it was proof of preferential treatment for the powerful tycoon class known as chaebols.

The firm said that the investment through 2023 will help strengthen the group's global standing in key industries such as chip-making, while allowing it to seek growth opportunities in new areas such as robotics and next-generation telecommunications.
 
Samsung Electronics, the world’s largest memory chip maker, said the group plans to solidify technology and market leadership through mergers and acquisitions. It did not provide a breakdown of the investment figures.
 
The firm did not say whether the latest investment figure includes the $17 billion it was reportedly spending on a new US chip contract chip factory.
 
The plan is 30 per cent larger than Samsung's previous three-year strategy floated in 2018. The group decided to increase investment to retain technological leadership, especially during “emergency situations” at home and abroad.
 
“The chip industry is the safety plate of the Korean economy... Our aggressive investment is a survival strategy in a sense that once we lose our competitiveness, it is almost impossible to make a comeback,” Samsung Electronics said in a statement. Chip rivals including Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co and Intel Corp are making large investments amid a global chip shortage and intensifying competition in the advanced chip segment.