Samsung's Lee Kun-hee leaves behind $21-billion wealth for inheritance

Lee Kun-hee, South Korea’s richest person and chairman of Samsung Electronics Co, died on Sunday, leaving behind considerable assets subject to be potentially inherited by his surviving family as well as inheritance tax.
 

Lee Kun-hee, who built Samsung Electronics into a global powerhouse in smartphones, semiconductors and televisions, died on Sunday after spending more than six years in hospital following a heart attack, the company said.
 

The charismatic leader of Samsung Group and the country's richest person, grew it into South Korea’s biggest conglomerate.

But he and the empire he built have also been vilified by critics for wielding huge economic clout, and for opaque governance and dubious transfers of the family wealth.
 

“Lee is such a symbolic figure in South Korea's spectacular rise and how South Korea embraced globalisation, that his death will be remembered by so many Koreans,” said Chung Sun-sup, chief executive of corporate researcher firm Chaebul.com.

 

Lee, who was 78, is the latest second-generation leader of a South Korean family-controlled conglomerate, or chaebol, to die, leaving potentially thorny succession issues for the third generation. Lee's “innovative leadership and indomitable spirit should be highly regarded in any era and in any field," ruling party leader and former prime minister Lee Nak-yon wrote on Facebook.
 

"But it can't be denied that he reinforced chaebol-led economic structure and failed to recognise labour unions." The death of Lee, with a net worth of $20.9 billion according to Forbes, is set to prompt investor interest in a potential restructuring of the group involving his stakes in key Samsung companies such as Samsung Life and Samsung Electronics.
 

Lee owns 20.76 per cent of the insurance firm and is the biggest individual shareholder of Samsung Electronics with a 4.18 per cent stake. Lee’s son Jay Y. Lee has been embroiled in legal troubles linked to a merger of two Samsung affiliates that helped Lee assume greater control of the group’s flagship Samsung Electronics.
 

The younger Lee served jail time for his role in a bribery scandal that triggered the impeachment of then-President Park Geun-hye. The case is on appeal. A separate trial on charges of accounting fraud and stock price manipulation kicked off this month.

“With Lee passing, Samsung Group is now facing the biggest governance shakeup since the merger between Cheil Industries and Samsung C&T” in 2015, said Ahn Sang-hee, an expert in corporate governance at Daishin Economic Research Institute.