Samsung Electronics strengthens its board by appointing Professor Lee Hyuk-jae of Seoul National University as a new outside director, among other semiconductor technology experts. The timeline for Lee Jae-yong's return as a registered executive of Samsung Electronics has been delayed.
Samsung Electronics announced on the 18th that it will hold its regular shareholders' meeting at the Suwon Convention Center in Gyeonggi Province on the 19th of next month. The agenda for this shareholders' meeting will include the election of directors, approval of financial statements, and approval of the director compensation limit.
The new outside director is Professor Lee Hyuk-jae, a semiconductor expert from Seoul National University.
Professor Lee, a graduate of the Department of Electrical Engineering at Seoul National University, received his Ph.D. in engineering from Purdue University in the U.S. He has served as an assistant professor at Louisiana Tech University and a senior engineer at Intel, and has been a professor at Seoul National University since 2001.
He has served as president of the Korea Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and currently holds positions such as director of the Semiconductor Industry Promotion Center at Seoul National University, head of the Artificial Intelligence Semiconductor Graduate School at Seoul National University, co-chair of the Semiconductor Special Committee at The National Academy of Engineering of Korea, and director of the Seoul National University Semiconductor Research Institute.
The new inside directors are Jeon Young-hyun, head of the Device Solutions (DS) institutional sector (vice chairman), and Song Jae-hyuk, Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of the DS institutional sector and head of the Semiconductor Research Institute (president).
Earlier, Samsung Electronics separated the roles of the representative director and the chairman of the board through a board resolution in March 2018, and in February 2020, it appointed an outside director as the chair.
However, the agenda item for appointing Lee as an inside director was not included this time either. Although there were suggestions that Lee could return as an inside director since he was acquitted in the appeals court, it is presumed that the timeline for his return to the board has been delayed as the prosecution has appealed to the Supreme Court, leaving the judicial risk unresolved.
Meanwhile, on that day, Lee Chan-hee, Commissioner of Samsung Compliance Monitoring Committee, reiterated the necessity of Lee's return as a registered director. The Commissioner noted in a meeting with reporters before the regular meeting of the third term compliance committee held at the Samsung Life Insurance building in Seocho-gu, Seoul, that "one of the reasons for advising Lee's return as a registered director for responsible management is that there is a need for a channel to convey many opinions about Samsung that are emerging now."