A Bigger Role
for Future CEO

Lee Jae-yong, only son of Samsung Chairman, promoted as chief customer officer

Samsung Electronics has created a new post of chief customer officer and promoted director Lee Jae-yong as managing director to the new post on Jan. 19.
Managing Director Lee, the only son of Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee, has been given the additional responsibility of taking charge of cooperation with various customer firms in and out of the country. This stride was taken as the next step in grooming the "crown prince"to succeed his father and to take over the management of the entire conglomerate, the biggest in the country, at an appropriate time in the future.
Lee's new job as CCO is running a 50-man unit assigned to him to take care of cooperative relations with the giant electronics firm's corporate clients at home and around the world running to several hundreds. The company said the new post was created to search for new customer firms and areas of investment, in addition to watching for new global business trends to look for new business opportunities and draw up long-term strategic visions for the company. The managing director will report directly to Vice Chairman Yun Jong-yong, who is the CEO of Samsung Electronics, the same as an affiliate president, going over the heads of President Choi Do-seok and business headquarters as head of an independent unit.
Lee's main job will be focused on the five big firms in the industry including Sony, Nokia, Apple, Hewlett Packard and Dell. He will have meetings with executives of those important customer firms to exchange opinions and reflect their views in Samsung Electronics product development and marketing strategies if needed with 80 percent of the company's annual revenue coming overseas including 10 trillion won from those five particular companies.
The new managing director, in a press release overseas, said he would devote his time to making Samsung Electronics respond fully to customer's demands through the pursuance of creativity and reform. He went on to say that much of his time would be given to the technology development in the areas of information and communication and entertainment that would make life more affluent.
There are a number of reasons for giving a larger responsibility to Managing Director Lee, industry experts speculate. One of them is to give enough experience to Lee to learn the aspect of managing customers'relations, an integral ability for top management. Another reason is to give him a position where he can see an overall picture of the company's operations in-depth, not limited to Samsung Electronics, but the entire group, rather than giving him a particular unit to manage. He will be able to mingle with top executives of these top-notch IT firms to build his own network of key executives in the industry. He worked in the planning and management dep's as an acting director to acquire an overall management experience of the company and this is the first time for him to manage an independent company unit.
The new managing director spent a busy time attending the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in the early part of January where he met the likes of Chairman Bill Gates of Microsoft Inc. and Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the News Corp., a media mogul in the Unites States. Samsung officials said the CCO's job includes the maintenance of close relations with global companies and investors that have relations with Samsung Electronics such as Sony and Intel and big business figures.
This is the first time that Lee will take charge of the company's unit and be responsible for its operational results, a departure from his usual role as a director in the past. He used to participate in the company's key meetings and expressed his opinions on important issues but this is the first time that he will be held accountable for the operation of a unit.
Industry experts speculate that the future CEO of the nation's largest conglomerate has been positioned to learn the overall aspects of the electronics giant's operation by taking charge of its relations with major customer firms, investors and drawing up future business strategies including the search for new markets for the company's products and new product development. nw

Samsung Electronics Chief Customer Officer
Lee Jae-yong.