Business Insight Zone

Today’s Company of the Day is Samsung Group.

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Samsung has made itself a household name around the world only in the past two decades, but it has been a dominant player in South Korean business for much longer. Samsung, which began operations in the 1930s, is now the top business group in Korea. Like its largest domestic peers, the group is a chaebol, a business conglomerate that is marked by informal cross-ownership — often within a single family — more than by formal parent/subsidiary relationships. (The founding Lee family still controls Samsung.) Even after paring down its operations over the past several years, Samsung still has dozens of affiliated companies across various industries, including petrochemicals, advertising, textile production, life insurance, amusement parks, and hotels. (It even owns a baseball team — the Samsung Lions — in the top Korean pro league.)

At the heart of the group lies the mammoth Samsung Electronics, which is a top maker of everything from semiconductors to cell phones to jumbo flat-panel televisions. Under the leadership of longtime CEO Jong-Yong Yun, the firm has transformed itself into a global powerhouse. Samsung Electronics has invested heavily in establishing itself as a top worldwide brand, especially through huge marketing efforts such as its sponsorship of the Olympic Games. All this effort has paid off, as the Samsung brand now competes effectively against the best electronics names in the world, including archrival Sony. (Besides being the world’s top seller of memory chips, Samsung is now the #1 seller of digital televisions in the US.) The company’s zeal has also led to setbacks, as when six of its executives pleaded guilty to US federal charges that they conspired with rivals to fix prices for memory chips. But with sales of many Samsung product lines continuing at a high pitch and with the Beijing Olympics just around the corner, Samsung seems poised to continue a long run at the top of the worldwide electronics game.

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Category: Company of the Day, Technology