Billionaire Lee fights back relatives over Samsung shares

DHAKA: During his long and controversial career, Samsung Electronics Co. Chairman Lee Kun Hee has transformed his family’s dried-fish and produce company into the world’s biggest maker of TVs and mobile phones, challenging Apple Inc. and Sony Corp. in the process.

Now he must contend with feuding siblings, reports Bloomberg.

Billionaire Lee, 70 years old and South Korea’s wealthiest citizen, is facing down lawsuits that his older brother and sister are waging in an attempt to win a slice of the family wealth.

Lee Byung Chul founded what is today South Korea’s biggest business group in 1938 and died in 1987 without leaving a will, casting a shadow over the giant company’s otherwise promising future.

The siblings’ demand for at least an $850 million stake in the group that generates about 20 percent of South Korea’s gross domestic product threatens to be a costly distraction at a time of intense industry competition. The civil trial starts today.

He has grown Samsung to the point where Korea is called ‘Republic of Samsung’, said Park Hyun Goon, author of ‘Lee Kun Hee’s Agony’, a book about Samsung succession published this year.

BDST: 1427 HRS, MAY 30, 2012

Edited by Robab Rosan, Cultural Affairs Editor