A third generation Samsung fortune
Lee Jae-yong, known internationally as Jay Y. Lee, is the third generation of his family to lead Samsung. The group was founded in 1938 by his grandfather, Lee Byung-chul, as a trading business in Daegu. His father, Lee Kun-hee, took over in 1987 and turned Samsung Electronics into a global leader in memory chips, smartphones and televisions. Jay Y. Lee's wealth therefore comes overwhelmingly from inheritance.
The family controls the group through a web of cross shareholdings rather than by owning most of each company outright. The central holding is Samsung C&T, a construction and trading company in which Lee is the largest individual shareholder. Samsung C&T in turn owns stakes in Samsung Life Insurance and Samsung Electronics, and Samsung Life also holds shares in Samsung Electronics.
A key step in securing his position was the 2015 merger of Samsung C&T with Cheil Industries, a company in which he held a large stake. Critics argued the terms favored the family at the expense of other shareholders. When Lee Kun-hee died in 2020, his shares passed to his widow and children, who faced one of the largest inheritance tax bills in Korean history and chose to pay it in installments over several years.
Samsung companies tied to the family
The main listed companies through which the family holds its wealth are:
- Samsung C&T: the de facto holding company of the group, with construction, trading, fashion and resort businesses
- Samsung Electronics: the group's largest company, making memory chips, smartphones, displays and consumer electronics
- Samsung Life Insurance: a major life insurer and an important link in the ownership chain
- Samsung SDS: an IT services company in which the family holds shares
Lee became executive chairman of Samsung Electronics in October 2022, formally taking the top post that his father once held. His sisters, Lee Boo-jin and Lee Seo-hyun, hold senior roles in other group businesses, Lee Boo-jin as head of Hotel Shilla.
Samsung's performance in memory chips, particularly in the high bandwidth memory used for artificial intelligence, has been the most closely watched issue of his tenure. The company has also pursued investments in contract chipmaking, including factories in the United States, and in biotechnology through Samsung Biologics.
Education, rise and legal battles
Lee was born in Seoul in 1968. He studied East Asian history at Seoul National University, earned an MBA from Keio University in Japan and completed coursework at Harvard Business School. He joined Samsung in 1991 and moved through strategy and management positions over the next two decades, becoming vice chairman of Samsung Electronics in 2012.
After his father suffered a heart attack in 2014, Lee became the group's de facto leader. His path was then interrupted by legal cases. In 2017 he was convicted of bribery in connection with the corruption scandal that brought down President Park Geun-hye, in a case focused on payments to entities linked to a confidante of the president. He was released on appeal in 2018, returned to prison in 2021 after a retrial, and was paroled later that year. He received a presidential pardon in 2022.
A separate case accused him of accounting fraud and stock manipulation linked to the 2015 merger. Courts acquitted him in 2024, and the acquittal was later upheld. In 2020 he publicly apologized over the succession controversies and said he would not pass management control to his children.
Donations and public obligations
The family's largest public gifts came after the death of Lee Kun-hee in 2020. Much of his large art collection, including Korean national treasures and works by Western modern artists, was donated to the National Museum of Korea, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and regional museums. The donated works have since been shown in exhibitions in Korea and abroad.
The family also pledged major funding for medical causes, including a hospital specializing in infectious diseases and programs to treat children with cancer and rare diseases.
Samsung group affiliates run foundations and charitable programs in education, scholarship and welfare, and the Samsung Medical Center in Seoul is one of the country's leading hospitals.
As head of South Korea's largest business group, Lee often appears alongside government leaders on trade missions and in meetings with foreign heads of state and business. His public statements are usually brief and focused on investment plans, technology and the need for Samsung to keep innovating.