Recently, activist hedge fund Elliott Management, which owns a small stake in Samsung, asked that the crown jewel electronics division of the company be spun off and listed on the NASDAQ, joining the pantheon of tech giants there like Apple, Microsoft, or Google’s parent company, Alphabet. This would make Samsung Electronics more transparent and easier to control for shareholders, and would ensure management changes of the type that might have avoided the double Note 7 recall.
Samsung is run like a typical “chaebol” structure out of South Korea. “Chae” means wealth, and “bol” is a clan, and that’s all you need to know about how companies like Samsung, LG, Hyundai and others are often run – as loosely knit family business conglomerates.
