Storm clouds gather over Samsung
Electronics giant faces legal, reputational and commercial woes which are closing in from every direction
Sept 24, 2019
ByAndrew Salmon
Prosecution raids, an ever-expanding accounting scandal, a governance downgrade and the upcoming retrial of its de facto leader are all converging into a tsunami of risk towering over South Korean electronics colossus Samsung.

On Monday, prosecutors raided offices of a key affiliate as the ripples from a Samsung accounting scandal continue to spread and the group’s third-generation heir, Lee Jae-yong, faces a retrial in a monumental corruption case that saw a president toppled and that could see him put back in jail.

Amid these various woes, Samsung fell to 52nd place in terms of its global reputation, according to the 2019 Global RepTrack report released by the Reputation Institute, which ranks 100 global companies. The year prior, it had been in the 26th spot, making Samsung a “fast faller,” according to the institute. The tech industry as a whole “has an ethics problem … and has failed to build assurance,” the report noted.

Meanwhile, on the commercial front, the giant group battles the headwinds of an ongoing cyclical downturn in its key business area, semiconductors, as well as the fallout from a Seoul-Tokyo political battle which is compressing its supply chain of key Japanese components.

Viewed through most prisms, these might appear to be a fearsome convergence of commercial perils and legal risks. Yet in South Korea, both market watchers and civic activists expect Lee to ride out the hurricane.
https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/09/artic ... r-samsung/

Samsung reportedly closes last mobile phone factory in China
By Song Lin Source:Global Times Published: 2019/10/3 16:30:40
South Korean tech giant Samsung, one of the leading smartphone producers in the world, has reportedly closed its last mobile phone factory in China after losing market share in the country amid the fierce business competition from domestic rivals.

Samsung will continue sales in China after it ended smartphone production in China, which was a difficult decision, in a bid to boost efficiency, Reuters quoted Samsung as saying on Wednesday.

The factory Samsung closed was located in Huizhou, South China's Guangdong Province, its third and last mobile phone factory in China, according to media reports, and the other two in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province and North China's Tianjin were either closed or suspended last year.
http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1166011.shtml