Samsung has announced a major reshuffle of its leadership team, naming Kyung-Ah Kim as the new CEO of Samsung Bioepis. She is the first female CEO outside the founding family in the Korean conglomerate’s 86-year history. The company also made major changes to the smartphone and semiconductor leadership.
Samsung reshuffles leadership teams amid financial hardships
Samsung Bioepis is a biopharmaceutical company within the Samsung Group of companies. Earlier today, the firm announced Kyung-Ah Kim as its new President and CEO. She previously held the rolled of Executive Vice President and Development Division Leader. The outgoing CEO, Christopher Hansung Ko, will now lead Samsung’s Future Business Division, exploring new growth opportunities.
Additionally, the company appointed Young Hyun Jun as the CEO of the Device Solutions (DS) Division. Jun already serves as a Vice Chairman of this division and will now lead the Memory Business and Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology. Jinman Han, who has been promoted to President of the DS Division, will lead the Foundry Business.
Samsung’s foundry unit has been struggling lately with poor yields of its advanced process nodes. The company is working hard to overcome this difficult situation as quickly as possible. It created a new position of the Chief Technology Officer within the Foundry Business, with Seok Woo Nam taking up this all-important role.
In the smartphone division, Samsung created a new committee to focus on quality improvements across the ecosystem. JH Han, Vice Chairman, CEO, and Head of the Device eXperience (DX) Division, will lead this committee. Jinman Han has been appointed as the new head of Samsung’s US semiconductor business. He previously worked in DRAM, Flash memory, and SSD development teams.
This leadership reshuffle also saw several other executives move to new roles. It comes amid a company-wide financial hardship, with the semiconductor division worst affected. It remains to be seen if Samsung can turn things around anytime soon.