Among Large Corporation Registered Executives, Owner Family Share is 6.5%... Lee Jae-yong is 'Non-Registered'

CEO Score, Survey on Concurrent Registered Executive Positions of Owner Families in 78 Large Business Groups

Among the registered executives of 78 domestic large business groups with assets exceeding 5 trillion won, owner family members accounted for about 7 out of every 100. Among the top 10 groups with a controlling shareholder, the proportion of registered executives who are owner family members is less than 2% in 8 groups, excluding GS and Hyundai Motor.

According to CEO Score, a corporate data research institute, on the 16th, a survey on the status of registered executives was conducted targeting 78 groups with a controlling shareholder out of 88 business groups designated as publicly disclosed business groups this year. It was found that among a total of 12,719 registered executives, 830 (6.5%) were owner family members.

There are six groups where the proportion of owner family members among registered executives exceeds 30%, including KCC (42.4%). KCC had 25 owner family members among 59 registered executives. This was followed by Youngone (38.6%), Celltrion (34.9%), SM (33.9%), Booyoung (30.6%), and Nongshim (30.0%).

Lee Jae-yong, Chairman of Samsung Electronics.
Photo by Yonhap News

The company with the highest number of owner family registered executives is SM (76 people), where Chairman Woo Oh-hyun and his children Woo Yeon-ah, Ji-young, Myung-ah, and Ki-won are registered executives. This was followed by GS (37 people), Youngone (34 people), Boseong (33 people), and KG (31 people).

There are four groups with no owner family registered executives at all: DL, Mirae Asset, E-Land, and Taekwang.

The proportion of owner family registered executives among the top 10 groups with a controlling shareholder was 1.9%. In Samsung (0.3%), Lee Boo-jin, President of Hotel Shilla, was the only owner family member, and in LG, Chairman Koo Kwang-mo was the only owner family member among registered executives within the group.

Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong is the only unregistered executive among the heads of the top 5 groups. Due to judicial risks related to the past political scandal, Lee Jae-yong has remained an unregistered executive to date.

In SK, 11 out of 1,052 registered executives (1.0%) were owner family members. Hyundai Motor had 10 owner family members (2.7%) among 368 registered executives, Lotte had 6 (1.2%) among 489, and Hanwha had 4 (0.8%) among 501.

Among the top 10 groups, GS had the highest proportion of owner family registered executives, with 37 out of 463 (8.0%).

The owner family member holding the most concurrent registered executive positions is Park Heung-joon, Head of the SM Group Governance Management Headquarters, who concurrently holds registered executive positions in 17 (27.4%) of the 62 affiliates, including SM Steel. Park is the son-in-law of Chairman Woo Oh-hyun.

Booyoung Chairman Lee Joong-geun followed, concurrently holding registered executive positions in 15 (71.4%) of 21 affiliates, and Lee Seo-jung, Executive Director of Booyoung Housing and the youngest daughter of Chairman Lee, concurrently holds registered executive positions in 13 (61.9%) affiliates.

Compared to May 2021, the owner family member with the largest increase in the number of concurrent registered executive positions was Booyoung Chairman Lee Joong-geun, who concurrently held 15 positions upon returning to the front line of management in August 2023. This was followed by Head Park Heung-joon (3→17) and Executive Director Lee Seo-jung (2→13).

On the other hand, the person with the largest decrease in the number of concurrent registered executive positions was Choi Seung-seok, Vice Chairman of SM Steel (14→7), followed by Woo Myung-ah, Purchasing Director of SM Group (14→9), Shin Dong-chul, Vice President of Bando Holdings (9→4), and Kim Hong-guk, Chairman of Harim (7→3).