According to new reports out of the company’s home country, the CEO of South Korea’s Samsung, Kwon Oh-hyun, has been ranked as the country’s top annual salary earner for the third year in a row. Kwon, who has been CEO at the company since 2013, managed to rake in a salary of just over $23 million during 2017, roughly 31-percent of which comprised of bonuses. Of course, that’s hardly surprising given the company’s standing as a world-leading electronics manufacturer. Not only was Samsung’s owners, the Lee Kun-hee family, ranked on last year’s Forbes list of the richest Asian families. The company actually did well enough last year that it was able to parcel out substantial bonuses to its other employees at the end of 2017. Some of those received as much as a 400-percent bonus. Most of that wealth was generated thanks to a healthy chip market and better-than-expected sales of flagship devices.
Having said that, the company’s CEO was not the only top Samsung employee to bring in a better than average income among executives in the country. The company’s vice chairman of human resources, Shin Jong-kyun, also managed a salary of around $8 million, placing Shin as having the second highest salary for any executive in the country. Just below Shin, the vice chairman of Samsung, Yoon Boo-keun, earned just over $7.3 million.
In spite of what has proven to be a good year for the company and its executives, Samsung has some serious challenges ahead in terms of maintaining its lead over Intel in the chipset market. Beyond that, there is plenty of competition in the mobile and television industries from the likes of Huawei, OPPO, LG Electronics, and others. Furthermore, it is expected that Samsung will be passing on the torch to another company to provide Apple with displays for its iOS handsets. So the company is going to have its work cut out for it if it wants to maintain the kinds of operating gains that are required to give out such substantial paychecks.