Samsung heirs sell Samsung Elec shares for $1.1 bn

The wife and two daughters of the late Samsung Group Chairman Lee Kun-hee raised a combined 1.37 trillion won ($1.1 billion) in block sale of Samsung Electronics Co. shares on Wednesday to pay for their multibillion dollar inheritance tax, according to people with knowledge of the matter on Thursday.

Kookmin Bank, South Korea's largest lender, carried out the block sale of 19.94 million shares, or a 0.33% stake in the world's largest memory chipmaker, on behalf of the three Samsung Group heirs.

Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Jay Y. Lee, who holds a 1.63% stake in the world's No. 1 smartphone brand as of end-2021, has not offered his shares for the block deal. He is expected to retain his shares in the electronics company and find other funding sources to pay for the tax. 

The stock was sold at 68,800 won per share to institutional investors, or a 2.4% discount to Wednesday's closing price. On Thursday, Samsung Electronics slipped 0.99% to end at 69,800 won.

In October of last year, the deceased chairman's wife Hong Ra-hee and two daughters -- Hotel Shilla CEO Lee Boo-jin and Lee Seo-hyun -- signed a trust deal with Kookmin of the KB Financial Group to sell shares of the electronics unit and other Samsung affiliates.

The block deal came just one day after Lee's two sisters disposed of a combined 3.9% stake in Samsung SDS Co., an information technology unit, for 190 billion won ($155 million) in after-hours trade. SDS shares tumbled 7.14% on Tuesday, just ahead of the block deal.  

After the death of Lee Kun-hee in October 2020, Hong and her two daughters have been offloading shares in Samsung Group units to foot the inheritance tax bill of 12 trillion won imposed on the family.

In December 2021, the second daughter Lee Seo-hyun sold Samsung Life Insurance Co. shares, worth an estimated 230 billion won.

The four heirs inherited 26 trillion won worth of Samsung group shares, real estate properties and artwork from the late chairman, and have so far paid about 2 trillion won out of the total inheritance tax of 12 trillion won.

Apart from the share sales, the Samsung family members have borrowed a total of 1.1 trillion won from domestic banks and brokerage companies, backed by a 0.46% stake in Samsung Electronics. 

The Lee family is supposed to pay an additional 2 trillion won in tax by next month and then the remainder in five annual installments.

Market watchers are keeping an eye on a possible sale of the Lees' remaining shares in SDS.

"Their additional stake sale will have nothing to do with the company's fuandamentals, but could send the stock temporarily lower," SK Securities analyst Choi Gwan-soon said, referring to Samsung SDS. 

Write to Jae-Yeon Koh at yeon@hankyung.com
Yeonhee Kim edited this article