14-07-2025
Samsung chief vows to 'work hard' after returning from exclusive Sun Valley conference
Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Jae-yong returned to South Korea on Monday after attending the exclusive Sun Valley conference in Idaho, joining some of the world's most powerful business leaders for a week of closed-door discussions and networking.
Arriving in the morning at Seoul Gimpo Business Aviation Center, Lee said, 'I will work hard,' when asked about Samsung's performance outlook for the second half of the year. He also noted that he felt tired after a packed schedule.
Hosted by US boutique investment bank Allen & Co, the annual Sun Valley Conference is dubbed the 'summer camp for billionaires' and has been a must-attend for media moguls, tech and finance executives since 1983. This year's attendees reportedly included Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and founder Jeff Bezos, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Disney CEO Bob Iger and Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos, among others.
Lee was a regular attendee since 2002, when he was a vice president of Samsung, but had not attended the event since 2017 due to legal disputes related to the political scandal that impeached President Park Geun-hye.
In court testimony in 2017, Lee said Sun Vally is 'the busiest and most important business trip of the year.'
Lee Won-jin, president and head of the global marketing office, was also spotted attending the event.
Samsung chief's attendance at the meeting comes as the tech giant faces a significant challenge in its key chip business. The company projected its operating profit for the second quarter to be around 4.6 trillion won ($3.33 billion), a 55.9 percent drop from a year earlier. Analysts attributed it to the sluggish chip businesses, especially amid delays in the supply of AI-critical high bandwidth memory, or HBM, as well as the fallout from US tariff policies.
Lee also awaits a final ruling from South Korea's Supreme Court on Thursday over charges including stock manipulation, breach of trust, accounting fraud and other irregularities in connection with a contentious 2015 merger of Samsung affiliates, Cheil Industries and Samsung C&T. Lee was acquitted in both his first and second trials.
