By Paul Mozur
The New York Times
Jan 16, 2017
“Beyond the arrest itself, this is going to be a big blow to the narrative they’ve been building,” said Geoffrey Cain, the author of a coming book on Samsung. “It’s hard to convince shareholders and partners they are a hip Silicon Valley-style company when these charges show them to be a company run like a feudal dynasty.”
Samsung is in effect a collection of widely disparate companies, each with an autonomous, professional management team. Samsung Electronics, the most important of those companies, is broken into high-functioning business units. Because of that, some observers say that the company could continue to run smoothly without Mr. Lee.
Important matters that require Mr. Lee’s imprimatur could be delayed amid the distractions, said Mark Newman, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein and Company. “I think that’s the thing you need to worry about: big decisions,” he said.
Read more about Samsung’s political crisis at The New York Times