As Samsung Executive Awaits Verdict, Company Surges<br />“It’s riding on the coattails of a rebounding semiconductor industry.”<br />The trial of Mr. Lee, known as Jay Y. Lee in the West, wrapped up on Monday, with prosecutors<br />also seeking up to 10 years in prison for a group of other Samsung executives.<br />The elder Mr. Lee has been incapacitated since a heart attack in 2014, leaving Lee Jae-yong as Samsung Electronics’ de facto leader.<br />Lee Jae-yong, vice chairman and heir apparent to Samsung Group, faces charges<br />that he bribed South Korean government officials to solidify his family’s control of one of the world’s biggest business empires.<br />Prosecutors say Mr. Lee and other Samsung executives offered $38 million to Ms. Park and a confidante, Choi Soon-sil.<br />Samsung has also begun to cast aside the cloud that fell over it last year when its Galaxy Note 7, a high-priced smartphone meant to challenge the Apple iPhone<br />but which showed a proclivity to burst into flames, became one of the technology world’s most spectacular failures.<br />Those investments were ordered by Mr. Lee’s father, Lee Kun-hee, Samsung’s chairman,<br />who is widely credited with building the group into the powerhouse it is today.
