Sun Woo 'Sunny' Lee () is a South Korean business executive, and is the former president and

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

Samsung Electronics Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (SEC; stylized as SΛMSUNG; ) is a South Korean multinational major appliance and consumer electronics corporation founded on 13 January 1969 and headquartered in Yeongtong District, Suwon, South Korea. It is curr ...

Europe, previously serving as

chief operating officer A chief operating officer (COO), also called chief operations officer, is an executive in charge of the daily operations of an organization (i.e. personnel, resources, and logistics). COOs are usually second-in-command immediately after the C ...

of Samsung Electronics Germany. In 2006 Lee was imprisoned for eight months and fined USD 250,000 for his involvement at Samsung in

DRAM price fixing In 2002, the United States Department of Justice, under the Sherman Antitrust Act, began a probe into the activities of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) manufacturers in response to claims by US computer makers, including Dell and Gateway, tha ...

with DRAM competitors Hynix, Infineon, Micron Technology, and Elpida.

Early life and education

Lee has a BA degree in

German Studies German studies is an academic field that researches, documents and disseminates German language, literature, and culture in its historic and present forms. Academic departments of German studies therefore often focus on German culture, German h ...

, an MBA from

Bradford University The University of Bradford is a public research university located in the city of Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. A plate glass university, it received its royal charter in 1966, making it the 40th university to be created in Britain, but ...

and an MSc in

information technology Information technology (IT) is a set of related fields within information and communications technology (ICT), that encompass computer systems, software, programming languages, data processing, data and information processing, and storage. Inf ...

from the

University of Warwick The University of Warwick ( ; abbreviated as ''Warw.'' in post-nominal letters) is a public research university on the outskirts of Coventry between the West Midlands and Warwickshire, England. The university was founded in 1965 as part of ...

Samsung

Early career

Lee joined Samsung in 1984. From 1989 to 1994 he worked as a marketing manager for storage media at Samsung Semiconductor Europe GmbH. From January 2001 to June 2002, Lee was Senior Manager of DRAM Sales based in Seoul. Between 2007 and 2009 Lee was President of Samsung Taiwan. On 1 February 2009 Lee was appointed as President of Samsung Germany, a position he held until his appointment as Executive Vice President of the Global Visual Display Sales and Marketing Division in 2012. In January 2014 Lee was promoted to president and

Europe, a position he held until his replacement by YH Eom in 2015.

DRAM price fixing scandal

In a Northern California district court in April 2006, Lee entered into a plea agreement with the U.S government for his criminal involvement in price fixing the U.S DRAM market. The plea agreement resulted in a sentence of eight months in prison and a USD 250,000 fine, and prevented the case going to trial in which evidence would have been formally presented. Following the sentencing, Samsung issued a statement saying that it was "strongly committed to fair competition and ethical practices and forbids anticompetitive behaviour". Lee was subsequently promoted to President of Samsung Germany in 2009, and then President of Samsung Europe in 2014.

References

Living people Year of birth missing (living people) South Korean chief executives Alumni of the University of Bradford Alumni of the University of Warwick {{SouthKorea-business-bio-stub