Samsung Group, South Korea's largest conglomerate, plans to freeze salaries for its executives next year as it suffered major setbacks in earnings this year, a senior Samsung official said on Thursday.
Salaries for about 2,000 executives at the group's affiliates, including its flagship Samsung Electronics, will be frozen at the current level in 2015, he said.
Those affiliates recently emailed the plan to each executive, the official said.
However, the conglomerate's incentive payment system based on each unit's earning performances will remain intact, he said.
The move comes after Samsung Electronics' operating profit plunged by 60 percent to 4.06 trillion won in the third quarter from the same period of last year. It was the first time in three years that the company's quarterly operating profit fell to below 5 trillion won.
Moreover, U.S. market researcher Gartner Inc. said last week that the tech giant's share in the global smartphone market plunged 7.7 percentage points to 24.4 percent in the July-September period from a year earlier.
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
