Lee Jae Yong, Chairman of Samsung Electronics, has topped Forbes’ list of South Korea’s 50 Richest People for the first time. Last year’s leader, Chairman Kim Byung Ju of MBK Partners, slipped to second place.
Forbes reported on the 17th (local time) that Chairman Lee had taken the top spot in the 2024 Korea’s 50 Richest list.
Chairman Lee, who added $3.5 billion this year, increased his net worth to $11.5 billion. Forbes analyzed that this was due to Samsung Electronics’ stock price increase following news that it was developing a key component of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) chip, High Bandwidth Memory (HBM), for the U.S. semiconductor company Nvidia.
Chairman Kim Byeong Ju, who took first place last year, ranked second this year. His assets were valued at $9.7 billion. Seo Jung Jin, honorary chairman of Celltrion, who recorded $7.5 billion, took third place. They were followed by Chairman Cho Jung Ho of Meritz Financial Group (4th place, $6.2 billion) and Honorary Chairman Chung Mong Koo of Hyundai Motor Group (5th place, $4.6 billion).
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