Samsung Group raising 2012 investment to record $41.4 bln

January 17, 2012 - 12:51 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - Samsung Group, which includes Samsung Electronics Co, said on Tuesday, Jan 18, it is raising its 2012 investment to a record $41.4 billion, underscoring the widening gulf between the dominant South Korean conglomerate and its faltering competitors.

Best known for making massive investments in new technologies ahead of rivals, Samsung is now banking on logic chips and OLED displays to repeat its roaring success in flash chips, computer memory chips and LCD flat-screens, even as a gloomy global economic and IT spending outlook forces its peers to be conservative in spending.

Samsung Group, South Korea's biggest business group, did not provide a breakdown of the 47.8 trillion won investment. But analysts have widely expected it to raise investment in mobile chips and next-generation OLED (organic light emitting diode) flat-screen displays.

The group also said on Tuesday it would add a record 26,000 employees this year, up from last year's 25,000, at a time when tens of thousands of jobs in the financial industry are being cut globally due to continuing turmoil in markets. Samsung now employs around 350,000 in total.

The investments will be in everything from building factories to research and development activities to doing mergers and acquisitions and hiring, Reuters reports.

Besides, Samsung plans to issue its first overseas bonds since 1997 to expand production of processors used in mobile devices including Apple Inc.’s iPhone.

The company has sent requests for proposals to banks to borrow as much as $1 billion to expand production capacity at its factory in Austin, Texas, James Chung, a Seoul-based spokesman for Samsung, said by telephone January 16, confirming a report in the Korea Economic Daily. The bonds will be issued by Samsung’s U.S. unit and may have maturities of five years.

Samsung also said it is working on merging its homegrown “bada” smartphone operating system with Tizen, an operating system project the company is conducting with chipmaker Intel.