Samsung heir takes seat on Fiat-Chrysler’s board

Samsung Electronics President Lee Jae-yong has been appointed an external director of Exor, a holding company of Italy’s Fiat-Chrysler car-making mogul, at a shareholders’ meeting on Tuesday (local time).

Lee, the only son of Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee, was also named a strategy committee member at the company that owns Ferrari and Maserati.

The appointment is notable as it is extremely rare for a Korean executive to take up a post as an external director of a foreign multinational.

After the news broke earlier this month, speculation has grown over whether Samsung is bracing to jump again into the automobile business.

Its first experiment in this industry was a flop, and France’s Renault Group acquired 80.1 percent of Samsung Motors in 2000 and renamed it Renault Samsung Motors.

But Samsung Group made it clear it would not get involved in car manufacturing. Instead, Lee is known to be interested in producing next-generation rechargeable batteries for automobiles.