Today’s post focuses on the largest business story today which is the news that Lee Jae-yong, the vice-chairman of Samsung and its de-facto head, has been jailed for five years after being found guilty of bribery, embezzlement, and perjury amongst a host of other offences. This massive news for South Korea, however, has the potential to fundamentally alter its environment in terms of the relationship between the massive family-owned conglomerates that dominate the South Korean landscape, and the Government. Yet, whether or not that comes to fruition is the focus for this piece because, as is usually the case, a realistic assessment suggests that the favoured outcome may not be attained. Today’s sentencing of the heir to the sprawling Samsung Empire, Lee Jae-yong, marks the accumulation of a string of events that began in 2016 with the investigation into the then-President Park Geun-hye. Very briefly, Park Geun-hye, the country’s first female President and daughter of the Milita...

Today’s short post looks at the news that Société Générale (hereafter SocGen) has settled with the Libyan Investment Authority (LIA) for €963 million ($1.05 billion) over alleged bribery . The settlement, which averted a large court case in London, was the result of a claim from the LIA regarding a $58.4 million payment made to a Libyan businessmen made to secure future investment deals; the investment group had asserted that the payment was a bribe, and thus any trades that occurred afterwards were invalid. In this post, this story will be dissected further, but the ultimate conclusion will be a brief analysis on the culture of big banks; the situation in Libya over recent years is a key indicator to the behaviour of big banks once a market is opened up to them, and for all of us this is an important factor to bear in mind. The Libyan Investment Authority was established in 2006, under the control of then-leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, to control the ever-increasing surplus st...