South Korea's major business groups prefer scholars to retired government officials as outside directors, data showed Thursday, as local companies move to cope with alleged bribery involving former President Park Geun-hye and some conglomerates.
As many as 57 out of 126 outside directors appointed by the country's 10 biggest conglomerates this year were professors, according to the data by market researcher Chaebul.com.
(Yonhap)
The comparable figure for last year was 45 professors, or 33.8 percent of the total.
The business groups appointed 33 former government official,s or 26.2 percent of the total, as non-executive directors this year, down 4.6 percent from 30.8 percent a year earlier.
By group, Samsung Group appointed 13 professors as outside directors, or 56.5 percent of the total, compared with seven retired government officials, or 30.4 percent.
SK Group appointed 11 professors as outside directors this year, up from last year's seven and Lotte Group's eight, up from five from the previous year.
LG Group had the highest percentage of professors as outside directors with 69.2 percent, followed by Lotte Group with 61.5 percent, Samsung Group with 56.5 percent and SK Group with 45.8 percent.
The 10 conglomerates had 19 Seoul National University professors appointed as their outside directors this year.
Yonsei University came in second with eight, followed by Korea University at five, Sungkyunkwan University and Hanyang University at four each, and Hankuk University of Foreign Studies and Kyunghee University at two each. (Yonhap)