Samsung to offer hefty bonuses to workers at chip business division

Samsung Electronics' headquarters in Gangnam, southern Seoul (Yonhap)

Samsung Electronics will provide a maximum of 50 percent of their annual salaries as bonuses to the employees of its chip business unit at the end of January, industry sources said Thursday.

The world's biggest memory chipmaker has reportedly informed its executives and employees about the detailed plan for annual incentives, dubbed the overall performance incentive (OPI), a day earlier.

Samsung rewards its executives and employees every January with up to 50 percent of their salaries within the range of 20 percent of the firm’s excess profits.

The employees of the device solutions division in charge of the tech giant’s chip business will receive 47-50 percent of their salaries, which is similar to the previous year’s OPI of around 50 percent.

The employees of the company’s Mobile eXperience division, which oversees smartphone and tablet business, will take home 29-33 percent of their annual salaries, while those at the Network Business division will be paid 22-26 percent of their salaries.

Its visual display and consumer electronics business units, on the other hand, will receive relatively low incentives at an 18-22 percent rate and a 5-7 percent rate, respectively.

However, the informed OPI rate did not reflect each division’s fourth-quarter business performance. It will likely be finalized and informed to Samsung employees sometime in January.

In addition to the OPI reward program, Samsung also runs the so-called target achievement incentive, or TAI program, which provides workers with up to 100 percent of their monthly salaries during the first and second half of every year.

Last week, the chipmaker reportedly announced its plan to cut the TAI rate for the latter half of this year. Workers at the device solutions division received 100 percent performance-based bonuses of their monthly salaries in the first half, but it was halved in value for the second half due to economic stagnation and sluggish performance.

Those at Samsung Display, the display panel-making arm of Samsung Group, will be paid 47-50 percent of their annual salaries, up from 35 percent last year. It will likely be the highest OPI rate in three years.

Samsung's display panel business logged solid performance in the third quarter on growing demand following the release of new flagship smartphones. The firm posted the highest quarterly operating profit of 1.9 trillion won ($1.5 billion) for the July-September period.

By Jie Ye-eun(yeeun@heraldcorp.com)