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Leading U.S. execs at Samsung and LG quietly leave roles

CEOs tend to come and go accompanied by headlines of some sort, at least in the American press.
Not so for the second-tier executives of multinational corporations, particularly those at Korean conglomerates such as Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. and LG Electronics Co. Ltd., who often slip away without fanfare.
Peter Skarzynski, formerly head of sales and marketing for Samsung Telecommunications America (“senior VP for strategy” was the title), the Korean vendor’s arm in the United States, left the company in December 2007, according to a company spokesman.
Skarzynski had been the face of Samsung at U.S. trade shows, delivering the latest gadgets with well-scripted talking points that rarely deviated from the company line, even under persistent questioning. He had served Samsung for more than a decade, during which the company climbed to the No. 2 position among handset vendors in the U.S.
A spokesman for Samsung said that Skarzynski had left “to pursue other interests.”
Bill Ogle, currently chief marketing officer for Samsung Telecommunications America, has been on board since November 2007, but the company has not linked Ogle’s arrival with Skarzynski’s departure.
As for LG
Juno Cho, formerly president of LG’s handset division in North America, was replaced by Jeff Hwang in January and, according to LG, has been named an executive VP for the LG Corp. in Seoul. “Mr. Cho,” as he preferred to be addressed, was the mirror opposite of Skarzynski, in that Cho preferred to operate out of the limelight.
An observer might well conclude that in American business, the personality at the top often sets the tone for the entire corporation — and as such, becomes a public figure. In contrast, the occasional executive shuffle in the mobile communications businesses of Korean conglomerates appears to reflect a different sensibility — executives serve the corporation’s greater good and do not seek to become public personalities in their own right. Whether that observation applies to mid-level executives, of course, is debatable.

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