SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – Samsung Biologics Co., the contract drug making unit of Samsung Group, made its market debut in Seoul on Thursday in South Korea’s largest initial public offering in six years.
Samsung is looking to biotech to be a new core business on a par with its semiconductor manufacturing. The company has included bio tech and health care in the five businesses it named as future growth engines for the next decade, to counter slowing growth in its key consumer electronics businesses.
Just as it has made huge profits suppling microchips to Apple and other tech companies, Samsung believes it can supply biologic drugs to global pharmaceutical companies.
There is also a leadership transition at play.
Growing Samsung Biologics will test the mettle of Lee Jae-yong, the 48-year-old Samsung heir, who is poised to take over leadership of South Korea’s largest business group. There’s a precedent: In the 1980s, Samsung Electronics’ venture into the memory chip business helped establish Lee’s father Lee Kun-hee, now 74 and ailing, as Samsung’s chairman.