A South Korean retail investor platform has launched a campaign aimed at pressuring Samsung Electronics to take stronger measures to boost shareholder value, including a massive share repurchase programme and tighter controls on executive and employee performance incentives.
The platform, ACT, announced on Tuesday that it would begin efforts to convene an extraordinary shareholders’ meeting at the world’s leading memory chipmaker. The group said it plans to gather electronic signatures from shareholders starting at 5 p.m. local time and will seek backing from major institutional investors, including the National Pension Service and both domestic and international asset managers.
Under South Korean corporate rules, shareholders must hold at least 3% of a company’s shares to formally request an extraordinary meeting. ACT said it hopes to build enough support to meet that requirement and bring its proposals before investors.
The campaign comes after Samsung Electronics’ shares suffered a steep decline, falling by more than one-third from their record highs reached in June. The drop occurred despite the global surge in demand for artificial intelligence technologies, as investors became increasingly concerned about a slowdown in AI-related infrastructure spending and broader market pressures caused by a wave of deleveraging.
ACT said its push was not merely a reaction to Samsung’s declining stock performance but part of a broader effort to improve corporate governance and ensure that shareholders have a stronger voice in key decisions.
"This is not simply an expression of dissatisfaction over a falling share price. We are asking a basic capital-market question: who really owns a corporation?" ACT said in a statement.
The investor group added that its goal was to encourage Samsung to adopt more shareholder-friendly policies and strengthen trust between the company and its investors.
"Retail shareholders are like a company's fan club: they praise it when it performs well and take out the stick when it does not," the group said, highlighting the growing influence of individual investors in South Korea’s capital markets.
One of ACT’s major proposals is for Samsung Electronics to approve a 45.5 trillion won ($31.79 billion) share buyback plan. The group believes such a move could help improve shareholder returns and support the company’s valuation after the recent decline in its market price.
The second proposal focuses on performance-related bonuses. ACT wants shareholders to have the authority to approve limits on bonuses linked to the company’s operating profit, arguing that payments of such magnitude should not be determined solely by the board of directors.
The issue gained attention earlier this year when Samsung agreed to allocate 10.5% of its operating profit from the chip division for special bonuses as part of a wage agreement that helped prevent a major strike by employees.
ACT argued that incentive payments of that scale could add up to hundreds of billions of dollars over a decade and that clearer oversight rules were needed to protect shareholder interests.
The campaign reflects a wider debate in South Korea over corporate governance, shareholder rights and the balance between rewarding employees and maintaining investor returns.
Samsung Electronics had not immediately responded to a request for comment on ACT’s proposals.