South Korea wins UK appeal over arbitration ruling in Samsung merger case

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LONDON (Reuters) -South Korea on Thursday won its latest appeal in its dispute with U.S. hedge fund Elliott over the 2015 merger of two affiliates of Samsung, shortly after the electronics group’s Chairman Jay Y. Lee was cleared by South Korea’s top court.

The South Korean government was ordered to pay Elliott around $100 million by the Netherlands-based Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2023.

Elliott had sued over the role played by South Korea’s National Pension Service in approving the $8 billion merger between Samsung C&T, in which Elliott was a minority stakeholder, and Cheil Industries.

South Korea sought to challenge the tribunal’s decision at London’s High Court, arguing the tribunal did not have jurisdiction under a free trade agreement with the U.S., but its case was rejected last year.

The Court of Appeal, however, allowed South Korea’s appeal and sent the case back to the High Court, to decide the challenge to the arbitration tribunal’s jurisdiction.

Its ruling came hours after Lee was ultimately cleared of accounting fraud and stock manipulation over the 2015 merger between Samsung C&T and Cheil Industries.

South Korea’s Supreme Court upheld the dismissal of prosecutors’ appeal against a Seoul court’s 2024 decision to clear Lee, removing a long-running legal risk for the head of the country’s biggest company Samsung Electronics.

(Reporting by Sam Tobin, Editing by Paul Sandle)