Harman Shareholders Withdraw from Class Action against Merger with Samsung

It was confirmed on July 1 that some shareholders of Harman, the world's largest electronic auto parts company acquired by Samsung Electronics, dropped a class action lawsuit against the contract to sell Harman to Samsung Electronics. A legal tug of war over Harman taken over by Samsung Electronics for about 9 trillion won ended up in the US without a verdict in about seven months.

Harman shareholders who filed a class action lawsuit against Harman executives in January for an alleged "breach of trust," gave up the lawsuit after accepting a court arbitration at the end of last month, according to the US Delaware Equity Court. As a result, the court ordered Harman and its legal representative to publicly announce the settlement in a joint press release within ten days, and to have the same facts posted on the internet homepages of Harman and the law firm for 30 days.

The court ordered Harman to pay US$195,000 for the class action lawsuit in ten days under the agreement with the shareholders.

"The acquisition of Harman by Samsung was already concluded with the approval of the general shareholders' meeting and the approval of antitrust regulators," an industry official said. “However, some shareholders filed a lawsuit for the undervaluation of Harman stocks. But they withdrew from the lawsuit as they understood that the completion of the takeover made the lawsuit meaningless.”

On the other hand, some Harman shareholders filed the class action lawsuit, claiming that directors such as CEO Dinesh Paliwal undervalued the company's value and accepted unfavorable conditions, violated the interests of the shareholders back in January. However, Harman held an extraordinary shareholders' meeting in February and pass the merger with Samsung Electronics by a landslide.