Supreme Court Orders Samsung Securities to Pay NPS 1.8 Billion Won in Fat-Finger Dividend Scandal

The Supreme Court has ruled that Samsung Securities must pay approximately 1.8 billion won in damages to the National Pension Service (NPS), which suffered losses due to the company's 2018 ghost dividend mishap.

The Supreme Court finalized the lower court's partial ruling in favor of the plaintiff today in a damages lawsuit filed by the NPS against Samsung Securities, stating, "There is ample room to recognize a significant causal relationship between the operational negligence of the employees in charge of dividends and the losses incurred by the NPS."

Samsung Securities is required to pay 1.86 billion won to the NPS.

On April 6, 2018, due to an employee error, Samsung Securities mistakenly issued 1,000 shares per share instead of a cash dividend of 1,000 won per share for employee stock holdings.

At the time, the shares distributed to Samsung Securities employees reached roughly 2.8 billion shares—amounting to 112 trillion won—which exceeded the total share issuance limit by dozens of times.

Chaos ensued after some employees sold these nonexistent "ghost shares" that were mistakenly deposited into their accounts.

More than 5 million shares were sold by employees, causing Samsung Securities stock to plummet by up to 11.7% during trading hours.

The NPS, which held approximately 11.23 million shares of Samsung Securities at the time, filed a lawsuit claiming damages due to the drop in stock price and demanding 29.9 billion won. In August 2024, the first-instance court pointed out that the company "failed to establish internal processing standards or guidelines concerning dividend procedures and requirements to prevent risks such as overpayment or misallocation of dividends," ruling that "Samsung Securities must pay 1.86 billion won."

However, the court also judged that holding the company entirely responsible for the losses was harsh, as the incident was caused not only by the mistakes of the dividend processing employees but also by the personal misconduct of the employees who sold the shares.

Both Samsung Securities and the NPS appealed, but the second-instance court reached the same conclusion. Following subsequent appeals by both sides, the Supreme Court dismissed the appeals, finalizing the compensation amount to be paid by Samsung Securities.

Reported by Kim Taewon | Video by Jang Yujin | Graphics by Lee Jeongju | Produced by SBS Digital News
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.