South Korea’s Samsung Group will invest $21bn in renewable energy and healthcare over the next decade, seeking “mega-trends” to help the world’s biggest electronics maker diversify away from its computer chip and mobile phone businesses.The ambitious investment plans are expected to clear years of uncertainty over the group’s future business direction. Samsung, which is South Korea’s biggest conglomerate, generates one fifth of the country’s exports.The new investment plans will help Samsung challenge rivals such as General Electric, Philips Electronics and Sanyo Electric in the long term.The strategic investment decision comes less than two months after Lee Kun-hee returned to the chairmanship of Samsung after receiving a presidential pardon for corruption. He argued that Samsung could fall into a crisis without a complete overhaul its business model.Samsung on Tuesday identified five businesses – solar cells, rechargeable batteries for hybrid cars, light emitting diode (LED) technology, biopharmaceuticals and medical equipment – as its future growth drivers.Samsung Group expects these businesses to generate $44bn of annual sales by 2020. The group generated Won191,000bn in sales in 2008. It also hopes to increase the current workforce of 276,000 employees by 45,000 over the same period.“Governments around the world are now investing in green industries to address the issues of depleting energy resources…We must move ahead decisively to take this opportunity while other global companies hesitate,” Mr Lee told the presidents of the group’s major units.Still, the three main investment areas are not completely new to the companies in the Samsung group. About Won11,400bn will be invested in solar cells and rechargeable batteries produced by Samsung SDI, while Won8,600bn will be spent to expand S-LCD’s light emitting diode business.The group will also invest about Won3,300bn on new businesses such as “biosimilars” – drugs that are close enough copies of biologics to be considered the same thing – and medical devices.Samsung Electronics last year overtook Hewlett-Packard as the world’s largest technology company by sales. The company is now the world’s largest maker of memory chips and flat panel screens as well as being the second-largest producer of mobile phones.Mr Lee, who stepped down two years ago amid a bribery scandal, indicated in March that Samsung’s future would be tough, predicting that most of the group’s current businesses and products would disappear in 10 years.His warning came as Samsung Electronics was hitting a boom as it benefited from the dramatic recovery in global chip prices and LCD TV demand. The company built up market share even during last year’s downturn by investing heavily in its main business to extend its lead over rivals. It posted a seven-fold increase in first-quarter operating profit to Won4,405bn on sales of Won34,638bn.Samsung last month said it would substantially increase spending on semiconductors to ride on the chip sector’s sharp recovery. Shares of Samsung Electronics were down 0.62 per cent at Won799,000 at midday.