SK Group chair sells stake to Dell family fund for US$406m divorce payout
SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won has agreed to sell a 1.34 per cent stake in SK Inc to a fund linked to Michael Dell's family office for US$406 million, part of a plan to raise 944 billion won for his divorce settlement. The deal raises governance questions in South Korea.
SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won has agreed to sell a 1.34 per cent stake in holding company SK Inc to an investment fund linked to Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell for 544 billion won (US$406 million), according to a regulatory filing on Wednesday.
The deal is part of Chey's plan to raise 944 billion won through share sales to pay a divorce settlement to his former wife. The buyer of 972,493 SK Inc shares was identified as DFO Public Investments, L.P., a Delaware-based fund affiliated with DFO Management, the family investment office of Michael Dell, the filing and DFO Management's website showed.
Earlier this month, SK Inc said in a filing that Chey had agreed to sell 1.65 million shares, or a 2.26 per cent stake, for 944 billion won. Of those, 681,431 shares, or 0.94 per cent, will be sold to Korea Investment & Securities for 400 billion won. SK had previously identified the buyer of the remaining shares only as a strategic investor, saying the investor had agreed to buy the stake after considering SK Inc's business competitiveness and medium- to long-term growth prospects.
Dell Technologies, a major supplier of AI servers and data centre infrastructure, has business ties with SK Hynix, SK Group's memory chipmaking unit. The stake is being acquired by a Dell family investment fund rather than Dell Technologies itself. Reuters reported in May that global technology companies had approached SK Hynix with proposals to invest in dedicated memory chip production lines and help finance costly manufacturing equipment as they sought to secure supplies amid booming AI demand.
The Korea Corporate Governance Forum, an independent watchdog that monitors corporate governance issues in South Korea, said Chey and the buyers would be required to disclose their stakes as joint holdings if they had agreed, even informally, to exercise their voting rights in the same way. Failure to do so would violate South Korea's capital markets law, it said. The forum said a strategic investor suggested their interests could be aligned, raising the possibility that the fund could be deemed a joint holder with Chey under the law.