A fund tied to Michael Dell’s family investment office has agreed to buy a 1.34% stake in SK Inc., the holding company of South Korea’s SK Group, from chairman Chey Tae-won for 544 billion won (about US$406 million), according to a regulatory filing and Korean media reports.
The buyer is DFO Public Investments, a Delaware fund linked to DFO Management, which runs the Dell family’s investments. It is buying 972,493 shares, or about 559,000 won apiece. Dell Technologies (NYSE: DELL) is not the buyer, though the company does business with SK Group’s memory chip unit, SK hynix.
Chey is selling shares to pay a divorce settlement to his former wife. The Dell fund’s purchase makes up 544 billion won of a planned 944 billion won in sales. Korea Investment & Securities will take the other 400 billion won, a 0.94% stake, through a three-year price return swap.
Sponsored · Cambria Gold Mines
SK Inc. had described the Dell fund only as a “strategic investor” that weighed the company’s competitiveness and growth prospects. Chey’s own stake is set to fall to 15.5% from 17.8%, and he remains the largest shareholder.
SK hynix said at a Dell Technologies event in Seoul in August that its DDR5 memory modules and enterprise solid-state drives would go into Dell’s R770 data center server. In June, Dell said it shipped CoreWeave a rack carrying 72 units of Nvidia’s (Nasdaq: NVDA) Vera Rubin AI chip, equipped with SK hynix’s HBM4 memory.
A revised Commercial Act in force since July limits the combined voting rights of a largest shareholder and related parties to 3% when electing or dismissing independent audit committee members. Shares that leave Chey’s bloc no longer count toward that cap.
On October 6, before the buyer was named, the Korea Corporate Governance Forum demanded that Chey’s side explain whether the deal aimed to avoid the rule. The group said buyers who agree to vote together, even informally, must disclose a joint holding. SK said it could not discuss the details of a deal between private parties.
