SEOUL, KOREA - Chey Tae-won, the chairman of SK Holdings and biggest shareholder of SK C&C, has sold a 5-percent stake in the IT services unit to Hon Hai Precision, the world's biggest electronics component maker. The transaction was valued at 381 billion won ($376 million). According to the Financial Supervisory Service on June 30, Mr. Chey sold off 2.45 million shares (4.90%) of SK C&C in a block deal, which reduced his holdings in the company to 43.63 percent from 48.53 percent.

 

The buyer of the shares was Hon Hai Precision, the parent company of Foxconn, the supplier of iPhones and iPads under an original equipment manufacturing arrangement. The company said on the same day in a regulatory filing with the Taiwanese stock market that it purchased SK C&C shares through its affiliate Best Leap Enterprises Ltd. The per-share purchase price was 155,000 won, with the total volume reaching 380.9 billion won. This is a 6.6-percent discount from the current share price.

 

Kim Dong-yang, analyst with Woori Investment & Securities, said, "SK C&C will be able to reap synergies from the strategic investment from Hon Hai in terms of production efficiency gains and factory automation. From the viewpoint of SK C&C shareholders, the latest transaction was small enough not to have any major impact on management control."

 

Although there are expectations of a change because of SK C&C's position as the center of the group's governance structure, an SK Group official said, "As Hon Hai wanted to expand its business focusing on ICT areas while SK Group was seeking to partner with the world's largest OEM manufacturer, the interest of the two companies has matched. It has nothing to do with the issue of governance structure."

 

Source : The Korea Economic Daily