Michael Dell’s Family Office Buys $406 Million Stake in SK Inc.

SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won has agreed to sell a 1.34% stake in holding company SK Inc to an investment fund linked to Dell Technologies founder Michael Dell for 544 billion won ($406 million), according to a regulatory filing released on Wednesday. 

The buyer of 972,493 SK Inc shares is DFO Public Investments, L.P., a Delaware fund affiliated with DFO Management, the family investment office of Michael Dell. Based on the filing figures, the implied price is roughly 559,000 won per share. DFO Management, formerly MSD Capital, manages the capital of Michael Dell and his family. 

The sale is driven by a personal obligation. The transaction is part of Chey’s plan to raise 944 billion won ($704 million) through share sales to fund a divorce settlement with his former wife. Earlier this month, SK Inc disclosed that Chey had agreed to sell 1.65 million shares, or a 2.26% stake, with 681,431 shares going to Korea Investment & Securities for 400 billion won. Chey remains the largest shareholder of SK Inc after the transfer. 

The strategic angle centers on memory chips. Dell Technologies, a major supplier of AI servers and data center infrastructure, has business ties with SK Hynix, the group’s memory chip unit, although the stake is being bought by the Dell family fund rather than Dell Technologies itself. SK Inc is the largest shareholder in SK Hynix. 

Governance questions follow. The Korea Corporate Governance Forum said Chey and the buyers must disclose their stakes as joint holdings if they agreed, even informally, to vote the same way, and that failing to do so would breach South Korea’s capital markets law. 

For allocators, the deal shows a family office using a forced seller situation to gain indirect exposure to one of the most important AI memory suppliers.