SK Group is set to hold its 2024 management strategy meeting at the SKMS Research Institute in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province, from June 28 to 29.

The meeting, which will be attended by about 30 key executives, including SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won, SK Innovation Senior Vice Chairman Chey Jae-won, SK Supex Council Chairman Chey Chang-won, and CEOs of major affiliates such as SK Corp., SK Innovation, SK Telecom, and SK Hynix, aims to set the direction for overcoming the current crisis and rebalancing the business structure centered on AI and semiconductors. Chairman Chey Tae-won, currently on a business trip to the United States, will participate via video conference.

The SK Group’s management strategy meeting, held annually in June, is a pivotal event that determines the group’s direction for the year. The keynote set at this meeting continues to influence the Icheon Forum in August, the CEO Seminar in October, and the regular personnel appointments at the end of the year. Given the current crisis, such as the temporary demand stagnation in the group’s next-generation growth engine, the battery business, this year’s meeting is more critical than ever. Consequently, the group has extended the meeting time from one day to two days and one night.

On June 29, the group’s top management will focus on discussing specific strategies and methods to secure maximum investment resources in future growth business areas led by AI and semiconductors. An SK official stated, “With the AI era approaching, it is expected that the largest investment in history will be needed in the group’s business areas related to the AI ecosystem, such as HBM (high-bandwidth memory), over the next 2-3 years.”

To this end, SK Group CEOs plan to deeply discuss ways to secure resources through ‘Operation Improvement’ and business portfolio rebalancing, which have been underway for each company since the beginning of the year. Operation Improvement is a comprehensive management activity and strategy aimed at enhancing the efficiency of existing businesses and maximizing profitability. Additionally, the CEOs will discuss ways to achieve ‘qualitative growth’ through internal management in promising future growth businesses such as batteries and bio.

Earlier, SK Group, which set out to save SK On, which had fallen into a deficit, is known to be considering measures such as merging SK Innovation, the parent company of SK On, with SK E&S, merging SK On with SK Enmove, and selling shares of SK IE Technology (SKIET). Regarding this, SK Group explained that the management strategy meeting is a place to discuss the group’s basic management principles and direction, and specific implementation plans will be decided after being reviewed by each company.

In particular, this meeting will focus on discussions to practice and strengthen SKMS, SK’s unique management system. SKMS was first established by the late Chairman Chey Jong-hyun in 1979 and has been continuously revised and advanced in line with changes in the management environment over the past 45 years. SKMS has played a pivotal role in overcoming difficult management environments such as the foreign exchange crisis in the 1990s and the global financial crisis in the 2000s. It also served as a driving force for major mergers and acquisitions (M&A), such as Yukong in 1980, Korea Mobile Telecommunications in 1994, and Hynix in 2012. The group’s top management plans to continue discussions on the SKMS agenda as a continuous task this year at the Icheon Forum in August and the CEO Seminar in October.