S.Korea’s ruling party seeks to ease capital-raising rules

South Korea’s ruling party is seeking to make it easier for chipmaker SK Hynix to set up ventures to build factories with outside investors — a move that follows a government push to position the country as an AI powerhouse.
Members of President Lee Jae Myung’s Democratic Party of Korea have proposed amending a law pertaining to “strategic industries with cutting-edge technologies” that currently forbids a subsidiary of a subsidiary from such a move.
If passed, chipmaker SK Hynix — which is a unit of SK Square which is in turn a unit of SK Inc — will be able to attract outside capital for its new fabs if it retains a stake of at least 50 per cent in such a joint venture.
The law primarily affects SK Hynix, the leading developer of high-bandwidth memory used in Nvidia’s AI processors. Other major South Korean conglomerates maintain less direct control over their prized units, instead exerting control through a complicated web of cross-shareholdings.