SK Business Group has decided to introduce a new management system, dubbed the “Separate & Together 3.0 Regime,” to hand over the holding company’s responsibilities to each subsidiary’s board of directors and committee. 

SK Business Group held the 2nd CEOs’ Seminar at the Acadia Training Institute in Gwangjang-dong, Seoul, on Nov. 26 in which CEOs of major subsidiaries and outside directors participated and determined the innovative management system the group had been discussing since September. Action plans will be established before the new management is translated into action next January, the group said. The participants of the gathering shared the need for introducing the Separate & Together 3.0 Regime to nurture each subsidiary of the group into a global player with the group’s capitalization standing at 300 trillion won. 

Each subsidiary of the group, which had obtained prior approval from the board of directors by the week of Nov. 19, endorsed a deal on the promotion of mutual cooperation and implementation. The new management regime calls for each committee, composed of member subsidiaries, to spearhead global joint growth strategies under the condition that each subsidiary is fully responsible for its own management.

From now on, the CEO of each company and its board of directors will make decisions on their own and take responsibility for management outcomes. Until now, they have consulted on decision-making with SK Holdings, the holding company of the business group, but from January, each subsidiary will have to make its own decisions with its board of directors taking the lead. Explaining the rationale for the introduction of the new management system, SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won told the first CEOs’ Seminar that each company should not ask the holding company for permission or advice or bring anything to it.

As a result, SK Holdings will never be involved in each company’s decision-making processes in order to promote full-fledged autonomous management, and the holding company will be reorganized and charged with major responsibilities for enhancing its own corporate values, such as making investments for global growth and the exploration of new projects. SK Holdings, however, will retain the existing function of conducting management evaluations from the portfolio perspective. The holding company’s major role -- the reshuffling of each company’s CEO and executives -- will be handed over to each committee composed of member subsidiaries. The manpower development committee will initially screen the evaluation of CEOs before transferring it to each company’s board of directors, which will have final say over personnel management. 

Each company will be asked to deliver its own strengths to committees made up of CEOs as part of efforts to beef up synergetic effects. In this vein, the business group inaugurated the Strategic Committee, the Global Growth Committee, and the Shared Growth Committee in 2007. The Manpower Development Committee, the Ethical Management Committee, and the Communication Committee, which have been test-operated since this past May, have been newly added. 

The business group’s management has evolved. It announced the Jeju Declaration, calling for securing each subsidiary’s survival strategies, in 2002. The group introduced each subsidiary’s board of directors’ own management in 2005 and introduced a holding company system in 2007 before shifting to the latest management system. 

Now that Chairman Chey is away from his involvement in each company’s duties, he will be charged with global growth strategies that he has so far handled, the development of new breadwinners, and the establishment of an overseas ranking officials’ network.