Chairman Chey Tae-won: "We Must Write a Corporate Value Story Trusted by the Market and Society"

[Asia Economy Reporter Park So-yeon] SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won has called for creating a CEO’s unique corporate value growth story that earns trust from customers and society through ESG (environment, social, governance), innovation in work culture, and enhancement of social value, beyond growth centered solely on financial performance.

On the 23rd, Chairman Chey attended the ‘2020 Expanded Management Meeting’ held at the SKMS Research Institute in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province, and defined, “The corporate value we need to cultivate is not simply economic value such as financial performance and dividend policy, but a total value encompassing social values like sustainability, ESG, and customer trust, as well as tangible and intangible assets such as intellectual property rights and work culture.”

Chairman Chey emphasized, “Each company’s CEO must utilize these components of corporate value to communicate with the market, investors, and customers, and create their own growth story that can secure trust.”

Accordingly, SK CEOs decided to overcome obstacles that have hindered growth in each company, create their own stories to enhance corporate value, and continuously persuade and communicate with the market, investors, and customers to grow corporate value.

About 30 people, including Chairman Chey, SK Senior Vice Chairman Chey Jae-won, SK Discovery Vice Chairman Chey Chang-won, SK Supex Council Chairman Cho Dae-sik, seven committee chairpersons, and CEOs of major affiliates, attended the expanded management meeting to focus on ways to enhance corporate value.

Throughout the expanded management meeting, Chairman Chey repeatedly stressed the importance of the CEO role.

He pointed out, “A shift in mindset is needed to recognize the structural limitations that have hindered our growth not as an inevitable ‘given environment’ but as a ‘challenge to overcome,’ which makes deep change (fundamental innovation) possible. Above all, CEOs must prepare their own growth stories to solve these structural obstacles and boldly declare their intentions.”

He continued, “CEOs should not only announce the economic achievements gained while executing their mid- to long-term vision (the person they want to become) to the market but also reflect the diverse voices of various stakeholders and gain trust so that a story everyone can empathize with can be completed.”

This means the CEO’s role as a storyteller who closely communicates with shareholders, institutional investors, pension funds, IBs, and other stakeholders that make up the financial society, as well as customers and society, to secure trust is essential.

In this regard, an SK official said, “Going forward, CEOs will create various stories suited to their management environment, such as financial stories centered on capital market evaluations, social value stories that solve social issues, and ESG stories integrating eco-friendly businesses, ultimately enhancing overall corporate value.”

Chairman Cho Dae-sik, in his opening remarks before Chairman Chey, diagnosed the cause of SK’s inability to break away from existing business areas, unlike global advanced companies expanding into new growth sectors with their unique strengths and startups recognized for high corporate value through groundbreaking new technologies, as a lack of urgency and execution power. He urged, “Let’s discover promising businesses and innovate business models to create visible and tangible changes quickly and boldly.”

This year’s expanded management meeting was conducted in a panel discussion format to explore ways to enhance corporate value by utilizing collective intelligence. Considering social distancing measures due to COVID-19, only top executives such as Chairman Chey and CEOs attended the panel discussion offline, while other executives watched the meeting online.

During the panel discussion, SK CEOs engaged in heated debates seeking management strategies and practical measures to enhance corporate value based on financial stories. Chairman Chey personally chaired the discussion on the topic of ‘Financial Story and CEO Role.’

In the energy and chemical sectors, there was a shared recognition that growth may stagnate with traditional energy industries, and they discussed ways to innovate corporate value by adopting eco-friendly business models. In the information and communication sector, they discussed ways to secure tech leadership in core technologies of the 4th industrial revolution such as AI and DT, and to close the technology gap with global leading companies.

Additionally, they considered the direction of SK Group’s portfolio management to secure both stable profits and future growth, and explored ways for SK affiliates to cooperate mutually to secure growth resources at the group level.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.