SK Group (034730 KS) has reportedly asked the government to ease duplicate-listing regulations to enable a Nasdaq IPO for Solidigm, SK hynix’s (000660 KS) NAND subsidiary, Korean press reports

Petitions of this kind, where a chaebol seeks relief from rules designed to protect domestic minority holders, are a recurring feature of Korean corporate governance: the duplicate-listing framework exists precisely because past spin-off and subsidiary-listing episodes left parent shareholders diluted while value migrated to the newly listed entity, and those episodes drove sustained political and regulatory pushback. The operative question is whether this reads as a precursor to an actual carve-out of the NAND unit or simply exploratory lobbying; on previous occasions, talk of overseas listings for Korean group assets has surfaced when parent funding needs or a desire to re-rate the asset at peer multiples outweighed domestic listing economics. The channel is the discount: Korean group parents have historically traded at holding-company discounts, and shifting a high-multiple asset to a US venue captures the peer-set re-rating at the subsidiary while crystallising the discount at the parent, which is why local holders of the parent tend to react negatively to such reports. Worth observing is the government response and whether the financial regulator signals any willingness to amend the rules, since rule changes in this area have previously been slow and contested. Until a filing or formal proposal exists, this is positioning rather than transaction.