To Sign Stock Purchase Agreement This Week

SK Shieldus’ cybersecurity control center

EQT Partners, a private equity fund (PEF), has finalized the acquisition of SK Shieldus, a security business affiliate of SK Group. 

EQT will sign a stock purchase agreement (SPA) worth three trillion won with SK Shieldus this week. It will take over about 30 percent of the 63.1 percent stake held by SK Square, the largest shareholder of SK Shieldus, and the entire 36.87 percent stake held by the second-largest shareholder, Macquarie Infrastructure Asset Management Consortium. EQT's stake in SK Shieldus will reach about 70 percent, including some newly issued shares.

SK Shieldus’ overall enterprise value is estimated to exceed four trillion won. In this transaction, KB Securities will serve as an acquisition financing broker to support the completion of the deal.

Established in 1994 by the Swedish Wallenberg family, EQT Partners is an asset management company specializing in infrastructure, private equity, and real estate investments. For 160 years, Wallenberg has been a major shareholder of European-based global companies such as Electrolux, Ericsson, ABB, and AstraZeneca. EQT invested 113 billion euros in companies over the past 30 years, with 24 billion euros of the total invested in 150 companies in Asia.

SK Shieldus’ security business is a kind of infrastructure business. EQT began to pay attention to SK Shieldus in 2021. When SK Shieldus presented a blueprint to go beyond physical security to grow into an information security company, the management of EQT decided to invest in it to accelerate overseas expansion.

At the beginning, EQT intended to become the third-largest shareholder, but after SK Shieldus’ attempt to go public failed in 2022, EQT chose to become the largest shareholder. EQT recently opened an office in Seoul and recruited Seo Sang-joon, a former CEO of Anchor Equity Partners, as the head of the infrastructure investment business, expanding its activities in investment in Korea.

In 2018, SK Telecom and Macquarie acquired a 100 percent stake in SK Shieldus from Carlyle Group, a global PEF, for 2.97 trillion won. After becoming an affiliate of SK Group, SK Shieldus has expanded its size through a series of mergers with SK Group subsidiaries.

SK Shieldus absorbed NSOK at the end of 2018. SK infosec, an information security arm of SK Telecom, merged with Life & Security Holdings, the parent company of SK Shieldus at the end of 2021. In March 2022, SK Infosec took over SK Shieldus. SK Telecom spun off its investment business unit into SK Square. SK Shieldus became the second-largest affiliate of SK Square after SK Hynix.

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