KUALA LUMPUR: SK Group has committed over US$700 million investments in Malaysia last year and plans to invest further on 2022.
SK Group, the second largest conglomerate in South Korea with a market capitalisation of US$177 billion, said building on its investments in 2021, Malaysia remained a strong investment destination for the group.
SK Malaysia chief representative Jung Kyu Kim said the group was confident that its experience in financial tech services would contribute to successful digital bank ecosystem in Malaysia and further growth into the Asean region.
"As the group expands rapidly into new industries globally especially in sectors benefiting the environment and human health, SK Group continues to look for further investment opportunities in Malaysia.
"In particular, SK Group is keen to explore with like- minded partners in the growing sectors of electric vehicle (EV), digitalisation and environment which will drive these Malaysian industries to the next stage," he said.
In January 2021, SK Group's battery copper foil-making subsidiary.SK Nexilis announced a capital expenditure (capex) of RM2.3 billion (US$553 million) to set up a copper foil manufacturing facility in Sabah, which will be part of the group's EV value chain.
Recently, SK Group's subsidiary SoCar Malaysia, the largest car sharing company in Malaysia, raised more than US$55 million from EastBridge Partners and local conglomerate Sime Darby Bhd to fuel its expansion and build an EV platform in Malaysia, with plans to deploy hundreds of EVs in the next five years.
Besides that, SK Group made a strategic investment of up to US$100 million into BigPay in August 2021.
It said the investment into BigPay was a testament to the ability of Malaysian fintech companies to grow not just domestically, but also regionally and become a major player in Southeast Asia.
SK Group said it was also joining the BigPay consortium to apply for the upcoming digital banking licence in Malaysia.
"SK Group has seen the growing opportunity in digital banking as a way to change the way large portions of the population access financial services that they did not have before.
"SK has proven commercial experience in digital banking which was successfully implemented in Korea, such as its alternative credit rating and artificial intelligence based data analytics," it added.