SK chairman Chey Tae-won is practicing his supporting role for the country’s third-largest conglomerate by engaging in semiconductor talks at the Davos Forum in Switzerland this week.

SK Hynix said Thursday that Chey organized meetings with Qualcomm chairman Paul Jacobs as well as Cisco chief executive John Chambers to discuss cooperation measures in chip projects.

The move is sought to be Chey’s first since stepping down from the helm of SK businesses and stating that he will play a supporting role involving global management of the conglomerate ― mapping out new global growth engines and fresh business projects.

The Davos Forum, or the World Economic Forum, which is running until Saturday in Switzerland, is the first international event that Chey has attended since the announcement.

At his meeting with the Qualcomm chief, Chey asked for support from the U.S. chipmaker.

The two parties are suspected to have talked about the trend and road map of mobile memory, the sector that has particularly risen as the item of strongest growth in the industry, according to industry sources.

The meeting also comes shortly after SK Telecom president Ha Sung-min met with Qualcomm’s Jacobs at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month.

Chey also shared views on network and storage projects along with the changes in the IT environment such as cloud computing and big data with Cisco’s Chambers.

SK Hynix, a firm that conducted 95 percent of its businesses abroad in 2011, became a member of the SK Group last year. SK Telecom is currently its biggest stakeholder.

“It’s eye-catching that Chey, who has made clear that he will position himself as the supporter of SK’s global tasks, kicked off his activities beginning with business meetings involving SK Hynix,” said an SK Hynix official. “This is a sign that shows the chairman will steer up overseas growth for the firm.”

Since coming under the SK wing, SK Hynix has been actively taking on mergers and acquisitions.

Last June, the semiconductor supplier signed a contract to take up U.S. controller firm Link_A_Media Devices to strengthen its output in NAND flash, which is widely used in wireless devices such as smartphones and tablet PCs.

In the same month, the company also established a research and development center in Italy by taking over Italian NAND flash developer Ideaflash ― a firm composed of 50 R&D experts with at least 12 years of experience ― for next-generation memory chips, and publicized that it will jointly work with IBM to develop next-generation PC RAM chips.

By Cho Ji-hyun (sharon@heraldcorp.com)