By Andrei Skvarsky.
South Korean private equity firm MBK Partners, which has $25.6bn in assets under management, is putting together a 10-trillion-won ($7.6bn) buyout fund to target the Chinese domestic market.
MBK co-founder and partner Michael Kim has been in talks with South Korean pension institutions in seeking inputs from them into what would be his firm’s sixth buyout fund, according to The Korea Economic Daily, a Seoul-based English-language newspaper.
The paper cited Kim as saying in a letter to investors in March that domestic consumption in China was accounting for a steadily increasing share of gross domestic product and that the role of exports as a GDP factor was going down.
MBK, which is focused on North Asia, bought out Chinese car rental company CAR Inc. for $1.2bn in 2021 and became the second-largest stakeholder in another Chinese car rental firm, eHi Car Services, in 2020.
MBK’s Chinese portfolio also includes interest in beauty and spa services provider Shanghai Siyanli Industrial Co. and a theme park in Shanghai, Haichang Ocean Park.
MBK’s fifth buyout fund closed at about $6.5bn in 2020. The Korea Economic Daily said that, by that time, it was Asia’s third-largest buyout fund ever. It was financed by South Korean institutional investors and pension funds in Illinois, Ohio and New Jersey.
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