Global assets of Mirae Asset Global Investments Co., South Korea’s top asset manager, have surpassed 450 trillion won ($320.6 billion), largely driven by a rapid growth in its overseas business, the company announced Monday.
The firm’s assets under management (AUM) stood at 250 trillion won at the end of 2022, climbed to 305 trillion won in 2023 and 378 trillion won last year.
As of September, it reached 456 trillion won, an increase of nearly 200 trillion won in three years.
The company attributed the stellar performance to the fast expansion of its overseas assets.
Mirae Asset launched its first overseas unit in Hong Kong in 2003, becoming Korea’s first asset manager to venture into a foreign market.
Since then, it has expanded into 16 markets, including the US, Canada, India, Japan and Australia, under the leadership of Park Hyeon-joo, founder and global strategy officer (GSO) of Mirae Asset Financial Group.
Overseas assets now account for about 45% of the total, or 182 trillion won.
Exchange-traded fund (ETF) growth has also been a key driver.
Mirae Asset’s global ETF business has swelled to 250 trillion won in assets, growing at an average of 36.8% annually over the past decade, nearly twice the global industry’s 19.5% growth rate.
Thanks to the strong performance of overseas ETF offerings, especially in the US and Hong Kong, its securities sibling Mirae Asset Securities Co. reported an 83.1% jump in second-quarter operating profit to 540 billion won.
Mirae Asset is the world’s 12th-largest ETF provider.
Park picked exchange-traded funds as a new growth engine as early as 2010, when the financial product was still unfamiliar to most Korean investors.
The company is also accelerating its advance into digital finance.
It signed a memorandum of understanding with global blockchain platform Avalanche last Thursday to develop financial products that incorporate blockchain technology in markets with more flexible regulation.
By Han-Shin Park
phs@hankyung.com
Sookyung Seo edited this article.
