Chairman Park Hyeon-joo of Mirae Asset Group won the 2016 Dasan Financial Award at a New Year’s gathering for the financial experts on Jan. 3 at Lotte Hotel in downtown Seoul.
The award recognizes Park for his contribution to the launch of Mirae Asset Daewoo Securities, the largest securities firm in Korea with total assets amounting to 6.6 trillion won.
The judges for the coveted award heavily weighed the Mirae Asset Group chairman’s ambition to lead the securities firm to the point where it is big and diversified enough to compete with the top investment banking securities firms in the world, such as Goldman Sachs and Nomura.
Park has had a steep climb to the top of the world of finance after starting his career as a simple salary man.
He has been calling for investments to lead the Korean economy towards to better growth path.
The chairman set up Mirae Asset Venture Capital and Mirae Asset Global Investments in 1997, and under his leadership, Mirae Asset Group has grown to be a leading financial group with total assets amounting to around 370 trillion won.
The words “for the first time” are often spoken with his business accomplishments.
He made a name for himself in 1998 by introducing mutual funds for the first time in Korea under the banner “Mirae Asset Park Hyeon-joo No. 1 Fund,” which were very successful, making him a household name in the financial industry.
He also led Mirae Asset to set up its first overseas venture in Hong Kong by launching the subsidiary Mirae Asset Global Investments. The group now has over 30 overseas outlets in 16 countries, and markets its financial products in some 36 countries.
The group took over Acu Cinet, the No. 1 Global Titlist, in 2011 and listed Mirae Asset on the New York Stock Exchange in 2016, indicating that Mirae Asset Group has the capacity to be a top global IB.
To cement its status as a global IB, the group acquired Hyatt Regency Waikiki Beach Resort in Honolulu for $780 million, surprising the financial community in Korea. It is rare for a Korean financial firm to invest in a landmark building in a top international resort destination.
Park also had his group to set up a fund for investments in overseas real estate for the first time in Korea last September.
The group is in the middle of setting up a fund to invest in startups and venture firms to invest in promising business areas in cooperation with Naver and other leading business firms in Korea. The new fund will collect some 1 trillion won in public investments.
“With the 4th industry in the works, we will have a new industrial revolution in our hands and the age of equity.
Mirae Asset will spread the seeds for the new industry to make an overall contribution to the economy’s continuous growth,” Chairman Park said in his New Year address. Mirae Asset Global Investments is a global investment management firm with offices, clients and business lines across the world's major markets (Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Hong Kong, India, Korea, Taiwan, the U.K., the United States and Vietnam).
“We provide asset management services through a diversified platform that offers market-leading franchises in traditional equity and fixed income products, ETFs and alternative strategies such as real estate, private equity and hedge funds,” according to the group.
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