Chairman Park Hyeon-joo of Mirae Asset Group.(Photos: Mirae Asset Daewoo Securities)

Senior V. Chairman Choi Hyun-man of Mirae Asset Daewoo Securities.

President Cho Woong-ki of Mirae Asset Daewoo Securities.

Chairman Park Hyeon-joo will resign from Mirae Asset Daewoo and take up a new position as the Global Investment Strategy Officer (GISO) and help the securities firm take charge of its overseas investments.
The company said on May 23 that domestic operation will be left in the hands of the group’s other executives, including Vice Chairman Choi Hyun-man and heads of affiliates, while the chairman will focus on the group’s global operations.
Park has been running the overseas operations from his office in Hong Kong since April and he will not use his name card as the chairman of Mirae Asset Daewoo anymore.
Park said the domestic operation can be handled by well-trained experts in the group, while he runs the global operations.
His two-year tenure as the chairman of Mirae Asset Daewoo Securities, which was born out of the merger between Mirae Asset Securities and Daewoo Securities in May, 2016, expired in May.
An official of the group said he threw away his business card as “the chairman” as his tenure expired so he can take charge of the overseas operations of the group.
But industry sources said he has been under too much pressure from a Fair Trade Commission investigation on the dealings among Mirae Asset affiliates to help each other out by exchanging businesses.
The government asked for reform of governance on the group, which is leading the industry in the area of capital and profit, although its rival securities firms such as NH Investment and Securities and Korea Investment and Securities secured licenses to issue their own notes at the market, ahead of Mirae Asset in the investment banking sector.
It appears that the chairman’s stepping down from the top position in the securities firm would not change much the overall management. A high-ranking official denied that the move has not been made by the outside pressure, but he just wants to leave the management of the company to the next generation of the leaders while he takes charge of the global operation side to lead the group to expand its overseas territory as he promised when he took over the top management of the company.
Mirae Asset Daewoo has its operations in 10 countries overseas with 14 offices, the most among domestic securities firms overseas with their total capital of the wholly-owned overseas subsidiaries coming to 2.3 trillion won hiring some 700 employees.
In March, the chairman declared that the company should generate around 1 trillion won in before tax net profit this year, up 50 percent from the previous year, growing up as a global investment bank and unveil an attacking investment style.
He will try to make the company “a Goldman Sachs of Korea,” he said, for his next challenge. Mirae Asset signed a deal with Korea Development Bank (KDB) in December to buy a 43 percent stake in KDB Daewoo for 2.4 trillion won ($2.1 billion). It plans to complete the deal later this week by paying the remaining 90 percent of the deal price. The financial regulator approved the deal last week.
"Chairman Park Hyeon-joo will move to lead the new securities unit, seeking to smooth the integration," said a spokesman.
Park vowed to transform the new brokerage unit, tentatively named Mirae Asset Daewoo Securities, into a leading player in the global market, by creating synergy from Mirae Asset's strengths in asset management and Daewoo's competitiveness in research and investment banking. He said he aims to make the group more influential on the international stage, similar to the level of Samsung in the manufacturing sector.