Chairman Park Hyeon-joo of Mirae Asset Group.

Mirae Asset Financial Group is emerging as the leading bidder for a U.S. luxury hotel portfolio being sold by trouble Chinese insurer Anbang Insurance Group Co, people with knowledge of the matter said.

An affiliate of Mirae is working to arrange financing and reach an agreement on terms of a purchase, the people said. An acquisition by the South Korean asset manager could value the 15 properties at more than $5.5 billion.

Anbang hasn't granted exclusivity to Mirae, and at least one other suitor is still actively pursuing the assets. If talks are successful, Mirae aims to make a nonrefundable deposit by the end of the month.

Anbang bought the properties’ owner, Strategic Hotels & Resorts Inc., from Blackstone Group Inc. for about $5.5 billion in 2016. The deal was part of a global buying spree that made Anbang synonymous with China’s unbridled appetite for international trophy assets. That era ended when Chinese authorities seized control of Anbang and later sentenced Chairman Wu Xiaohui to 18 years in prison.

The hotel portfolio also attracted interest from suitors including Brookfield Asset Management Inc. and a consortium fronted by a former lieutenant to the U.K.’s billionaire Barclay twins. The properties include the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco, the Loews Santa Monica Beach Hotel, the JW Marriott Essex House in New York and the Four Seasons in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Separately, Anbang still owns the famed Waldorf Astoria hotel in Manhattan from a $1.95 billion deal in 2015.

The China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, Anbang’s ultimate custodian, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Mirae has previously invested in U.S. hotels, buying the five-star Fairmont San Francisco Hotel in 2015 and the Fairmont Orchid hotel on the big island of Hawaii in 2016.

The U.K. and Germany were the top two destinations for South Korean real estate investment last year, followed by the U.S., according to CBRE. Korean interest in London office property has dropped this year on concerns over Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, according to broker Knight Frank. Mirae Asset Global Investments, the asset management unit of Mirae Asset Financial Group, has been aggressively pushing for global expansion leaving its rivals far behind.

According to data from the Financial Supervisory Service, South Korea’s financial watchdog, only 27 companies out of 250 registered asset management companies in the country operate 52 overseas regional offices and branches as of end-March. Among them, Mirae Asset alone operates 12. The runners-up Samsung Asset Management and Assetplus Investment Management each have four overseas offices.

Mirae Asset has attained the top position among Korea firms due to a series of vigorous acquisitions in the past several years. In 2018 alone, it bought US ETF operator Global X and established a joint venture with Vietnam Investment Corp.

In China, Mirae Asset’s Shanghai subsidiary was granted a private equity fund manager license, becoming the first Korean company to get it.

Mirae Asset has 158 trillion won ($131.6 billion) assets under management as of end-June and 45 percent of the AUM, or 4 percent, are invested in overseas markets.

Mirae Asset has grown to be the only operator among Korean AMCs that collects assets by directly selling funds overseas, with almost 300 funds set up and sold overseas.

A view of the JW Marriot Essex House in New York, one of the 15 hotels that Mirae Asset Group has been vying to take over from Anbang Insurance Group of China, which owns the U.S. hotel chain, but wants reportedly to sell it due to a set of financial problems.(Photos: Mirae Asset)