Chairman Park Hyun-joo of Mirae Asset Securities. (Photos: Mirae Asset Securities)

Mirae Asset Financial Group was considered the most active securities company that pioneered overseas markets among South Korean financial groups, IB industry sources said in early July.

In particular, they say the group hit the jackpot as a result of consistently betting on global growth companies over the past three years.

Mirae Asset Financial Group already made investments in Grab, dubbed as the Uber of Southeast Asia, and Didi Chuxing, China's largest car-sharing service provider, among others.

The group also joined hands with Naver in 2018 to create the Mirae Asset-Naver Asia Gross Fund and purchased about $150 million worth of Grab shares at the time.

Grab’s stocks are set to start trading on the U.S NASDAQ market via a merger with Altimeter Gross, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) established by U.S. investment firm Altimeter Capital.

In the meantime, the industry expects Mirae Asset to earn more than three times the amount of investment as Grab’s value rises.

Mirae Asset Financial Group invested $26.8 million in Didi Chuxing in 2018. Didi Chuxing, which listed on the NASDAQ market on June 30, logged a market capitalization of $71 billion on the first trading day.

Didi Chuxing is a Chinese car-sharing service company that distributes taxis and privately owned cars through a mobile application. Mirae Asset Financial Group invested in Didi Chuxing.

Considering that Didi Chuxing’s corporate value was only around $56 billion when Mirae Asset Financial Group invested in the company in 2018, Mirae Asset Financial Group is expected to make more than 100 billion won in profits out of its investment in Didi Chuxing.

Its active investment in new growth engine items has attracted a lot of attention. After investing $100 million in China's DJI, the world's largest drone company, it also invested in Indonesia's logistics delivery startup Cargo and JW Therapeutics, a Chinese anti-cancer drug developer, in June last year.

Such investment performance has been proven by improved performance of overseas subsidiaries. Net income before tax at Mirae Asset Securities' overseas subsidiaries is on the rise every year.

After surpassing 100 billion won a year for the first time in the securities industry with pre-tax net income of 171 billion won in 2019, it posted over 200 billion won last year.

This is also the first record set by foreign subsidiaries of a Korean securities firm. Their performances are also expected to become robust as they already earned 70 billion won in pre-tax net profit in the first quarter of this year.

Mirae Asset Securities' customer deposit assets exceeded 400.5 trillion won at the end of June, Mirae Asset Securities said on July 7.

They broke through the milestone of 400 trillion only 10 months after surpassing 300 trillion won last August. Among them, retail customer deposits entrusted by individuals hit 296.5 trillion won.

Analysts say Mirae Asset Securities could surpass 300 trillion won in retail deposits due to a growing interest in stock investment, as ultra-low interest rates pushed money to domestic and foreign stocks and blue-chip financial products.

Mirae Asset Securities’ overseas stock assets grew by five trillion won in 2021 alone. Customers’ total investment income from overseas stock investments since 2017 amounted to about 5.5 trillion won.

Mirae Asset Securities customers held top overseas stocks including Tesla, Apple, Amazon, NVIDIA and Microsoft.

These stocks are considered one of the world's leading blue-chip stocks. They earned about 2.4 trillion won in profits from investing in those stocks alone.

Mirae Asset Securities diversified its portfolio into overseas ETF investments in the domestic stock investment market while strengthening asset allocation through ETFs, stock market experts say.

Pension assets also surpassed 20 trillion won based on excellent retirement pension returns Mirae Asset Securities.

Mirae Asset Securities ranked first among the top 10 pension management companies in both defined contributions (DCs) and individual retirement pensions (IRPs) in the one-year public return on retirement pensions as of the end of the first quarter of 2021.

Its DC yield stood at 13.75 percent, up 5.85 percentage points from 7.90 percent in the previous quarter while its IRP yield 11.37 percent, up 4.12 percentage points from 7.25 percent in the previous quarter.