South Korea’s Public Officials Benefit Association (POBA) has opened two tenders for domestic equity mandates, one related to healthcare and the other focusing on technology.
POBA will choose one asset manager for each mandate. The value of investments was not disclosed in the request for proposal published on March 13.
The healthcare mandate will focus on environmental, social and governance investments. The technology mandate will adopt an active strategy and is aimed at generating alpha in the long run.
Applicants can be local fund houses or foreign asset managers with investment staff based in Korea, and must have at least 10 billion won (US$7.6 million) of assets under management.
Applications are open until March 22. On-site inspection and manager selection is expected to be completed by April 24.
Local investment consulting firm KG Zeroin has been appointed to evaluate bidders.
This is the second time POBA is looking to outsource investments thus far this year. The first was on February 9, when it sought bids for a collateralised loan obligation of unspecified value. Like most Korean asset owners, POBA does not usually announce winners of its tenders publicly.
POBA, a pension and welfare fund for around 250,000 local government civil servants, had 189.88 trillion won of assets as of December 2021.
