South Korea’s top exchange-traded fund manager Samsung Asset Management has lost its second-in-command Bae Jae-Kyu to rival Korea Investment Management (KIM), which has hired him to succeed Chief Executive Officer Cho Hong-rae, according to The Korea Times.
Cho is moving to KIM’s parent company Korea Investment Holdings, the newspaper reported on December 10, citing unidentified market sources who say the asset management firm poached Bae from Samsung to help boost its ETF market share.
KIM ranks fourth in the Korean ETF market after Samsung, Mirae Asset Global Investments and KB Asset Management.
Bae, who had worked at Samsung for over 20 years, was in charge of ETFs and helped introduce KODEX 200, Korea’s first ETF, in 2002.
Spokespersons for both the companies did not immediately respond to questions from Asia Asset Management.
According to figures from Morningstar, as of September 2021, Samsung had US$24.99 billion of ETF assets, accounting for 42.6% market share, and KIM had $2.97 billion of ETF assets or 5.1% market share.
Samsung’s total assets under management as of December 2020 was 275 trillion won ($232.9 billion), while KIM had $54 billion of assets as of September 2021.
