This article was published on April 21, 2025, at 5:26 p.m. on the ChosunBiz MoneyMove site.
The MG Saemaul Geumgo Central Association, a major player in the domestic investment market, has changed its internal regulations to act as an anchor limited partner (Anchor LP). An anchor LP refers to a key investor that leads the formation of a fund.
This internal regulation revision indicates that the investment capacity of Saemaul Geumgo, which has assets under management amounting to 79 trillion won, has been significantly expanded, which is likely to be good news for private equity (PE) funds that are preparing to form blind funds.
According to the investment banking (IB) industry on the 21st, Saemaul Geumgo included in its internal regulations in mid-February that "anchor investment is possible with the approval of the risk management committee."
Saemaul Geumgo resumed its investment in a blind fund project worth 500 billion won in the second half of last year. Following the fallout from the investment scandal in 2023, former Chairman Park Cha-hoon and former Head of Team Choi, who were part of the corporate finance department, were indicted, leading to a complete stop of investments until they reopened their coffers. However, they had established a regulation stating that they would not take on anchor LP roles and had communicated this to the fund operators.
However, the regulation stating that they would not take on anchor LP roles has imposed significant constraints on investment operations. If they do not take on anchor LP roles, they cannot invest more than a certain amount in a fund. In this case, from the LP's perspective, they can only distribute a smaller amount among more fund operators, which reduces the risk associated with investing in a specific operator but may cause them to miss out on opportunities to bet significantly on good operators, leading to decreased management efficiency of the fund.
Consequently, discussions have been underway within Saemaul Geumgo to resume anchor investments, and they have changed the regulations to provide a basis for this.
Industry insiders predict that Saemaul Geumgo's anchor investments will be possible starting in the second half of this year. However, a Saemaul Geumgo official noted, "We have only changed the internal regulations; no investment plans have been established yet."
Last year, JKL Partners and Praxis Capital were selected as entrusted operators in the equity institutional sector. In the credit institutional sector, five firms were selected: HanTucPE, Dominus Investment, IMM Credit & Solution, Glenwood Credit, and Curious Partners.