Hahn & Company, a leading domestic private equity fund (PEF) manager, sold used-car corporations K Car. It comes eight years after the 2018 acquisition, allowing it to recoup about five times its invested principal.
On the 1st, Hahn & Company said it signed a stock purchase agreement (SPA) to sell K Car to a KG Group consortium for 750 billion won. Cactus Private Equity (PE) will join as a co-investor.
The assets for sale are Hahn & Company's 72.19% management-control equity in K Car and 100% equity in K Car Capital. K Car's enterprise value (EV) was assessed at about 1 trillion won, and K Car Capital's sale value at 200 billion won.
Hahn & Company acquired K Car for about 200 billion won in 2018. It later listed K Car on the KOSPI, generating 300 billion won in secondary share sales. With the successful sale, it will recover about five times its invested principal.
K Car traces back to SK Encar, founded by SK in 2000. At the time, a major conglomerate quickly seized the used-car market—then called a "lemon market" due to opaque pricing—by leveraging a company-run direct sales system.
Hahn & Company changed the corporate name to K Car and built an integrated online-offline platform, steadily driving operational efficiency. It also directly established the captive finance company "K Car Capital," internalizing installment finance.
K Car's revenue rose about 2.5 times from 990.4 billion won in 2018, the first year after Hahn & Company's acquisition, to 2.4388 trillion won in 2025. Over the same period, operating profit increased about 15 times from 5.1 billion won to 76 billion won.
KG Group is said to expect synergies between K Car and automaker KG Mobility. The view is that it can build a "vertical integration" structure spanning new-car sales to used-car distribution and finance.
A KG Group representative said, "By combining KG Mobility's vehicle production capabilities and global sales and service network with K Car's online-offline distribution platform, we will implement customer-centric integrated mobility services."