This article was displayed on the ChosunBiz MoneyMove (MM) site at 1:36 p.m. on Jul. 10, 2026.
Private equity fund (PEF) manager bnw Investment has begun a generational shift. Co-CEOs Yoon Jun-hee and Kim Seok-ju will establish a new company in which they are shareholders and switch to a partner structure. It is also understood to be pursuing a plan to move management of a new fund set to be formed this year to the new entity.
According to the investment banking (IB) industry on the 10th, bnw Investment recently established a new management company, bnw Partners. The parent company, bnw Investment, holds 50% equity, and the remaining 50% is split 25% each by Co-CEOs Yoon Jun-hee and Kim Seok-ju, and it also obtained a license to manage institution-only private funds under this structure.
Analysts said this is part of a generational shift putting second-generation talent born in the 1970s at the forefront. bnw Investment is a homegrown PEF manager founded by Chairman Kim Jae-uk, born in 1954 and formerly president in charge of memory manufacturing technology at Samsung Electronics, and it has been run under a single control structure with Kim holding more than 90% equity.
Instead of directly proceeding with a transfer of the equity in bnw Investment held by the founder, Chairman Kim, the structure shifts economic rights such as management fees and performance fees to the new entity for allocation. Skyrake Investment and Dominus Investment previously moved to partnerships in a similar manner.
In particular, it resembles Skyrake's equity design, which already conducted a generational shift seven years ago in 2019. At the time, Skyrake established Skyrake Equity Partners and transitioned to a partner structure in which founder Chairman Chin Dae-je and executives split equity 50% each.
An IB industry official said, "It is a structure that maintains the founder's control while handing over economic rights and authority and responsibility to next-generation partners," adding, "The recent trend of major limited partners such as the National Pension Service, led by public pensions and mutual aid associations, requiring dispersion of the 'one-man risk' as a condition of commitment likely also had an effect."
bnw Investment is pushing to transfer even the management of a new blind fund of about 700 billion won set to be formed this year to bnw Partners. However, as bnw Investment has already completed fundraising of a considerable size, coordinating the detailed procedures related to the transfer is expected to take time.
A bnw Investment official said, "It is true that we newly established bnw Partners, a new management entity, with the goal of transitioning to a partnership structure," adding, "During the commitment review process, there was a requirement to align interests with key personnel, so we chose to switch to a method commonly used in the market."