UPDATE ON KOREA'S PRIVATE EQUITY INDUSTRY

News from a few days ago. I've been a bit out of the loop in Seoul, so I didn't know that Michael Kim already left The Carlyle Group. The newsclip also mentions Christine's former boss, Dr. Byeon, who we will be meeting with in the coming weeks. From Thomson's Asian Private Equity News:

Woori Finance Holdings Co., the holding company of Korea's Woori Bank, is set to close the country's second-largest buyout fund, Woori Private Equity Fund, by the end of November. APEN readers will recall that Woori Bank set up an earlier fund of $190 million in December 2004, but that fund was closed after charges of accounting fraud emerged based on its local investments. It was one of the more public failures of Korean government-encouraged efforts to create a domestic private equity funds industry in this country.

The bank says it is in talks with more than 20 local and foreign investors to raise $680 million. If successful the newly launched buyout fund will be smaller than former Carlyle Executive's Michael Kim's $1 billion MBK Associates, but will exceed the $490 million Vogo Investment fund set up in April by Byeon Yang-ho, a former Ministry of Finance executive, and the $400 million fund set up by H&Q Asia Pacific, Wise Assets and Hyundai Securities.