Sungji “Steve” An, a vice president on Hamilton Lane's business development team, was named official representative of the private markets investment firm's new office in Seoul, said Juan Delgado-Moreira, Hamilton Lane's Hong Kong-based managing director.
Mr. An relocates to Seoul from Hong Kong. A Hamilton Lane news release Wednesday said the office in South Korea is the company's 12th, as well as its third in the Asia-Pacific region following Hong Kong and Tokyo.
Mr. Delgado-Moreira said in a telephone interview the decision to open a Seoul office comes after Hamilton Lane was awarded allocations from a “significant cluster of clients” in the country over the past three years or so.
He declined to provide aggregate asset figures for South Korea clients, but last July the country's biggest investor, the 496 trillion won ($424 billion) National Pension Service, confirmed it had invested 400 billion won in a Hamilton Lane private equity co-investment fund.
While the strength of Hamilton Lane's brand in the region has helped the firm attract business from the country's largest institutional investors, with Mr. An in Seoul, the company will be able to reach out to a much broader range of investors, said Mr. Delgado-Moreira.
