Pru leads race to buy Daehan of Korea
A CONSORTIUM led by the Prudential and billionaire financier George Soros has emerged as frontrunner in a bid for State-owned South Korean asset manager Daehan Investment & Securities.
The Korean government said the group had been picked as lead negotiator and added that local financial firm Dongwon Finance Holding was top bidder for a second asset manager, Korea Investment & Securities. The Pru's consortium includes buyout fund Olympus Capital and Seoul Securities, a Korean brokerage owned by Soros. The finance firms are each expected to fetch between $430m (£232m) and £$520m.
The investment would mark the British insurer's entry into the £75bn fund management industry in South Korea, following in the footsteps of its US namesake Prudential Financial as a consolidation of the sector gains pace.
The government in Seoul injected huge sums of public cash to bail out ailing financial companies following the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
Daehan and Korea had obtained a total of 7.7 trillion won (£320m) in public funds in 2000 to stay afloat. The government is expected to inject a further 2.8 trillion won into the firms, which jointly control a quarter of the local asset management market.
Should talks with the Pru falter, the committee named a consortium involving Hana Bank and Singapore's State-owned investment fund Temasek as a reserve bidder for Daehan Investment. US buyout specialist Carlyle was named as second-place bidder for Korea Investment.