Eastspring Asset in Korea up for grabs at about $77 mn

Eastspring Asset Management Korea Co., the Korean operation of Prudential plc’s asset management unit, is up for sale for about 100 billion won ($77 million) as its business in Asia’s No. 4 economy is stumbling.

According to investment banking industry sources on Tuesday, a foreign investment bank is in talks with multiple potential buyers to sell Eastspring Investments' Korean operations owned by UK-headquartered multinational insurance company Prudential plc.

The sale attempt comes after its major client National Pension Service, Korea’s No. 1 institutional investor that is also the world’s third-largest public pension fund, withdrew about 2.6 trillion won from an Eastspring Asset Management-managed active quant fund investing in a portfolio of Korean stocks.

The NPS exit was in response to the asset manager’s unintentional mistake of exercising the Korean public pension fund’s voting rights of 24,507 shares in Kospi-listed KISCO Holdings Corp., the holding company of a reinforcing steel bar-manufacturing group, without NPS approval earlier this year.

Its voting, including its own 833 shares, barred a KISCO Holdings’ minority shareholders-backed nonexecutive director from being elected as the company’s auditor, dealing a blow to the minority shareholders who were in a proxy battle with the company’s majority shareholders at the time.

As of the end of the third quarter ended September this year, Eastspring Asset Management Korea’s total assets under management stood at about 8 trillion won, down 37.8% from two years ago.

Its bottom line reached 2.4 billion won in the same quarter, while its operating profit amounted to 3.2 billion won on revenue of 16.4 billion won.  

Considering its shareholders’ equity stood at 69.5 billion won as of end-September, the asset manager’s value is estimated at about 100 billion won, including its Korean operations’ license value.

An official of Eastspring Asset Management Korea declined to comment on the company’s sale.

Eastspring Asset Management Korea was formerly PCA Asset Management before changing its Korea brand to the current name in 2021.

Write to Jong-Kwan Park at pjk@hankyung.com

Sookyung Seo edited this article.