Teachers’ Pension announces new overseas alternative investment head

The Korea Teachers’ Pension on April 24 named its domestic alternative investment head Young-sin Jeong as new head of overseas alternative investments in a personnel reshuffle, after Dae-yang Park took office as CIO of the pension fund in January.

Jeong, 54, has handled investments in alternative and real assets and investment outsourcing in the pension fund’s asset management department for the past nine years, according to Teachers’ Pension. He studied public administration at Kookmin University in Seoul.

He will work under CIO Park, a former head of investments at Allianz Life Insurance Co. Ltd.

Park, an MBA of Iowa State University, was selected outside of the Teachers’ Pension to succeed Min-ho Park who was the first CIO chosen from within the organization and retired last December after a three-year tenure.

Teachers’ Pension managed 14 trillion won ($12.3 billion) in financial assets for South Korea’s private school personnel at end-2016.

Its overseas alternative investments returned 8.45% last year, outperforming the overall return of 4.0% for the fund, according to Yonhap Infomax. The 2016 average return edged up from 3.7% in 2015.

The pension fund has been aggressively diversifying alternative investments into an office building in Australia and a US warehouse portfolio fund, as well as value-added and opportunistic real estate funds in the US and Europe.

Last December, it decided to invest $50 million in a US-focused, value-added real estate fund of LaSalle Investment Management for expected returns of 14 to 16%.

In 2016, it invested around $500 million in blind-pool funds ranging from real estate, corporate mezzanine debt and infrastructure to secondary and value-added funds, the Teachers’ Pension said in December when it announced the new CIO .

Separately, the Government Employees Pension Service and the Military Mutual Aid Association also appointed new CIOs recently.

(Corrected: New overseas alternative head Young-sin Jeong was not promoted from the position of domestic alternative investment head, but moved to the new position. First paragraph was corrected in that regard.)

By Hugh YH Jeong

hugh@hankyung.com