MBK names two partners as vice chairman, vice president

MBK Partners said on Wednesday it has named Moon Joo Ho, partner and head of South Korea for special situations, as the North Asia-focused private equity firm’s vice president. The firm has promoted Kim Kwang Il, a partner and lawyer, to vice chairman.

Moon joined the special situations unit of MBK in 2018. Before joining the PE house, he served as a partner with H&Q Korea, one of the first-generation PE managers in the country, as well as vice president at JP Morgan Chase & Co. and an associate with Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong and Seoul.

He has led the PE firm’s buyout of fried chicken franchise BHC Group, Series C funding of cloud service provider Megazone Cloud Corp. and a minority stake acquisition in battery maker SK On Co. He will take part in the PE firm's key decision-making processes as an investment committee member.

Moon has been instrumental in the remarkable growth of the special situations unit’s investments in Korea, said MBK Co-founder Michael ByungJu Kim.

Kim Kwang Il, a key player in MBK’s buyouts, has been appointed as a vice chairman. 

As a lawyer specializing in mergers and acquisitions, he has led the PE manager’s investments in supermarket chain Homeplus, Lotte Group's credit card services arm Lotte Card Co. and home decoration firm Modern House.

Before joining MBK in 2005, he was a partner and senior M&A lawyer at Kim & Chang, a top international law firm in Korea, and a certified public accountant at Samil PricewaterhouseCoopers in Seoul.

With his promotion, MBK's Seoul headquarters has three vice chairs, – Kim, Jay H. Bu and Jong-Ha James Yoon.

Write to Jun-Ho Cha at chacha@hankyung.com

Jihyun Kim edited this article.