Adams Street, Benefit Street, Clearlake join NPS' PE managers

National Pension Service (NPS) of South Korea announced on Feb. 28 it selected Adams Street Partners LLC, Benefit Street Partners LLC and Clearlake Capital Group LP as investment managers during the fourth quarter of 2021. Including the three firms, NPS has hired 71 asset managers for overseas private equity and debts on its behalf.

Adams Street Partners, managing $51 billion in assets, focuses on primaries, secondaries, co-investments and growth equity, along with private credit strategies. The firm has closed partnerships with some Korean institutional investors, including a Korea Post insurance arm that committed $50 million to Adams Street's fund of funds (FoF) for overseas venture capital in late 2018. The Chicago-headquartered investment firm promoted its Seoul office head Chris SungWoo Cho to partner in January of this year.

Benefit Street Partners is a wholly owned subsidiary of global investment management giant Franklin Resources Inc. Headquartered in New York, Benefit Street manages $36 billion in assets and focuses on private/opportunistic debt, structured credit, high yield, special situations, long-short liquid credit and commercial real estate debt. The investment firm received a combined $90 million commitment from three Korean limited partners in 2016, including Korea Scientists and Engineers Mutual-Aid Association (SEMA), Lotte Insurance and The Korea Federation of SMEs (KBIZ), for a senior secured loan investment in US mid-sized corporates with BBB minus ratings. 

Clearlake Capital, based in California, has $60 billion of AUM focusing on software & technology, energy & industrials and food & consumer services. In February, the firm acquired Quest Software, a global cybersecurity, data intelligence and IT operation management software provider, from US private equity firm Francisco Partners for $5.4 billion.

NPS, the world’s third-largest pension fund, said its annualized return in 2021 was 10.86%, the second-highest record following an 11.3% return in 2019. The alternative investment return reached 23.97%. The pension fund’s AUM increased to 948.7 trillion won ($786.3 billion), 115 trillion won up from 2020.  

The pension fund's overseas private equity investment reached 20.6 trillion won ($17.1 billion) as of January 2022, 20.1% of its alternative assets. The pension fund said it will increase exposure to overseas private equity this year, according to The Korea Economic Daily's Asset Owners Report. 

Write to Jae-fu Kim and Go-Woon Yi at hu@hankyung.com
Jihyun Kim edited this article.