이 기사는 2020년 02월 07일 08시00분 thebell에 표출된 기사입니다

South Korea’s fund of funds (FoF) operator Korea Growth Investment (K-Growth) plans to create a 60 billion won fund during the third quarter of this year in a bid to support domestic companies to enter the global market.

The state-run FoF manager said on Tuesday that it will make an announcement about the launch of the Global Scale-up Fund during the third quarter. The fund size will be 60 billion won while K-Growth will commit 30 billion won of the total. K-Growth will select three general partners (GPs) for the fund.

The fund will invest in domestic companies that aim to expand their businesses abroad. K-Growth has broadened its GP and limited partner (LP) candidates to include foreign firms in a bid to secure the flexibility in investment and the possibility of attraction of foreign capital. The FoF operator will prepare the detailed plan once views and opinions are gathered.

“The purpose [of the establishment fund], which is to support domestic companies’ overseas expansion would be more important than the power struggle over the fund creation itself. [We] will interact more actively with foreign institutions and collaborate with foreign LPs, if necessary,” said a K-Growth official.

K-Growth will launch the fund for companies’ global expansion for the first time in four years. The commitment amount is not large, considering K-Growth committed around 100 billion won, respectively, to its Global Fund 1 and 2, which were created in 2015 and 2016, respectively.

The FoF manager will set the fund size for next year, depending on the result of the Global Scale-up Fund creation this year. “We have set the amount based on the portfolio of existing funds. We will decide whether to increase the fund size next year, depending on the progress this year,” said the official.

K-Growth will create subfunds worth 5.4 trillion won in total this year, which will be created through its two flagship FoF worth 1.6 trillion won. Under the plan, the FoF operator will commit 460 billion to create subfunds worth 3.3 trillion won to nurture startups for later-stage funding rounds.

(By reporter Seo Jung-eun)