Affirma achieves $473m final close on fifth Korea fund

The firm launched Ascenta V in January with a view to raising KRW500 billion, and a first close of KRW443 billion came three months later. The fund is more than twice the size of its predecessor – which closed a KRW256 billion in 2016 – but has fallen short of the revised target of KRW700 billion. The revision was made after the first close.

A total of 20 LPs are participating, up from six in Ascenta IV. Korea Development Bank, the Ministry of Employment & Labor, and Shinhan Financial Group all re-upped, while the National Pension Service (NPS) returned, having sat out Fund IV. NPS anchored Ascenta I in 2011 and featured in Ascenta III in 2014. Fund I was fully liquidated last year with a gross IRR of more than 15%.

Affirma deliberately targeted a wider range of institutions for the latest vintage, including pension funds, governmental organizations, commercial banks, and securities houses. This partly reflects the broader mandate – the fund will pursue deals in China, India, and Southeast Asia, as well as in Korea – and the desire to give Korean investors more diversified exposure.

The first investment coincided with the first close. Affirma committed $181 million to T Map Mobility, SK Telecom's map-navigation services business. Affirma joined a funding round that also featured Uber and domestic GP East Bridge. Uber put in $50 million, having earlier agreed to invest $100 million in a taxi e-hailing joint venture with SK Telecom.

Three more deals have been agreed since then: a majority stake in two steel manufacturing subsidiaries of Korea-based industrial conglomerate SeAH Group; a growth investment in Metanet T Platform, a local cloud-managed service provider; and a privatization of Golden Throat Holdings, a Hong Kong-listed drugmaker. Completion on all three is expected by year-end.

Affirma's Korea's funds were previously raised under the Standard Chartered Private Equity (SCPE) Korea name. The bank's PE team agreed to spin out in late 2018, taking most of SCPE's remaining $1 billion in assets off the balance sheet. The transaction was supported by ICG Strategic Equity, a unit of Intermediate Capital Group. Affirma was allocated $700 million for new investments.

The GP has $3.5 billion in assets under management across Southeast Asia, India, China, South Korea, the Middle East, and Africa. The total includes assets spun out through five secondary deals between 2013 and 2015, as well as separate account mandates.

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• Topics
• North Asia
• Fundraising
• Growth
• GPs
• LPs
• South Korea
• Affirma Capital
• National Pension Service (Korea)
• Korea Development Bank