North Asia buyout player MBK sells GP stake to Dyal
North Asia-focused buyout firm MBK Partners has sold a 12% GP stake to Dyal Capital Partners, a unit of US-based alternative investment firm Blue Owl that buys interests in third-party managers.
The development was first reported by Bloomberg and has since been confirmed to AVCJ by a source close to the situation. While Bloomberg claimed that Dyal had acquired “roughly 13%” of MBK’s management entity for about USD 1bn, the source clarified that it was in fact 12%. MBK declined to comment on the situation.
It is the third pan-regional private equity firm to sell a minority interest in itself, after Baring Private Equity Asia in 2016 and PAG in 2018. Those deals involved Affiliated Managers Group (AMG) and The Blackstone Group’s Strategic Capital Holdings Fund, respectively.
Several smaller players in the region have done the same. Japan’s Advantage Partners sold a GP stake to one of its LPs in 2019, while India’s Iron Pillar Capital brought in US-headquartered real estate investment firm Nitya Capital as a strategic investor a year later. Most recently, Australia’s Five V Capital sold a 25% interest to locally listed Pinnacle Investment Management Group.
The motivations behind these transactions vary, but they are often used to facilitate succession planning – putting a price on the GP and allowing founders to cash out some equity – to enable wider participation in the GP commitment to a new fund, or to seed new investment strategies.
MBK is understood to be considering the latter. The private equity firm was established in 2005 by Michael B. Kim (pictured), formerly president of Carlyle Asia Partners, and now has more than USD 24bn in assets under management.
A fifth buyout fund closed in May 2020 at USD 6.5bn. The firm introduced a special situations strategy in 2018 and raised USD 1.8bn for its second vehicle in this space in November 2021. As of year-end 2020, MBK’s four active funds – three buyout and one special situations – were marked at a 2.4x multiple and a 27.5% IRR.
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