CVC hires Korea specialist Charles Huh from Standard Chartered

Huh was based in SCPE's Hong Kong and Seoul offices, during which time he made eight investments in the Korean consumer, media, retail and service sectors. Prior to that, he was an investment banker at Citi in New York.

The SCPE deals include several transacted through a partnership with Korea's National Pension Service (NPS) that launched in 2011 with a mandate to help target companies expand overseas.

SCPE and NPS committed $46 million to Smoothies Korea so it could acquire its franchisor, US-based Smoothie King. This was the first cross-border acquisition by a Korean company of a global brand in the food and beverage sector.

Two of the three other investments are Korean companies: Doosan Industrial Vehicle, South Korea's largest forklift manufacturer, which wanted to expand into Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East and South America; and motorcycle and auto parts maker Daelim Motor, another company seen as having the brand and network to establish itself internationally.

CVC made a string of successful investments in South Korea in the late 1990s and early 2000s as overleveraged corporates divested non-core assets in the wake of the country's credit crisis. However, the most recent Korea investment came in 2005 with the buyout of appliance maker WiniaMando. The company remains in CVC's portfolio.

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