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| Mirae Asset Financial Group headquarters in Seoul / Courtesy of Mirae Asset Financial Group |
By Lee Min-hyung
Mirae Asset Securities is moving to expand its advancement into the European financial market after completing the acquisition of GHCO, an exchange-traded fund (ETF) market maker based in London, the Korean brokerage house said Wednesday.
An exchange-traded fund is a marketable security that tracks an index, a commodity, bonds, or a basket of assets like an index fund.
This is the first time that an overseas branch of a Korean securities firm has taken over a financial company headquartered in a territory outside Asia. Mirae Asset Securities' London branch engaged in the deal for its expansion into the lucrative European ETF industry, the company said.
Mirae Asset Securities UK finalized all of the legal procedures for the high-profile acquisition of GHCO on May 15 after receiving approvals from regulatory authorities there. Europe is the world's second-largest ETF market.
Established in 2005, GHCO operates in markets making services focusing on ETFs. The company is one of Europe's major ETF market makers with an industry-leading level of systems that can cover around 14,000 ETFs across the globe. The company has enough potential to compete against top-tier market makers not just in Europe, but other developed countries, according to Mirae Asset Securities.
Mirae Asset expects the deal will help the company generate synergy for its global ETF business in countries not just in Europe but also in the United States and Australia.
"GHCO's technological capability and Mirae Asset's financial infrastructure will help us build a more solid global ETF ecosystem," Mirae Asset Securities UK CEO Kim Seung-wook said. "We will now focus on post-merger integration processes with GHCO members and strengthen the competitiveness of GHCO's services."
Mirae Asset is one of Korea's most proactive players in terms of the acquisition of overseas financial firms. In 2011, the company took over Canada's Horizons ETFs and has since engaged in diverse M&As with global ETF players. The company also took over formerly ETF Securities ― an ETF management firm in Australia ― in 2022.
Mirae Asset's global ETF assets under management have been on a rapid rise for the past decade. It was in 2017 when the figure reached 10 trillion won, but it has since soared to more than 135 trillion won as of the end of 2022, according to the company.
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