(Bloomberg) -- JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s top banker in South Korea, who helped devise landmark deals for domestic leaders such as Samsung Electronics Co., is retiring while the US bank focuses on backing clients’ bets on chips and AI.
Tae Jin Park is leaving the firm after a 23-year tenure, during which he helped arrange deals for some of the country’s biggest and oldest conglomerates. Those included one of Samsung’s earliest US dollar bond issuances and Hyundai Motor Co.’s $3.3 billion Indian stock market debut.
JPMorgan is now concentrating on chip and AI deals for clients, mirroring the country’s rise as a major global semiconductor manufacturer, the 63-year-old told Bloomberg News. Korean firms like SK Hynix Inc. and Samsung are the leaders in high-bandwidth memory, an essential component of Nvidia Corp.’s accelerators for training AI models.
“We’re investing in two main areas: helping Korean conglomerates expand into US high-tech sectors like semiconductors and AI, and aiding local and foreign investors in the Korean capital market,” said Park, who is relinquishing roles as JPMorgan’s chairman for South Korea and vice chairman for Asia Pacific.
Park, who started his career at Deutsche Bank AG in Seoul, counts Samsung’s $1 billion bond sale of 2012 among the highlights of a 37-year career. According to Park, he convinced Samsung to tap the market despite worries about investor demand, and it ended up pricing dollar-denominated securities in line with global peers.
More recently, the US firm acted as lead manager for Hyundai Motor India Ltd.’s debut. JPMorgan’s revenue in South Korea roughly doubled during Park’s tenure as senior country officer from 2015 to 2023, he said.
Park aims to remain involved in finance even after retirement, such as by helping individual investors. The Korean fixed income market, less developed relative to the US, is another area of interest, he said.
--With assistance from Youkyung Lee.
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.