South Korea’s NPS appoints new acting CIO

Cho In-Sik resigned in early July as acting CIO of South Korea’s 635 trillion won ($561.4 billion) National Pension Service (NPS), and a new acting CIO, Lee Soo-Cheol, was appointed July 13, according to Asian Investor. Lee takes on the acting CIO role in addition to his current role at NPS as head of investment strategy.

NPS has also started a new recruitment process for a permanent CIO replacement, after the three shortlisted candidates from the recruitment process started this past February failed to meet the necessary requirements, according to The Investor, a Herald Corp. publication.

The pension fund’s last CIO, Kang Myoun-Wook, resigned in July 2017, citing personal reasons for not completing his two-year term. Cho, who previously served as NPS’ head of global public markets, had also been serving as acting CIO since Kang’s resignation.

NPS had a total 44.8 trillion won ($39.6 billion) invested in global alternatives at the end of first quarter 2018, of which 18.2 trillion won ($16.1 billion) was invested in real estate.