CPPIB global private equity head Suyi Kim to leave

Suyi Kim, global private equity head at Canada Pension Plan Investments Board (CPPIB), is set to leave the world’s seventh-largest pension fund, managing $646.8 billion in assets, after spending 17 years as a private investment professional at the institution.

“I'm thrilled to announce that I am embarking on a new professional journey at the end of this year,” the South Korean asset manager said in a LinkedIn post last week. “Looking ahead, I see tremendous opportunities in private investments. I plan to bring my investing and business-building experience to a new investment platform,” she added.

Kim joined CPPIB in 2007 as the first international employee at the Canadian pension scheme and opened its first global office in Hong Kong the following year. She became Asia Pacific head in 2016 and for five years oversaw the pension fund’s Asian business, which has grown to around 150 members and a $120 billion asset portfolio today.

Since 2021, she managed the pension fund’s largest active investment program from Toronto and New York as the global private equity head. CPPIB’s private equity portfolio increased by 25% under her leadership, with the creation of a growth equity investment group and programs for single asset continuation and preferred equity secondary investment.

Before CPPIB, Kim served as a portfolio manager at Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTTP) from 2004 to 2006 and as a senior associate at The Carlyle Group from 2002 to 2004. She worked as a business analyst at McKinsey & Co. from 1998 to 2000.

Kim earned a master's degree in business administration from Stanford University Graduate School of Business in 2002 and a bachelor’s degree in economics from Seoul National University in 1996.  

She is well known for having led CPPIB’s partnerships with North Asia-focused MBK Partners since 2008.

She and MBK co-founder and Partner Michael ByungJu Kim both worked at The Carlyle Group in the early 2000s, and this relationship led to the Canadian pension’s $1.6 billion investments in MBK funds to date.

CPPIB committed $175 million to MBK’s sixth blind pool fund last year, the target size of which is 10 trillion won ($7.5 billion). The pension scheme injected $500 million into the buyout firm’s $6.5 billion fifth blind pool fund as an anchor investor in 2020.  

Kim will be succeeded by Caitlin Gubbels, who was promoted to senior managing director earlier this month.

Gubbels will oversee the pension scheme's private equity program globally, including the teams dedicated to direct private equity, Asian private equity and private equity funds and secondaries, according to CPPIB's announcement last week.

Gubbels joined CPPIB in 2010 and was most recently managing director, leading the Canadian institution's private equity funds.  

Write to Jong-Kwan Park at pjk@hankyung.com

Jihyun Kim edited this article.