GIC taps its real estate expert Jasmine Loo as new Korea head

Singapore’s GIC Private Ltd., the world’s sixth-largest sovereign wealth fund with around $770 billion in assets under management, has tapped its London office Senior Vice President Jasmine Loo as its South Korea head, people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

GIC, which owns Korean landmark office buildings Gangnam Finance Center and Seoul Finance Center, may resume new investments in the country’s real estate with the new leadership, according to banking industry sources. The official appointment date for Loo has not yet been disclosed.

Loo led investments in European multifamily housing and digital infrastructure, including the establishment of xScale, a joint venture between GIC and the Nasdaq-listed data center management firm Equinix. GIC and Equinix are operating two data centers in Korea.

Loo has spent more than five years at GIC’s London office focusing on European real estate. Previously, she worked for the sovereign wealth fund’s Shanghai office for three years overseeing investment in Greater China. Before this, she spent more than four years at the Singapore headquarters.

She earned bachelor’s degrees in both bioengineering and business administration from the National University of Singapore and joined GIC in 2011.

The new Korea chief will meet the country’s real estate investment firms and conduct due diligence, according to sources. Cai Wenzheng, who has been head of Korea real estate since 2019 will return to the headquarters in Singapore.

GIC plans to move its Seoul office from the Seoul Finance Center to the Gangnam Finance Center and expand the Korean affiliate.

The fund has been a major investor in Korean real estate since the Singaporean state-run fund acquired the 30-story Seoul Finance Center in the Central Business District for 355 billion won ($257.4 million) in 2000.

It bought Gangnam Finance Center for 930 billion won in 2004 and funded 300 billion won when Seoul-based IGIS Asst Management Co. acquired Shinhan Securities Co.'s headquarters for 640 billion won in 2022.

GIS has seen losses from some Korean assets it has invested in since the pandemic, including a development project of a 23-story residential building in Dohwa-dong, Mapo District, Seoul.

The sovereign wealth fund invested 43.1 billion won in Seoul-based Mastern Investment Management’s fund for the building in 2020 and recovered 18 billion won when Mastern sold the property to Shinhan Asset Management Co. in May this year amid Korea's real estate project finance liquidity crisis. 

Write to Byeong-Hwa Ryu at hwahwa@hankyung.com

Jihyun Kim edited this article.