The typical fund manager in Korea majored in business administration or economics, is 39.5 years old and manages W300 billion worth of capital (US$1=W1,119). Profiles published by the Korea Financial Investment Association on Monday show there were 592 fund managers in charge of public funds at 56 asset management companies as of the end of 2010.
Some 89 percent or 528 are men. Shinyoung Asset Management has the highest number of female fund managers with five out of 13. But 26 companies including the largest, Mirae Asset Management, have no female fund managers at all.
At Mirae, each fund manger handles a whopping W1.63 trillion worth of investments, but the amount was only around W10 billion at smaller companies.
Among companies with more than 10 staff, managers at Franklin Templement Investments are the oldest with an average age of 42.6. Korea Value Asset Management had the youngest fund managers at 35.1 years of age.
One-fifth of the 1,700 fund managers working at asset management and investment advisory firms in Korea managing both public and private funds graduated from Seoul National University, 18.6 percent from Yonsei University, 13.4 percent from Korea University and 6.4 percent from Sogang University, according to fund evaluation company ZEROIN.
Around 4 percent graduated from universities overseas. Some 34.7 percent studied business administration and 23 percent economics. Others majored in statistics (3.5 percent), law (2.8 percent) and mathmatics (2.2 percent). There has been an increase in the number of fund managers with engineering backgrounds with their numbers surpassing 100 recently.
