Offerings, the debut novel of MBK Partners Chairman Michael Byungju Kim

MBK head to release 'Offerings' on March 24

As the founder of Korea’s largest homegrown private equity fund, MBK Partners Chairman Michael Byungju Kim is mostly known about his aggressive investments.

This time around, however, he is poised to grab headlines not as a cold-blooded investor, but as a warm-hearted author of an autobiographical novel.

The MBK head, otherwise known as Kim Byung-ju, plans to publish his debut novel “Offerings” on March 24. Various online retailers, including Amazon, are taking pre-orders for the 288-page book.

“With the rapidly cascading Asian Financial Crisis threatening to go global and Korea in imminent meltdown, investment banker Dae Joon finds himself in his native Seoul as part of an international team brought in to rescue the country from sovereign default,” the sites note.

“For Dae Joon – also known by his American name of Shane, after the cowboy movie his father so loved – the stakes are personal.”

Dae Joon can be easily related to Chairman Kim, who moved to the United States when he was 10 years old and played an important role in helping South Korea deal with the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s.

Just like Dae Joon, Kim is a Harvard graduate _ After majoring in English literature at Haverford College, he studied management of business administration at Harvard to work in the investment banking business. 

In the novel, Dae Joon also meets a young woman from a prominent family, which has a resemblance to Chairman Kim’s marriage to the youngest daughter of the POSCO founder. POSCO is Korea’s biggest steelmaker.

Putting his impressive Wall Street experience behind, Kim established MBK Partners in 2005 to make the hedge fund, which bears his initials, one of the top-tier players in the whole Asian market.

The Seoul-based outfit has made a splash in the M&A market through a series of lucrative deals. As a result, he made a big fortune.

According to the latest Forbes report, the 56-year-old is Korea’s 23rd wealthiest businessman with a fortune of $1.5 billion.
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