Macquarie hires Jae Won Lee to head Korea ECM

Macquarie Group has hired Jae Won Lee as head of equity capital markets in Korea as it continues to build a presence in this country, according to sources. Lee has a lot of experience in Korean banking, having worked with a variety of firms in this market. At Macquarie he will be responsible for developing the bank's ECM and advisory business.

Lee is joining from ABN AMRO (part of the Royal Bank of Scotland) where he was manager of the Seoul branch and head of the Korean M&A and ECM business. Prior to ABN, he worked with ING Securities (which in 2004 sold its equity capital markets business to Macquarie) where he was responsible for ECM deal origination of deal advisory. He has previously also worked with Arthur Andersen in Korea as a project manager and with the Korea Development Bank's M&A team.

In May this year, Macquarie's ECM team in Korea acted as one of four bookrunners when Hyundai Engineering & Construction's major creditors raised $618 million from the sale of an 11% stake in the company and in December 2007 it helped arrange a $583 million convertible bond for Korean memory-chip maker Hynix Semiconductor. But compared with Macquarie's increasingly active role when it comes to Chinese IPOs in Hong Kong, the bank has been relatively quiet in Korea -- even when taking into account the smaller deal volume in this country. No doubt, Lee is being brought on board to change this.