Mirae Asset Financial Group, with its charismatic self-made boss bent on expansion, is likely to win the race for majority stake in Daewoo Securities, a deal that would create a titanic new leader in the local brokerage industry.  

In the bid that closed Monday, four submitted their final tender for a controlling 43 percent stake in the country’s second largest brokerage by assets. Among them, Mirae Asset Securities, the brokerage arm of the eponymous asset management-focused group, penciled in the highest price, local reports said citing unidentified sources.

Mirae Asset offered to pay over 2.4 trillion won ($2 billion), substantially higher than that proposed by its three competitors, the reports said. The three other bidders were KB Financial Group, Korea Investment Holdings and an employee stock ownership association led by Daewoo’s labor union.

“The (reported) bidding price (of Mirae Asset) is above market expectations,” Jun Bae-seung, an analyst at eBest Securities said in a note Tuesday. “It seems to reflect the strong will of chairman Park Hyeon-joo to clinch this deal and use it as a springboard for the group’s advancement into a global investment bank.”

The majority stake in Daewoo is valued at about 1.5 trillion won based on Monday’s closing price of 11,000 won per share. KDB is selling its 100 percent stake in KDB Asset Management, along with the Daewoo shares.

Park -- who founded Mirae Asset group in the rubble of the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and has grown it into a household name in Korea’s retail fund market -- has for some time harbored an ambition to turn the group into Asia’s leading investment bank.

In its takeover proposal to KDB, Mirae Asset Securities reiterated it, stating that “through this deal, we aim to take a leap toward becoming a global investment bank.”

The marriage between Daewoo Securities and Mirae Asset, if realized, would create an overwhelming new leader in Korea’s fragmented brokerage sector, with their combined assets approaching 7 trillion won. The current leader is NH Investment & Securities, with total asset of 4.4 trillion, which is only slightly larger than the second-ranked Daewoo Securities’ 4.3 trillion won.

KDB acquired Daewoo Securities in 2000 after the brokerage firm went bankrupt in the midst of the Asian financial crisis. A previous attempt in 2008 to privatize the securities firm, as well as KDB itself, fell through.

KDB plans to announce a preferred bidder Thursday at the earliest and close the deal early next year. The deal is subject to a review by the Financial Supervisory Service which will look into the eligibility of the winning bidder as the largest shareholder of a securities company.

By Lee Sun-young (milaya@heraldcorp.com)