Marking one year since Mirae Asset Group Chairman Park Hyeon-joo became global investment strategy officer of the firm’s brokerage unit Mirae Asset Daewoo, the brokerage’s overseas businesses reported robust earnings for the first half of the year.

According to an earnings report recently released by the brokerage, the combined net profit of Mirae Asset Daewoo’s overseas branches reached 82.7 billion ($80 million) in the January-to-June period, up nearly 70 percent compared to the same period last year.

This is expected to contribute to the performance of Mirae Asset Group’s overall overseas business, with the firm and industry watchers projecting robust pretax operating profit of 130 billion won for the first half of the year, exceeding last year’s annual performance. 

It will help Mirae Asset break its previous records and help profit for the first half of the year surpass last year’s annual record of 150 billion won, the firm said.

Mirae Asset said that the latest performance was significant, as it overcame a number of obstacles, including a probe by the Fair Trade Commission and the lackluster market weighed down by the Seoul-Tokyo trade dispute and US-China trade war.

Mirae Asset has been expanding its presence in the global market by making successful investments and clinching deals in recent years.

In June, its asset management arm Mirae Asset Global Investments earned about 160 billion won in profit through the sale of Taunusanlage 8, a prime office building in Frankfurt, Germany.

Mirae Asset Daewoo has the most number of foreign branches among local brokerages and has been successfully pursuing a slew of investment banking deals overseas.

By Jung Min-kyung (mkjung@heraldcorp.com)