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Grizzly Bulls’ Billionaires Index

⬅ # 228 Brian Armstrong|# 230 Wang Xing ➡

# 229 Michael Kim 

$9.86B

Real Time Net Worth
as of 7/2/2024

# 229 Michael Kim 

$9.86B

Real Time Net Worth
as of 7/2/2024
OccupationFounder, MBK Partners
Source of WealthPrivate Equity
Age60
ResidenceSeoul, South Korea
Marital StatusMarried
Children2
EducationMBA, Harvard Business School; BS, Haverford College
Age-Adjusted Net Worth$9.86B
Michael Kim
Michael Kim
United States
Net worth: $9.86B

Self-Made Score 

Wealth History

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Biography

Early and Personal Life

Michael ByungJu Kim was born in Jinhae, South Gyeongsang Province, South Korea, in 1963.
He graduated from Haverford College in 1985 with a degree in English.
Kim earned an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1990 and received a Fulbright Scholarship afterward.
He obtained U.S. citizenship along the way, having been educated in the U.S. from preparatory school onward.
Kim is married to Park Kyung-ah, the daughter of the late South Korean Prime Minister Park Tae-joon. They have two children and reside in Seoul.

Career Highlights

Kim started his career as a mergers and acquisitions banker at Goldman Sachs.
In 1995, he joined Salomon Smith Barney and later became Managing Director and COO of Asia-Pacific Investment Banking.
Kim served as the president of Carlyle Asia until 2005 when he left to co-found MBK Partners.
Under Kim's leadership, MBK Partners has grown to over $23.4 billion in assets under management.
MBK Partners raised $6.5 billion for its most recent Fund V, becoming the largest independent private equity fund in Asia.
In 2015, Kim's firm executed a $6.1 billion takeover of Tesco's Korean operation, Homeplus, marking the country's biggest private-equity deal at the time.
ING Insurance Korea, wholly owned by MBK Partners, went public in 2017, making it the first private-equity owned company to list on the Korean exchange.
In Japan, Kim and MBK Partners acquired Godiva Japan, and in China, they acquired eHi Car Services, a major car rental and services company.
Kim has been on the boards of various institutions, including Harvard Business School, KorAm Bank, RAND Corporation, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Philanthropy

In 2010, Kim pledged $7.5 million toward the construction of a new dormitory at Haverford College.
In 2018, he endowed $7 million toward the Michael B. Kim Associate Professorship for Asian business leadership at Harvard Business School.
In August 2021, Kim pledged KRW30 billion ($27 million) to the Seoul Metropolitan Government to build a public library, named The Seoul Public Kim ByungJu Library.
Kim was honored in Forbes Asia's Heroes of Philanthropy list in December 2021 and 2022.
In September 2022, he donated $10 million to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, resulting in a gallery named after him and his wife, the Michael B. Kim and Kyung Ah Park gallery.

How long would it take you to become as rich as Michael Kim?

If you started with $10,000 and invested an additional $500 each month at a 44.06% CAGR, it would take you 5 years to reach Michael Kim's net worth of $9.86B.

Is this realistic? It depends how closely the VIX-TA-Macro Advanced model performs to its history in the future. Since Grizzly Bulls launched on January 1, 2022, it's returned 48.24% compared to 16.19% for the S&P 500 benchmark.

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Michael Kim is very wealthy, but what's stopping you from reaching that same level of success? As summarized in our five fundamental rules to wealth building, becoming wealthy in a modern capitalist economy is not complicated. There's actually only three variables:

  1. Your starting capital
  2. Your earnings after expenses
  3. The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of your savings

Most people start with zero or very little, so if you weren't born into wealth, don't fret! The majority of the fortunate folks listed in our Grizzly Bulls’ Billionaires Index came from middle class or lower backgrounds. The most distinguishing characteristic of the group is their ability to consistently earn a high CAGR on their savings.

Every billionaire has a unique strategy to achieve high CAGR. For Michael Kim, Private Equity is the primary source. Whether you choose to invest your savings in your own businesses or the businesses of others is not as important. The salient piece of the puzzle is ensuring that your hard-earned savings are generating sufficient CAGR to reach your long term goals.

Most people simply invest their money in index funds and call it a day. There's nothing wrong with this approach, but it guarantees relative mediocrity. To achieve greatness, you need to invest your money to earn higher than average returns. In the long run, better investors will always finish ahead of better earners.

Source: Grizzly Bulls reporting

Methodology: Grizzly Bulls' Billionaires Index is a daily ranking of the world's billionaires and richest people. Grizzly Bulls strives to provide the most accurate net worth calculations available. We pull data from public equity markets, SEC filings, public real estate records, and other reputable sources.

The index is dynamic and updates daily at the close of U.S. stock market trading based on changes in the markets, economy, and updates to Grizzly Bulls' proprietary algorithm of personal wealth calculation. Stakes in public companies are tracked daily based on the relevant closing prices of the underlying securities. Additionally, stakes in private companies, cash, real estate, and other less easily valued assets are updated periodically through careful analysis of insider transactions, comparable public company sales / EBITDA multiples, etc.

Edited by: Lee Bailey