John Lee of Meritz Asset Management says companies that push for women’s empowerment are a good investment
SOUTH KOREA - John Lee joined Meritz Asset Management as chief executive five years ago, when few women were in positions of power at the firm. Yet things at the Seoul-based company have changed - today the head of marketing is female, eight of the 10 fund sales staff are women, and the investment team has almost reached gender parity.
Now Mr Lee has a bigger ambition: to prove it can be profitable to invest in Korean companies that push for women’s empowerment.
Mr Lee has created a “women-focused” fund aimed at promoting female participation in South Korean companies, which Mr Meritz says is the first of its kind in the country’s industry. Besides looking at business fundamentals, the open-ended Meritz The Women Fund adds criteria related to gender diversity and equality such as the ratio of women employees and directors at a firm as well as work-life balance policies.
Hana Tour Service and CJ ENM - both have workforces that are half female - are in the fund’s still-concentrated portfolio, which consists of 25 to 30 companies.
“Korean woman are highly educated, but they don’t have equal opportunities” in the corporate world, says Mr Lee, the chief executive and also the fund manager. “These highly qualified, highly educated women definitely can contribute to shareholders’ value. That’s always my thinking.”
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