Michael ByungJu Kim (, born 1963) is an American billionaire businessman of South Korean origin. He is the founder and chairman of MBK Partners, a private equity firm headquartered in Seoul, South Korea. He has been called the "godfather of Asian private equity".
He has been named one of Bloomberg's 50 most influential people in the world and Forbes Asia's Heroes of Philanthropy. According to Forbes, Kim has a net worth of $9.9 billion as of March 2026.
Michael B. Kim was born in Jinhae, South Gyeongsang Province, South Korea in 1963.
Kim began his career as a mergers and acquisitions banker at Goldman Sachs after completing his MBA at Harvard. In 1995, he joined Salomon Smith Barney, where he became a managing director and COO of Asia-Pacific Investment Banking. He later joined the Carlyle Group as president of Carlyle Asia until 2005.
Kim left Carlyle to found MBK Partners in 2005, which has since grown to over $30 billion in assets under management, raising $6.5 billion for its most recent Fund V, becoming the largest independent private equity firm in Asia. Under Kim's leadership, MBK Partners was named one of Time's World's Best Companies of 2024.
Kim chairs the Haverford College board of managers, as well as the MBK Scholarship Foundation. He has been on the boards of KorAm Bank, China Network Systems, Yayoi, C&M, Tasaki, Universal Studios Japan, Coway, ING Life Korea, Homeplus, RAND Corporation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Public Library, Carnegie Hall, Asia Business Leaders Advisory Council and Temasek Philanthropy Asia Alliance.
Kim is the author of a novel, Offerings, published in 2020. In 2022, the novel was named a U.S. best-selling novel, and in October 2023, it was announced that it would be adapted into a film and produced by Anonymous Content and Anthology Studios.
In September 2022, The Chosun Daily alleged Kim paid 40 billion won in taxes and penalties related to overseas tax evasion. This issue was reportedly associated with untaxed income from the sale of ING Life Insurance in 2018. According to another local paper, Kim's company denied the accusations as "groundless and stated that both Kim and the Company paid all due taxes." In October 2025, Kim again faced allegations of tax evasion during an audit by the National Assembly's Strategy and Finance Committee. Lawmakers claimed that "Kim [had] earned significant profits domestically while paying little to no taxes", and called for a tax investigation; MBK Partners denied the allegations, saying it had fully complied with Korean laws.
In 2010, Kim pledged $7.5 million toward the construction of a new dormitory at Haverford College. The dorm was named "Kim Hall" in honor of his father, Kim Ki Yong.
In August 2021, Kim pledged KRW30 billion ($27 million) to the Seoul Metropolitan Government to build a public library in Seoul. Mayor Oh Se-hoon announced Seoul would honor the gift by naming the library after the donor, The Seoul Public Kim ByungJu Library. The gift was reported to represent the first-ever donation by an individual for the construction of a civic institution in Seoul.
In December 2021, Kim was named to Forbes Asia's Heroes of Philanthropy list. In December 2022 and December 2024, he was named to Forbes Asia's Heroes of Philanthropy list again.
In September 2022, Kim donated $10 million to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The museum stated it would name a gallery after Kim and his wife, the Michael B. Kim and Kyung Ah Park Gallery. This would be the first gallery in the museum to be named after a person of Korean descent.
In April 2024, Haverford announced that Kim was donating $25 million to the college (equal to the largest single gift the school had ever received) to establish an Institute for Ethical Inquiry and Leadership and to fund related faculty positions.
Kim is married to Park Kyung-ah, the daughter of Park Tae-joon, the late South Korean Prime Minister and founder of South Korea's largest steel company, POSCO. The couple have two children and live in Seoul.