South Korea's National Pension Service plans to jointly establish private equity funds with local conglomerates to invest hundreds of billions of won in overseas resources and energy assets, as the world's fourth largest pension fund seeks to diversify its portfolio to secure stable returns.

The NPS, which manages more than 300 trillion won ($267.1bn) in assets as the administrator of the national pension scheme, is seeking to establish four separate private equity funds with the SK Group, GS Group, telecommunications firm KT and Samsung C&T, two NPS officials said on Tuesday.