ASIA: Array of Speakers

This morning we taxied over to the International Financial Center tower II to meet with Nicole Yuen, Managing Director and Head of China Equities at UBS. Ms. Yuen was yet another extremely impressive person that we’ve had the opportunity to speak with on this trip. She gave us more insight into the equities market in China and explained why UBS is one of the leading foreign investment banks in China. We were all amazed at how seamlessly she went through a presentation that she’d probably never seen before until the second she walked into the room. Nicole was not your ordinary banker. It was clear that her instincts make her think about how to make China’s financial markets successful rather than what’s in it for us (firm centric)

After a quick turnaround, Mr. Weijian Shan, Partner at TPG Capital, and former Professor at the Wharton School, met with us back at the hotel to discuss the pending deal between Shenzhen Development Bank, Ping An and Newbridge. This was truly an extraordinary opportunity as we had access to privileged information and more importantly, the man responsible for it all. Mr. Shan left a lasting image upon us all. His remarkable life story took him from the depths of the Cultural Revolution in the Gobi desert to the peaks of J.P Morgan. Weijian Shan epitomizes hard work. During the Cultural Revolution he taught himself English with nothing more than a dictionary. After listening to his journey it was by no means difficult to buy into his philosophy that the most important thing you can do in life is to be prepared. Although Mr. Shan believes that life is to a large part about luck, he told us that we must always be ready to seize the opportunity.

We broke for a quick lunch break and returned to the Island Pacific for a session on real estate in Greater China. Our keynote speaker was Mr. Kenny Tse, Managing Director of Aetos Capital Asia and head of its real estate business in China. Aetos is a private equity real estate firm based out of New York. They began investing in Asia in Japan in 2002 and opened their HK office in 2006. Currently their primary focus is in China, Japan and Macau. Prof. Maillet stressed to us that in Hong Kong and Asia, property is THE asset class and that we could not study business in China without covering real estate. In this session, we learned that the Chinese think of real estate as “land” whereas in the U.S. we are more concerned with the value of the building we can get out the land.

~Claire Bordley