One Billion Customers - James McGregor [36]
If Wadsworth said so, then the bosses agreed.
The African Connection
If Jack Wadsworth could see the opportunities in China for investment banking, it was much easier for economically savvy Chinese to see them. To Edwin Lim, China’s lack of financial infrastructure was glaringly obvious. From his World Bank office in Beijing in the late 1980s, the tall, stately Lim had exhaustively examined China’s economy, suggested economic reforms, and tried to forecast where the country was headed. He knew how primitive and shaky China’s finances were. He had also seen how desperate the entrepreneurial Chinese were to lay their hands on capital, to seize any opportunity to make money. In 1990, Lim left China for the World Bank headquarters in Washington, where he went stir-crazy heading the Nigeria desk. As the pace of change in China accelerated, Lim became increasingly impatient to return. Many of the reforms that were being put in place were ones he had recommended. He wanted to be a part of the action. Investment banking, he knew, was the key to China’s emergence onto the world scene.
Under cover of a speaking engagement in China in July 1993, Lim paid a visit to an old acquaintance in Beijing. When Lim headed the World Bank’s Beijing mission he became a well-known figure among Chinese officials. During the winter his toasty office was a gathering place for even high-level ministers, who would abandon their poorly heated offices and bike over to the World Bank to discuss economics. The Chinese respected Lim because of his knowledge and humble beginnings. His grandfather had migrated from China to the Philippines to work as a coconut plantation coolie, and Lim had earned scholarships that led to a Harvard PhD in economics. Among the visitors to Lim’s office had been an economic planner named Zhu Rongji. Zhu, now a vice-premier and China’s de facto economic czar, could be helpful.
As Lim was checking into the New World Hotel in Beijing, someone tapped his shoulder. He turned and found himself facing Payson Cha, his long-ago tennis partner in Lagos, Nigeria. Lagos had been one of Lim’s first assignments with the World Bank and he had been delighted to meet a fellow Chinese in such a remote outpost. Cha, the son of a Hong Kong textile tycoon, had been in Nigeria building his family business, Mingly Corporation, into the largest textile producer in Africa. The two men were regular tennis partners at the Ikoyi Club, a British colonial relic, where they would relax on the veranda overlooking lush gardens and talk about events in China and the future of their ancestral homeland.
Now, sipping tea in the hotel’s lobby lounge, the two renewed their friendship. Cha had returned to Hong Kong to become a real-estate developer and had created the stunningly successful Discovery Bay development, an enclave of California-style homes for ten thousand residents on Lantau Island. Lim confided to Cha that he was going to suggest to Vice-Premier Zhu that China team up with a foreign investment firm to form a joint-venture investment bank to help Chinese companies raise capital.
Cha burst out laughing and began rooting through his briefcase. He pulled out a sheaf of paper. “Here you go,” he said, thrusting the package into Lim’s hand. “A little slow, aren’t you?”
As do many wealthy overseas Chinese, Cha had been looking for a way to help the motherland and had hit on the idea of preparing a report that explained modern finance methods and advocated the establishment of a state investment bank. That was the plan that Lim was holding.
“Why don’t you take over this project?” Cha told Lim. “I’m not out for personal glory. I’m too busy.”
Lim was astounded. Here on paper was a plan very similar to what he had been thinking about. The report even suggested a joint venture between one of China’s big state-owned banks and Britain’s venerable Barings Bank, long a recognized player in Asian finance. That was one of the few things Lim changed in the plan. Rather than