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More of China’s Art Treasures Belong At Home

Leave a Comment / January 18, 2010

Song porcelain from China First Capital blog post

Hangzhou’s main art museum, known as the Zhejiang Provincial Museum,  sits on a nicer plot of land than any museum I’ve ever been to, including the Louvre in Paris and National Gallery in London. It’s on a small bend in the road that circles the city’s famous Xi Hu, or West Lake. From the museum entrance, you look out across the lake at a particularly lovely spot, with a small steep island ahead and the steeper mountains beyond. The museum itself is modern, in a classically-Chinese format, with pavilions reached by gabled walkways, set among small streams teeming with koi. 

The setting is perfect, but sadly, the museum’s contents are anything but. One pavilion offers a bunch of world “art treasures” that looked like they were bought for ten bucks each at airport souvenir stores . A low point: a set of mounted bull horns from Indiana. Another beautiful pavilion had the paintings and personal effects of a Hangzhou-born 20th century artist who had studied painting in France in the early part of the century, and then did some so-so pastiches of Chinese subject matter, incorporating elements of Cezanne, Picasso, Monet among others. 

A pavilion said to hold “historical relics” was locked and empty. Finally, you get to the two buildings with Chinese porcelains. My hopes remained high, since, after all, Hangzhou is the greatest of all China’s cultural cities, capital of the Southern Song dynasty, which produced (for my money) the finest porcelains the world has ever seen, including Jun, Ding, Guan, Yaozhou, Longguan, Qingbai, Cizhou, Ge styles. (The bowl above is an example of Song Dynasty Guan porcelain.) I’ve had the good fortune to see a lot of Song porcelains over the years, in museums in the West, and have handled a fair number at auctions in London and New York.  Many were produced close to Hangzhou. 

My not-unrealistic expectation, therefore,  was that the Hangzhou museum would have both more and better Song porcelains than I’d ever seen. So sure was I of this that I invited four CFC colleagues to come along with me, after we finished a client meeting. 

Bad choice. The museum, though in a gorgeous setting on a lake fabled for its beauty and historical meaning, is mainly a sad reminder that many of China’s most important art treasures are held outside the country, in museums and private collections. The porcelains in the Hangzhou museum look like (and most probably are) the leftovers after all the best pieces had been spirited away. The celadons have little sparkle or translucence, and have a gimpy shape.  There are no examples of the Jun and Guan styles most prized by connoisseurs. The one Yaozhou bowl is clumsily carved. Song burial urns are among the least ornate and less precisely-molded I’ve ever seen. 

The two pavilions with Song porcelains are a colossal disappointment, not just because the art works are generally of middling quality. Instead, a museum that should be a encapsulation of the greatness of Song culture is, instead, a subtle reminder of how much has been lost or pillaged.  Thousands of Song wares are in collections, public and private, around the world. At least six times a year, Sothebys and Christies hold auctions in London, New York and Hong Kong that include dozens of  works of Song porcelain far better than any on display in the Hangzhou museum. Museums from Tokyo to Paris to Washington D.C. are loaded with great works from the Song. 

But, here in Hangzhou, there are only cast-offs. Among the millions of Chinese who come to Hangzhou each year as tourists,  most will likely leave with no concrete appreciation of the paramount artistic achievements of the Song culture that sprang from here.  Instead, many must end up wondering, after visiting the museum, if there’s really anything much to be proud of from that period. One of the two pavilions for Song porcelain is almost entirely made up of shards of the most common sort of household pottery from the Song era, not the exquisite pieces crafted for emperors and scholars. 

The effect is a little like visiting Tiffany, expecting to ogle the diamonds, and finding it filled instead with broomsticks and knitting needles. 

The Chinese government, quite publicly, has been seeking to block the sale at auction of art objects looted from the Summer Palace in Beijing. It’s a small step toward the goal of one day recovering more of China’s lost artistic patrimony. I’d personally like to see the Chinese government more active, not just blocking the sale of items stolen long ago, but also buying some of the more important Chinese antiques that come on the market.

It’s easy to understand why the Chinese government has so far refused to do so, since they don’t want to let others profit from what it sees as wrongful expropriation. But, as a lesser of evils, I’d prefer them to bring back some of the more beautiful objects, and add them to the collections of important national museums like the one in Hangzhou. That way, at least, more Chinese would have opportunities to admire up close the crowning achievements of Chinese culture. 

It’s a good side project for CIC, China’s sovereign wealth fund, and China’s State Pension Fund. Along with trying to secure the country’s financial future, these two organizations could also invest, on a comparably small scale, to secure more of the country’s incomparable artistic heritage. 

The museum visit left me feeling sad, but also resolved to do my own small part. I’m fortunate to own a few Chinese porcelains and jade pieces from the Qing and Ming dynasties. The jade was left to me by my grandfather, who started collecting in the 1950s. I’d like to donate the art works to a Chinese museum when I die, if not sooner.  While nowhere near as important as the items regularly at auction at Sothebys and Christies, they are decent examples of the output of some of China’s finest artists and artisans. 

Art is a shared inheritance. But, more of China’s treasures should be seen where they were crafted. 


Navigating China’s Treacherous IPO Markets

Leave a Comment / January 11, 2010

Song plate from China First Capital blog post

How do you say “Scylla and Charybdis”  in Chinese? Thankfully, you don’t need to know the translation, or even reference from Homer’s The Odyssey, to understand the severe dilemma faced by China’s stock exchange regulator, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC). 

Scylla and Charybdis were a pair of sea monsters guarding opposite sides of a narrow straight. Together, they posed an inescapable threat to sailors’ lives. By avoiding one, you sailed directly into the lair of the other. 

The CSRC has been trying to navigate between twin perils over the last months, since the October launch of ChiNext , the new Shenzhen stock exchange for smaller-cap private companies. They have tried to stamp out the trading volatility and big first day gains that characterized earlier IPOs in China. But, in doing so, they’ve created circumstances where the valuations of companies going public on the ChiNext have reached dangerous and unsustainably high levels. 

Monsters to the left, monsters to the right. The regulators at CSRC deserve combat pay. 

Based on most key measures, ChiNext has been a phenomenal success. So far, through the end of 2009, 36 companies have IPO’d on ChiNext, raising a total of over $2 billion from investors. That’s more than double the amount these 36 companies were originally seeking to raise from their IPOs. Therein lies the Scylla-Charybdis problem. 

Before ChiNext  opened, the CSRC was determined to avoid one common problem with Chinese IPOs on the main Shanghai and Shenzhen markets – that the price on the first day of trading typically rose very sharply, with lots of volatility. A sharp jump in the price on the first day is great for investors who were able to buy shares ahead of the IPO. In China, those lucky few investors are usually friends and business contacts of the underwriters, who were typically rewarded with first-day gains of over 20%. These investors could hold their shares for a matter of minutes or hours on the day of the IPO, then sell at a nice profit. 

But, while a first-day surge may be great for these favored investors, it’s bad news for the companies staging the IPOs. It means, quite simply, their shares were underpriced (often significantly so) at IPO. As a result, they raised less money than they could have. The money, instead, is wrongly diverted into the hands of the investors who bought the shares at artificially low prices. An IPO that has a 25% first-day gain is an IPO that failed to maximize the amount the company could raise from investors. 

Underwriters are at fault. When they set the price at IPO, they can start trading at a level that all but guarantees an immediate increase. This locks in profits for the people they choose to allocate shares to ahead of the start of trading. 

The CSRC, rightly,  decided to do something about this. They mandated that the opening price for companies listing on the CSRC should be set more by market demand, not the decision of an underwriter. The result is that the opening day prices on ChiNext have far more accurately reflected the price investors are willing to pay for the new offering.

Gains that used to go to first-day IPO investors are now harvested by the companies. They can raise far more money for the fixed number of shares offered at IPO. So far so good. The problem is: Chinese investors are bidding up the prices of many of these new offerings to levels that are approaching madness. 

The best example so far: when Guangzhou Improve Medical Instruments Co had its IPO last month, its shares traded at an opening price 108 times its 2008 earnings.  The most recent  group of companies to IPO on ChiNext had first-day valuations of over 80 times 2008 earnings. Because of the high valuations, these ChiNext-listed companies have raised more than twice the amount of money they planned from their IPO. 

On one hand, that’s great for the companies. But, the risk is that the companies will not use the extra money wisely (for example by speculating in China’s overheated property market), and so the high valuations they enjoy now will eventually plummet. Indeed, valuations at over 80x  are no more sustainable on the ChiNext now than they were on the Tokyo Stock Exchange a generation ago. 

Having steered ChiNext away from the danger of underpriced IPOs, the CSRC is now trying to cope with this new menace. They have limited tools at their disposal. They clearly don’t want to return pricing power to underwriters. But, neither do they want ChiNext to become a market with insane valuations and companies that are bloated with too much cash and too many temptations to misuse it.   

CSRC’s response: they just introduced new rules to limit the ways ChiNext companies can use the extra cash raised at IPO.  CSRC is also reportedly studying ways to lower IPO valuations on ChiNext. 

The new rules restrict the uses of the extra cash. Shareholder approval is required for any investment over Rmb 50 million, or more than 20% of the extra IPO proceeds on a single project. The CSRC also reiterated that ChiNext companies should use the additional proceeds from their IPOs to fund their main businesses and not for high-risk investments, such as securities, derivatives or venture capital.

The new rules are fine, as far as they go. But, they don’t go very far towards resolving the underlying cause of all these problems, of both underpriced and overpriced IPOs in China.

The problem is that CSRC itself limits the number of new IPOs, to try to maintain overall market stability. Broadly speaking, this restricted supply creates excessive demand for all Chinese IPOs. Regulatory interventions and tinkering with the rules won’t do much. There remains the fundamental imbalance between the number of domestic IPOs and investor interest in new offerings.

Faced with two bad options, Odysseus chose to take his chances with the sea monster Scylla, and survived, while losing quite a few of his crew. The alternative was worse, he figured, since Charybdis could sink the whole ship.

The CSRC may well make a similar decision and return some pricing power to underwriters, to bring down ChiNext’s valuations.  But, without an increased supply of IPOs in China,  the two large hazards will persist. CSRC’s navigation of China’s IPO market will certainly remain treacherous.  


The New Equilibrium – It’s the Best Time Ever to be a Chinese Entrepreneur

1 Comment / January 7, 2010

China Private Equity blog post

As I wrote the last time out, the game is changed in PE investing in China. The firms most certain to prosper in the future are those with ability to raise and invest renminbi, and then guide their portfolio companies to an IPO in China. For many PE firms, we’re at a hinge moment: adapt or die. 

Luckily for me, I work on the other side of the investment ledger, advising private Chinese companies and assisting them with pre-IPO capital raising. So, while the changes now underway are a supreme challenge for PE firms, they are largely positive for the excellent SME businesses I work with.

They now have access to a greater pool of capital and the realistic prospect of a successful domestic IPO in the near future. Both factors will allow the best Chinese entrepreneurs to build their businesses larger and faster, and create significant wealth for themselves. 

As my colleagues and me are reminded every day, we are very fortunate. We have a particularly good vantage point to see what’s happening with China’s entrepreneurs all over the country. On any given week, our company will talk to the bosses of five and ten private Chinese SME. Few of these will become our clients, often because they are still a little small for us, or still focused more on exports than on China’s burgeoning domestic market. We generally look for companies with at least Rmb 25 million in annual profits, and a focus on China’s burgeoning domestic market. 

For the Chinese companies we talk to on a regular basis, the outlook is almost uniformly ideal. China’s economy is generating enormous, once-in-a-business-lifetime opportunities for good entrepreneurs.

Here’s the big change: for the first time ever, the flow of capital in China is beginning to more accurately mirror where these opportunities are. 

China’s state-owned banks have become more willing to lend to private companies, something they’ve done only reluctantly in the past. The bigger change is there is far more equity capital available. Every week brings word that new PE firms have been formed with hundreds of millions of renminbi to invest.

The capital market has also undergone its own evolutionary change. China’s new Growth Enterprise Market, known as Chinext, launched in October 2009. In two months, it has already raised over $1 billion in new capital for private Chinese companies. 

In short, the balance has shifted more in favor of the users rather than the deployers of capital. That because capital is no longer in such short supply. This is among the most significant financial changes taking place in China today: growth capital is no longer the scarcest resource. As recently as a year ago, PE firms were relatively few, and exit opportunities more limited. Within a year, my guess is the number of PE firms and the capital they have to invest in private Chinese companies will both double. 

Of course, raising equity capital remains a difficult exercise in China, just as it is in the US or Europe. Far fewer than 1% of private companies in China will attract outside investment from a PE or VC fund. But, when the business model and entrepreneur are both outstanding,  there is a far better chance now to succeed.

Great business models and great entrepreneurs are both increasingly prevalent in China. I’m literally awestruck by the talent of the Chinese entrepreneurs we meet and work with – and I’ve met quite a few good ones in my past life as a venture capital boss and technology CEO in California, and earlier as a business journalist for Forbes. 

So, while life is getting tougher for the partners of PE firms (especially those with only dollars to invest), it is a better time now than ever before in Chinese history to be a private entrepreneur. That is great news for China, and a big reason why I’m so thrilled to go to work each day.  


The End of the Line for Old-Style PE Investing in China

2 Comments / January 4, 2010

Ming Dynasty flask, from China Private Equity blog post

As 2010 dawns, private equity in China is undergoing epic changes. PE in China got its start ten years ago. The founding era is now drawing to a close.  The result will be a fundamental realignment in the way private equity operates in China. It’s a change few of the PE firms anticipated, or can cope with. 

What’s changed? These PE firms grew large and successful raising and investing US dollars,  and then taking Chinese companies public in Hong Kong or New York. This worked beautifully for a long time, in large part because China’s own capital markets were relatively underdeveloped. Now, the best profit opportunities are for PE investors using renminbi and exiting on China’s domestic stock markets. Many of the first generation PE firms are stuck holding an inferior currency, and an inferior path to IPO. 

The dominant PE firms of yesterday, those that led the industry during its first decade in China, are under pressure, and some will not survive. They once generated hundreds of millions of dollars in profits. Now, these same firms seem antiquated, their methods and approach ill-suited to conditions in China. 

In the end, success in PE investing comes down to one thing: maximizing the difference between your entry and exit price. This differential will often be twice as large for investors with renminbi as those with dollars. The basic reason is that stock market valuations in China, on a current p/e basis, are over twice as high as in Hong Kong and New York – or an average of about 30 times earnings in China, compared to fifteen times earnings in Hong Kong and US. 

The gap has remained large and persistent for years. My view is that it will continue to be wide for many years to come. That’s because profits in China (in step with GDP) are growing faster than anywhere else, and Chinese investors are more willing to bid up the price of those earnings. 

For PE firms, the stark reality is: if you can’t enter with renminbi and exit in China, you cut your profit potential in half. 

chart1









If given the freedom, of course, any PE investor would choose to exit in China. The problem is, they don’t have that freedom. Only fully-Chinese companies can IPO in China. It’s not possible for Chinese companies with what’s called an “offshore structure”, meaning the ultimate holding company is based in Hong Kong, BVI, the Caymans or elsewhere outside China. Offshore companies could take in dollar investment from PE firms, swap it into renminbi to build their business in China, then IPO outside China. The PE firms put dollars in and took dollars out. That’s the way it worked, for example, for the lucky PE firms that invested in successful Chinese companies like Baidu, Suntech, Alibaba, Belle – all of which have offshore structure. 

In September 2006, the game changed. New securities laws in China made it all but impossible for Chinese companies to establish holding companies outside China. Year by year, the number has dwindled of good private companies in China with offshore structure. First generation PE firms with only dollars to invest in China have fewer good deals to chase. At the same time, the appeal of a domestic Chinese IPO has become stronger and stronger. Not only are IPO prices higher, but the stock markets in Shanghai and Shenzhen have become larger, more liquid, less prone to the kind of wild price-swings that were once a defining trait of Chinese investing. 

Of course, it’s not all sweetness and light. A Chinese company seeking a domestic IPO cannot choose its own timing. That’s up to the securities regulators. To IPO in China, a company must first apply to China’s securities market regulator, the CSRC, and once approved, join a queue of uncertain length. At present, the process can take two years or more. Planning and executing an IPO in Hong Kong or the US is far quicker and the regulatory process far more transparent. 

In any IPO, timing is important, but price is more so. That’s why, on balance, a Chinese IPO is still going to be a much better choice for any company that can manage one. 

Some of the first generation PE firms have tried to get around the legal limitations. For example, there is a way for PE firms to invest dollars into a purely Chinese company, by establishing a new joint venture company with the target Chinese firm. However, that only solves the smaller part of the problem. It remains difficult, if not impossible, for these joint venture entities to go public in China. 

For PE investors in China, if you can’t go public in Shanghai or Shenzhen, you’ve cut your potential profits in half. That’s a bad way to run a business, and a bad way to please your Limited Partners, the cash-rich pension funds, insurance firms, family offices and endowments that provide the capital for PE firms to invest.   

The valuation differential has other knock-on effects. A PE firm can afford to pay a higher price when investing in a Chinese company if it knows it can exit domestically.  That leaves more margin for error, and also allows PE firms to compete for the best deals. The only PE firms, however, with this option are those already holding renminbi. This group includes some of the best first generation PE firms, including CDH, SZVC, Legend. But, most first generation firms only have dollars, and that means they can only invest in companies that will exit outside China. 

Seeing the handwriting on the wall, many of the other first generation PE firms are now scrambling to raise renminbi funds. A few have already succeeded, including Prax and SAIF. But, raising an renminbi fund is difficult. Few will succeed. Those that do will usually only be able to raise a fraction of the amount they can raise is dollars. 

Add it up and it spells trouble – deep trouble – for many of the first generation PE firms in China. They made great money over the last ten years for themselves and their Limited Partners. But, the game is changed. And, as always in today’s China, change is swift and irreversible. The successful PE firms of the future will be those that can enter and exit in renminbi, not dollars.


China’s Party Apparatus

Leave a Comment / December 28, 2009

China First Capital blog post -- Qing dynasty peach bowl

Christmas has passed, but the reindeer antlers are still out in force. At my local supermarket in Shenzhen, the checkout team began sporting plastic antlers in late November. We’re a long way from the North Pole, and even farther, culturally, from the parts of the world where Christmas is traditionally celebrated. But, if there’s a party going on anywhere,  the Chinese want to be part of it. 

It’s not just the reindeer horns. A good 30% of all other shops’ sales force, as well as restaurant wait staff, are wearing those droopy red Santa caps. Most lobbies of the larger office buildings have Christmas trees, lit and ornamented. Mine also has a small crèche, that looks like a gingerbread house big enough to sleep three adults.  

Incongruous? Sure. But, one grows inured very quickly in China to things that don’t seem to make a lot of sense culturally. Red wine is increasingly the drink of choice among urban, upwardly-striving Chinese. Never mind that most of the wine is domestically produced, and has a thin, sour watered-down flavor a bit like salad dressing, and doesn’t compliment well the salty and spicy foods favored in much of China. 

Other examples: pajamas are occasionally used as outdoor-wear in China. The slowest-moving trucks on China’s expressways tend to putter along at one-third the speed limit in the left passing lane. Many ads for infant formula feature fat blond-haired babies. 

Christmas in China does not involve gift-giving, carol-singing, church-going. It’s a reason to decorate buildings, wear odd outfits, and send tens of millions (by my guesstimate) of SMS messages wishing other Chinese “圣诞快乐” ，literally “Happy Holy Birth”.  Santa Claus? His plastic likeness is plastered everywhere. In China, though, he is known as “圣诞老人“，or “Holy Birth Old Guy”. 

Not only is Christmas part of China’s holiday calendar now, so is Halloween in some of the bigger cities. But, it’s a Halloween celebrated only by adults wearing scary costumes to restaurants and bars that night. There’s no candy, no trick-or-treating. 

Much as China’s government still describes the economy as “socialism with Chinese characteristics”, there’s a lot of my daily life here that can be understood as “Western civilization with Chinese characteristics”. Much is broadly familiar, but most things have a strikingly and singularly Chinese flavor. 

Thursday night is New Year’s Eve. It’ll be my first in China. Logic tells me it should mainly pass unnoticed. Chinese New Year, which falls this year on Valentine’s Day, is the most important holiday of the year, and is so deeply engrained in the consciousness that when Chinese say “next year”, they usually mean some time after Chinese new year, which has no fixed date on the Gregorian calendar. It begins either in January or February, depending on cycles of the moon. The New Year holiday lasts seven days in China. 

So while there’s no cultural imperative to celebrate New Year’s Eve, I do expect restaurants, bars and shopping areas to be unusually raucous on Thursday night, much as they were on Christmas and Halloween. Like a college fraternity, China seems determined to seize any excuse to throw a party. 

 

 

Not Accountable: Why Brilliant 15th-Century Italian Accounting Rules Are Sometimes of Limited Use in China

Leave a Comment / December 21, 2009

 

Luca Pacioli

Luca Pacioli

 

In the history of business, there are no innovations more important, transformative, valuable and widely-used than Luca Pacioli’s. Yet, few know his name. He never made a fortune and likely spent most of his adult life in prayer and cloistered meditation. 

Pacioli was a 15th century Italian mathematician and monk who first codified the system of double-entry bookkeeping. This made modern corporate management possible, by providing a standardized and generally foolproof system for summarizing a business’s financial condition. Pacioli’s system of offsetting credits and debits remains very much the basis of all modern corporate accounting. 

I looked around, but couldn’t discover when double-entry bookkeeping, Pacioli’s brainchild, was first introduced to China. It is certainly pervasive now. The principles of corporate accounting, like mathematics,  don’t change as you move across national borders. In private equity investing, the process of assessing a company’s performance and attractiveness as an investment will be a function, ultimately, of its profitability and net asset value. Pacioli’s methods are the tools to determine both. 

Yet, there are times when I think Pacioli’s accounting principles are no more useful a tool in private equity investment in China than his fellow Italian Marco Polo’s travelogues are to current-day tourists visiting the Great Wall. They are better than nothing. But, you will still need to do a lot of your own strenuous legwork. 

The reason is that accounting principles are not widely applied in the management of many of the better private SME in China. They are entrepreneur-led businesses. Usually the most complete statement of the businesses financial worth is not to be found on a company balance sheet, but in the mind  of the entrepreneur. Some of this is by habit, other by design, to thwart any unwanted outsider, especially the taxman, from knowing exactly what is going on in a company. 

One example from my own work: I made a first visit to an excellent company, with a thriving retail business and brand that’s both well-established and well-known in large parts of China. I was immediately impressed and asked the finance director for the company’s last year’s revenues and profits. “I don’t know,” she replied. Quickly, it became clear she wasn’t being coy or secretive. She genuinely did not know. “Only the boss knows”, she explained, looking over at him. 

He looked momentarily baffled, as if the question had never been posed before, and then did the calculation aloud. He knew precisely how many products he manufactured last year, the average selling price, and unit profit. So with a little multiplication, we were able to get to a number. Turned out, revenues were well north of USD$65mn, and net profits over $7mn. Very solid numbers. We later brought in an accounting firm to do a trial set of financials, and in fact, the true figures were about 15% higher than that first calculation by the boss. Apparently, he hadn’t fully consolidated the results from an outsourced production facility. 

It’s a great company from every perspective – except if you’re trying to evaluate it quickly, using a statement prepared using Luca Pacioli’s principles. Anyone attempting to assess the company using such methods is going to hit a wall, right at the outset. 

The company, like many others of China’s best private firms, does not track its performance with a set of financials, or commission an annual audit. Management stays rigorously attuned to operational details, to cash in the bank, to inputs and outputs, to seizing any available economies to fatten its profit margin. Most often, none of this is ever summarized in a P&L or balance sheet. The boss doesn’t need it. He lives and breathes it every day. 

Any PE firm looking to evaluate the company needs to do the same  – spend time at the company, with the boss, in the factory, and get a feel for how the business is running. If you make it a precondition before any visit to have a set of financials, you’re going to be spending a lot of time anchored to your desk, or visiting only companies that are so hard-up for cash that they’ve spent a good chunk of money getting financials done, to please potential investors. Even in China, an audit done by a local Chinese accounting firm can cost well over USD$50,000. I’d rather have that money spent where it can do more good, like building the business.  

Some good private Chinese companies do have audited financials. They are usually the ones with sizable bank loans. An annual audit is often a covenant of such loans. But, in my experience, most good Chinese companies, with little or no debt and no urgent need to attract investors will not have the sort of financials that some PE firms want to see at the start. 

In China, a set of financials should not be an absolute prerequisite for PE investors. The first step should be to understand the business operationally, and then pay a visit, if the industry and business model both seem attractive. You learn more in two hour site-visit than you would in two days combing through financials.  Besides, any PE firm will commission its own audit, usually by a Big Four accounting firm, before it invests, during the due diligence phase. So, no one is committing money blindly. Eventually, Luca Pacioli’s principles will be put to work. The only issue is whether this is a first step, or one that comes later in the process. 

Accounting rules have enormous value.  Double-entry bookkeeping has never been improved upon, in the 500 years since Pacioli wrote the rules. But, in private equity investment in China, an over-reliance on financial statements, especially as a first-step in getting to know a company, will distort more often than it clarifies. As brilliant as he was, Luca Pacioli could not have anticipated the singular conditions and management style of the current generation of China’s successful private entrepreneurs. 


An Inflationary Epoch – “ a period of extremely rapid exponential expansion”

Leave a Comment / December 13, 2009

China First Capital blog post -- cloisonne censer

It’s been a particularly busy, gratifying workweek. Reaching for a metaphor from the Big Bang’s cosmological model, it felt like we entered an Inflationary Epoch, a period of extremely rapid and exponential expansion.  One measure: the traffic of outstanding “laoban” (company boss, in Chinese) in and out of our office was heavier than any other time in our company’s history. In all, six came by this past week. I expect most, or all, of these companies to become our clients. 

Our recent visitors run businesses with cumulative revenues of well over Rmb 3.5 billion ($500mn). Four are industry leaders in China.  My best guess would be that within five years, their combined revenues will exceed $3 billion, and cumulative market cap exceed $5 billion. To reach these levels, they need nothing more than to do precisely what they’re doing now – seeking out large market opportunities, and then having the products and discipline to prevail over any competitors. 

Raising private equity capital will accelerate the process and heighten the growth trajectory. But, like many of the best private businesses in China, they’ve shown they can succeed when investment capital is limited and very hard to come by. That’s another commonality among the six companies that visited us this week. None has raised equity capital thus far. All are large, successful and well-managed enough to put capital to effective use. But, raising money is not compulsory. 

It may be a bad recipe for success, but my strong preference is for clients like this, ones that don’t really need us. If we have a value, it’s being able to help laoban prioritize and plan over  a longer time frame. In first meetings, I often ask laoban a question along these lines: “If capital were not a problem, and you could invest in areas of your business with the greatest likelihood of success and highest rates of return over the next three years, what would you do?” 

The answers usually come back with little time wasted for deliberation. A good laoban knows where to go without needing to consult a spreadsheet financial model or market research studies. In today’s China, the answer is usually some variation on, “We need to grow larger and be in more areas of China where there is a clear demand for what we are selling”. 

It’s hard for me to comprehend sometimes given their size, but the best private companies in China are often still in their “test marketing phase”. China’s market is so huge, and growing so quickly, that few if any businesses have penetrated more than a fraction of it. The six companies that visited this week are typical. None of them now serves more than 5% of their current easily-addressable market. At the same time, their potential customer base is also increasing quickly every year. A business needs to grow by 30-40% a year just to stay in place, to hold onto existing market share. 

Of course, none of these six laoban would be content with that, with just growing at the speed of the overall market. They need and want to dominate their industries. That’s where capital can make the biggest difference – especially if it’s supplied by an experienced private equity investor that knows how to help, guide, encourage and finance rapid growth. 

These six companies, like our existing clients, are all so good that I envy the investor that gets to own a share of the business. Investment opportunities this good should be much harder to come by. Instead, as this past week has shown,  great private businesses exist in startlingly large numbers in present day China. 

I’ll only get to know about a small portion of them, and will work with an even smaller number. After a week like this one, it’s impossible not to feel extremely positive about China’s economic prospects, and deeply privileged to know some of the laoban who are doing so much to assure that bright future. 

It was a great week. If the coming one is a little quieter, I think me and my China First Capital colleagues will all be quite content. It’s a challenge to keep up with the pace, and to contribute as much as we aim to. We too are in “test marketing phase”, with so much yet to build and to accomplish with clients across China.

 

Going Private: The Unstoppable Rise of China’s Private-Sector Entrepreneurs

1 Comment / December 7, 2009

Qing Jun-style, from China First Capital blog post

China’s private sector economy continues to perform miracles. According to figures just released by China’s National Bureau of Statistics, private companies in China now employ 70 million people, or 80 percent of China’s total industrial workforce. These same private companies account for 70% of all profits earned by Chinese industry. Profits at private companies rose 31.4% in 2008 over a year earlier, while those of China’s state-owned enterprises (so-called SOEs) fell by 16%. 

The rise of China’s private sector is, in my view, the most remarkable aspect of China’s economic development. When I first came to China in 1981, there were no private companies at all. SOEs continued to be favored sons, until recently. Only in 2005 did the Chinese government introduce a policy that gave private companies the same market access, same treatment in project approval, taxation, land use and foreign trade as SOEs. During that time, over 150,000 new private companies have gotten started and by 2008 had annual sales of over Rmb 5 million.   

These statistics only look at industrial companies, where SOEs long predominated. By last year, fully 95% of all industrial businesses in China were privately-owned. In the service sector, the dominance of private companies is even more comprehensive, as far as I can tell. While banks and insurance companies are all still largely state-owned, most of the rest of the service economy is in private hands – shops of all kinds, restaurants, barbers, hotels, dry cleaners, real estate agents, ad agencies, you name it. 

Other than the times I fly around China (airlines are still mainly state-owned) and when I pay my electric bill, I can’t think of any time my money goes directly to an SOE. This is not something, of course, I could have envisioned back in 1981. The transformation has both been so fast and so thoroughgoing. And yet, it still has a long way to go, as these latest figures suggest. Almost certainly, private company business formation and profit-generation will continue to grow strongly in 2009 and beyond. SOE contribution to the Chinese economy, while still significant,  grows proportionately less by the day. 

There once were vast regional disparities in the role of the private sector. Certain areas of China, for example the Northeast and West of the country, were until recently still dominated by SOEs. But, the changeover is occurring in these areas as well, and every year more private companies will reach the size threshold (revenues of over Rmb 5mn) where they will be captured by the statisticians. 

Equally, every year more of these private companies will reach the sort of scale where they become attractive to private equity investors. That happens when sales get above Rmb 100mn.  

Never in human history has so much private wealth been created so fast, by so many, as it has in China over the last 20 years. And yet, all this growth happened despite an almost complete lack of outside investment capital, from private equity and other institutional sources. This shows the resourcefulness of China’s entrepreneurs, to be able to build thriving businesses with little or no outside capital. Imagine how much faster this transformation would have happened if investment capital, and the expertise of PE firms, was more widely available. It is becoming more available by the day. 

China is primed, as it’s never been, for spectacular growth in PE investment over the coming 20 years.

Will Bad Money Drive Out Good in Chinese Private Equity?

2 Comments / December 1, 2009

Qing Dynasty jade boulder, from China First Capital blog post

The financial rule first postulated by Sir Thomas Gresham 500 years ago famously holds that “bad money drives out good”. In other words, if two different currencies are circulating together, the “bad” one will be used more frequently. By “bad”, what Gresham meant was a currency of equal face value but lower real value than its competitor. A simple way to understand it: if you had two $100 bills in your wallet, and suspected one is counterfeit and the other genuine, you’d likely try to spend the counterfeit $100 bill first, hoping you can pass it off at its nominal value. 

While it’s a bit of a stretch from Sir Thomas’s original precept, it’s possible to see a modified version of Gresham’s Law beginning to emerge in the private equity industry in China. How so? Money from some of “bad” PE investors may drive out money from “good” PE investors. If this happens, it could result in companies growing less strongly, less solidly and, ultimately, having less successful IPOs. 

Good money belongs to the PE investors who have the experience, temperament, patience, connections, managerial knowledge and financial techniques to help a company after it receives investment. Bad money, on the other hand, comes from private equity and other investment firms that either cannot or will not do much to help the companies it invests in. Instead, it pushes for the earliest possible IPO. 

Good money can be transformational for a company, putting it on a better pathway financially, operationally and strategically. We see it all the time in our work: a good PE investor will usually lift a company’s performance, and help implement long-term improvements. They do it by having operational experience of their own, running companies, and also knowing who to bring in to tighten up things like financial controls and inventory management. 

You only need to look at some of China’s most successful private businesses, before and after they received pre-IPO PE finance, to see how effective this “good money” can be. Baidu, Suntech, Focus Media, Belle and a host of the other most successful fully-private companies on the stock market had pre-IPO PE investment. After the PE firms invested, up to the time of IPO, these companies showed significant improvements in operating and financial performance. 

The problem the “good money” PEs face in China is that they are being squeezed out by other investors who will invest at higher valuations, more quickly and with less time and money spent on due diligence. All money spends the same, of course. So, from the perspective of many company bosses, these firms offering “bad money” have a lot going for them. They pay more, intrude less, demand little. Sure, they don’t have the experience or inclination to get involved improving a company’s operations. But, many bosses see that also as a plus. They are usually, rightly or wrongly,  pretty sure of themselves and the direction they are moving. The “good money” PE firms can be seen as nosy and meddlesome. The “bad money” guys as trusting and fully-supportive. 

Every week, new private equity companies are being formed to invest in China – with billions of renminbi in capital from government departments, banks, state-owned companies, rich individuals. “Stampede” isn’t too strong a word. The reason is simple: investing in private Chinese companies, ahead of their eventual IPOs, can be a very good way to make money. It also looks (deceptively) easy: you find a decent company, buy their shares at ten times this year’s earnings, hold for a few years while profits increase, and then sell your shares in an IPO on the Shanghai or Shenzhen stock markets for thirty times earnings. 

The management of these firms often have very different backgrounds (and pay structures) than the partners at the global PE firms. Many are former stockbrokers or accountants, have never run companies, nor do they know what to do to turn around an investment that goes wrong. They do know how to ride a favorable wave – and that wave is China’s booming domestic economy, and high profit growth at lots of private Chinese companies. 

Having both served on boards and run companies with outside directors and investors, I am a big believer in their importance. Having a smart, experienced, active, hands-on minority investor is often a real boon. In the best cases, the minority investors can more than make up for any value they extract (by driving a hard bargain when buying the shares) by introducing more rigorous financial controls, strategic planning and corporate governance. The best proof of this: private companies with pre-IPO investment from a “good money” PE firm tend to get higher valuations, and better underwriters, at the time of their initial public offering. 

But, the precise dollar value of “good money” investment is hard to measure. It’s easy enough for a “bad money” PE firm to claim it’s very knowledgeable about the best way to structure the company ahead of an IPO.  So, then it comes back to: who is willing to pay the highest price, act the quickest, do the most perfunctory due diligence and attach the fewest punitive terms (no ratchets or anti-dilution measures) in their investment contracts. In PE in China, bad money drives out the good, because it drives faster and looser.

Multi-Tasking, Chinese Style

1 Comment / November 24, 2009

China First Capital blog post -- Qing Dynasty grissaille stype

For 18 months or so,  until last month, I tried burning my work candle at both ends. The goal was to play a constructive role both as Chairman of China First Capital, and CEO of Awareness Technologies. For me, it’s been something of a dream come true, this chance to work with two great companies, at different points in their lifecycle, in wholly different industries, with different home markets, different customers, different languages, and vastly different business models.  So much the better. 

It’s also exposed, in way that nothing else ever quite has, just how limited my managerial skills are. They are, at best, barely adequate for managing one business. Cleaved in two, they are woe-begotten. It probably also helps explain why bigamy never really caught on. Attention divided is attention corrupted. 

Or so I thought, until I began spending time with one supremely talented entrepreneur in China. He’s the boss of at least four different companies. There could be more, for all I know. Each time we meet, he mentions, in passing, another business that he founded and runs. Other than the fact they’re all based in China, they are all as different from one another as chalk and cheese. This entrepreneur owns and manages a very consumer goods company, a mining business, an advertising agency and a high-technology business.

And when I say “manage”, I mean manage. He’s not some absentee landlord. He spends significant time with each, and established each to seize what is a very large market opportunity. I only know in detail one of these companies, and it’s outstanding. My sense is that the others are no less so. 

So, how does this one guy do it? For one thing, he’s probably a lot smarter, and certainly more locked-in and ambitious than I am. He sees the world, so far as I can tell, as a vast and intricate delta, of multiple earning streams and innumerable opportunities for profit. He grabs only those that he knows he can readily seize – by being clearer, smarter, and richer than any competitor. 

Me, I look in my business life more for purpose than for profit, for the chance to work on large and complex problems, rather than ways to make a killing. It’s probably why I’ll never be as rich, or as managerially capable, as this Chinese businessman. Some businessmen enter new areas for the very sound reason of diversifying their sources of wealth.

This businessman does so because he visualizes the world as a series of P&L statements. He sees (better than anyone I’ve ever met) where the money is. Then he goes for it. He also chooses businesses that let him maximize his managerial skills, by setting a concrete direction, funneling in the capital, hiring strong management, and then waiting for the money to flow. 

Knowing him more and more, I’m convinced he’d never have entered the two businesses I’m now involved with: investment banking and enterprise software. Investment banking, especially for Chinese SME,  has too many moving parts, too many vagaries (for example, of market prices and investor predilections); enterprise software is crowded, and competitive, prone to technological disruption,  and has many smart people chasing the same limited supply of dollars. 

As I said, I like challenge. He likes making money. 

The kicker here is that it turns out, we need each other. I need him, because my investment banking business thrives by having the very best Chinese entrepreneurs as clients. He needs me to help him get additional capital to build the most promising of his businesses. I am equally confident we can get him that capital as I am that he will put it to very productive use, and so earn his investor a fortune. 

Of all the entrepreneurs I work with, this guy is the one that I’m most awed by, probably because he is so obviously so much better at this “CEO multi-tasking” than I am. He is very comfortable in his skin, and clearly having a great time in life.  It’s a joy to be a small part of his intricate, expansive and beautifully-engineered business empire.

The Billion-Dollar Product In Search of an Inventor

4 Comments / November 18, 2009

China First Capital blog post -- Ming Dynasty lacquer screen

Too many inventive minds over too many years have focused on trying to solve environmental problems that may be insoluble: like a internal-combustion engine that gets +100mpg, or a new fuel that will burn cleaner and cost less than gasoline. Of course, a solution to either of these would earn its inventor a multi-billion fortune. That’s a very powerful motivator.

But, let’s face it. Some of these bigger problems may be beyond the wit of man and the realms of molecular science. There are so many smaller, more manageable problems to be solved that will both lower pollution and earn its inventor a very tidy sum. Case in point: a new water cooler for China. 

Here’s a problem crying out for a solution. Solve it and you could build one of the largest consumer products companies in the world, much like how Sony’s Akio Morita got his start inventing a small, portable transistor radio in the 1950s. 

Most offices, as well as a large percentage of urban households in China, have a water cooler. They look like the kind you see in the US, but with one addition: Chinese water coolers also have a hot water spigot. The machines keep hot water, as well as cold water, on tap. They do this by having a small in-built heating system to keep about one liter of water continuously heated to around 80-degrees centigrade (176-degrees Fahrenheit). The reason is obvious: many Chinese still like drinking tea. 

When I first came to China almost 30 years ago, cold potable water and bottled water were both all but nonexistent. Today, they are both pervasively common. Tea often seems like a dying brand in China, except as an accompaniment to a cooked meal. 

But, most Chinese water coolers still offer the hot water function, and will likely continue to do so for many long years to come. There are two problems with the current design in China. First, the hot water is produced continuously, even outside of working hours, at enormous cost in wasted electricity. Since in China most electricity is produced by burning coal, this equates to a lot more coal being mined and burned than is necessary. 

Problem number two: though heated, the water is kept at a temperature too low to make a decent cup of tea.  For that, you need water at or about boiling point. It’s not a difference discernible only by tea connoisseurs. You need the hotter water to get the flavor, as well as get the tea leaves to sink to the bottom of the cup. All tap water needs to be boiled, for health reasons in China. But, the water coolers use bottled water (in 18.9 liter jugs). Each jug weighs over forty pounds. The massive infrastructure to deliver these water bottles, mainly done by guys riding specially-configured bicycles that can hold four of the jugs over the back wheel, is another problem crying out for a solution. But, we’ll leave that one be, for the time being.   

China needs a better water cooler. The person who can invent one, and can protect it from copycats with patents,  is going to become very rich. Two relatively small changes would achieve the goal: (1) incorporate a timer so that the machine will waste less energy;  and (2) design a system that will bring water to a boil and then dispense it. Better air and better tea. Both marketing messages should resonate deeply with a large part of China’s urban population.   

I’m no engineer, but assume there will be a positive energy trade-off here. The new system will likely use more power to get water 25% hotter, to boiling point.  But, the timer would shut down the hot water production, in most cases, for at least 40% of the time, outside of office hours. 

How big is the potential market? My guess would be it’s quite big. In most of the larger hypermarkets in China like Wal-Mart or Carrefour, the section devoted to water coolers is quite large, with at least ten models on display – more space than is given to vacuum cleaners, for example. This gives some approximation of overall sales volume. The current models are all roughly equivalent. Top-of-the-line models not only have the hot water, but refrigerate the cold water before dispensing. These generally cost around $150-$200. An eco- and flavor-friendly model should be in the same price range. If so, it would likely become market leader. 

Inventors mostly like to tackle life’s biggest problems. But, there’s a lot of money to be made in “gradual innovation”, particularly when it delivers improvements on a product that is a ubiquitous in a country as large as China.


Why Is China Booming? Surprise, It’s Not the Stimulus

1 Comment / November 13, 2009

China First Capital blog post -- Qing Dynasty stupa

Launched amid much worldwide rejoicing when the financial crisis struck last year, China’s Rmb 4 trillion ($585 billion) stimulus package is given much of the credit for China’s continued strong economic performance this year. China’s GDP growth is likely to exceed 8%, and the domestic stock market is up by over 70% since the start of the year. 

A Keynesian miracle? To read a lot of the financial commentary on China, you might well conclude this is so, that government spending has single-handedly kept the economy jaunty, while both firms and consumers sank into a deep funk. It’s a great story, and provides a simple explanation for how China dodged the bullets that struck all other major economies. Other countries looked on enviously, and urged China to continue the fiscal pump-priming to help out the overall world economy. 

Problem is, the analysis is flawed. China’s stimulus plan is not all it’s cracked up to be. While the additional government spending has clearly played a part, it is not the only reason why China’s economy has remained so sound this year. The unsung heroes of China’s economic success this year are its ordinary consumers. It’s their continued confidence and increased spending that have really made the difference. 

Economic statistics are notoriously iffy in China. The further one gets from the economic lever-pullers in Beijing, the harder it becomes to track economic activity. That’s another reason why the stimulus plan was so often singled out as the main spur to China’s growth. It’s easier to calculate how much additional the Chinese government is spending building expressways than it is to see how many pairs of socks or bowls of noodles Chinese are buying. 

Another reason: a lot of the economic commentary comes from folks who believe that governments really are responsible for what happens, good and bad, in an economy. Again, it’s just so much simpler to view things this way, that powerful government men can pull out their checkbooks and spend their way to national prosperity. These are often the same people who will tell you, wrongly, that Roosevelt’s New Deal spending lifted the US out of Depression.

China’s supporters and detractors both give the government too much credit. There are those who are convinced China’s economic growth is all some kind of fraud, cooked up by the central government, and that once the extra government spending is dialed down, the economy is certain to crash. 

Again, pure hogwash. 

In China, the government rightly deserves credit for excellent economic management, for creating the circumstances, both marco and micro,  that allow the Chinese economy to continue to thrive. I’ve said it frequently, including in public forums: China is the best-managed major economy in the world. 

But, again, let’s also commend the country’s one-billion-plus consumers, too often seem as miserly skinflints, saving up all their money for their great-grandchildren’s rainy days. It just ain’t so. China’s consumers, with an ever-increasing choice of products, services and shops, are spending ever-increasing sums on improving the quality of their lives. Newer and better housing. New cars. Holidays. New wardrobes. You name it. 

I see it every day here, the untethered exuberance of the Chinese consumer. It’s true that in the early part of this year, there was a relative lull. Back then, shops were working harder to attract customers, by putting a lot of their goods on sale at steep discounts. About four months ago, the situation began to change markedly. No more major knockdowns. Prices now all seem to carry list price, and the prices for many common consumer products are as high, or higher, than in the US. 

Not much of this, it goes without saying, gets noticed by the world’s financial commentariat. Car sales in China are at an all-time high, and China is now the world’s largest car market. But, listen to the commentators, and they’ll tell you it’s the result of some small government tax breaks on new car purchases. Helpful, yes. The main spur? No. Car prices in China are still, in dollar terms, generally much higher than in the US. Based on a percentage of average disposable income, car prices in China are probably among the most expensive in the world. Same goes for property prices. Yet, Chinese keep buying. 

They will keep buying, at or near this record pace, long after any tax breaks phase out.  Chinese want the new cars to drive on the new expressways to carry them to the new shopping malls to buy the new furniture for their new apartments. 

Of all the economic statistics I’ve seen lately, the one that best captures what is going on now in China is this: revenues in China’s restaurant industry were up 18% during the first half of 2009, to over $120 billion. That’s not due to stimulus, or bank loans, or tax concessions, or a government mandate to entertain more. It’s largely because Chinese are out having a good time, more often, and spending a lot more doing so than they did a year ago. 

It’s one of the best barometers of a nation’s mood, restaurant spending. In China, the mood is buoyant, the outlook bright, and the woks are working overtime.

 


 

Private Equity in China: Blackstone & Others May Grab the Money But Miss the Best Opportunities

1 Comment / November 11, 2009

China First Capital blog post -- Song Jun vase

Blackstone, the giant American PE firm, is now trying to raise its first renminbi fund. Its stated goal is to provide growth capital for China’s fast-growing companies. Blackstone isn’t the only international private equity firm seeking to raise renminbi to invest in China.  In fact, many of the world’s largest private equity firms, including those already investing in China using dollars, are looking to tap domestic Chinese sources for investment capital.

Dollar-based investors are increasingly at a serious disadvantage in China’s private equity industry: investing is more difficult, often impossible, and deals take longer to close than competing investors with access to renminbi.

Blackstone enjoys a big leg up in China over other international private equity firms looking to raise renminbi. Its largest institutional shareholder is China’s sovereign wealth fund, CIC. Knowing how to get Chinese investors to open their wallets is a skill both highly rare and highly advantageous in today’s global private equity industry.  

There are two reasons for this stampede to raise renminbi. First, more and more of the best investment opportunities in China are SME with purely domestic structure – meaning they cannot easily raise equity in any other currency except renminbi. The second reason is the most basic of all in the financial industry: if you want money, you go where there’s the most to spare. Right now, that means looking in China.   

In theory, the big international private equity companies have a lot to offer Chinese investors – principally, very long track records of successful deal-making that richly rewarded their earlier investors.

The international PE firms have more experience picking companies and exiting from them with fat gains. They also do a good job, in general, of keeping their investors informed about what they’re doing, and acting as prudent fiduciaries. 

So far so good. But, there’s one enormous problem here, one that Blackstone and others presumably don’t like talking about to prospective Chinese investors. Their main way of making money in the past is now both broken, and wholly unsuited to China. They’re trying to sell a beautiful left-hand drive Rolls-Royce to people who drive on the right. 

Blackstone, Carlyle, KKR, Cerberus and most of the other largest global private equity companies grew large, rich and powerful by buying controlling stakes in companies, using mainly money borrowed from banks. They then would improve the operating performance over several years, and make their real money by either selling the company in an M&A deal or listing it on the stock market.

The leverage (in the form of the bank borrowing) was key to their financial success. Like buying a house, the trick was to put a little money down, borrow the rest, and then pocket most of any increase in the value of the asset. 

It can be a great way to make money, as long as banks are happy to lend. They no longer are. As a result, these kinds of private equity deals – which really ought to be called by their original name of “leveraged buyouts”, have all but vanished from the financial landscape.  It was always a rickety structure, reliant as much on access to cheap bank debt as on a talent for spotting great, undervalued businesses. If proof were needed, just look at Cerberus’s disastrous takeover of Chrysler last year, which will result in likely losses for Cerberus of over $5 billion. 

In his annual letter to shareholders this year, Warren Buffett highlighted the inherent weaknesses in this form of private equity: “A purchase of a business by these [private equity] firms almost invariably results in dramatic reductions in the equity portion of the acquiree’s capital structure compared to that previously existing. A number of these acquirees, purchased only two to three years ago, are now in mortal danger because of the debt piled on them by their private-equity buyers. The private equity firms, it should be noted, are not rushing in to inject the equity their wards now desperately need. Instead, they’re keeping their remaining funds very private.” 

On their backs at home, it’s no wonder Blackstone, Carlyle, KKR are looking to expand in China, All have a presence in China, having invested in some larger deals involving mainly State-Owned Enterprises. But, to really flourish in China, these PE firms will need to hone a different set of skills: choosing solid companies, investing their own capital for a minority position, and then waiting patiently for an exit. 

There’s no legal way to use the formula that worked so well for so long in the US. In China, highly-leveraged transactions are prohibited. PE firms also, in most cases, can’t buy a controlling stake in a business. That runs afoul of strict takeover rules in China. 

I have little doubt Blackstone, KKR, Carlyle can all succeed doing these smaller, unleveraged deals in China. After all, they employ some of the smartest people on the planet. But, these firms all still have a serious preference for doing larger deals, investing at least $50mn. This is also true in China.

There are few good deals on this scale around. Very few private companies have the level of annual profits (at least $15mn) to absorb that amount of capital for a minority stake. Private companies that large have likely already had an IPO or are well along in the planning process. As for large SOEs, the good ones are mostly already public, and those that remain are often sick beyond the point of cure. In these cases, private equity investors find it tough to push through an effective restructuring plan because they don’t control a majority on the board seats. 

Result: some of the companies best-positioned to raise renminbi funds, including Blackstone, have an investment model that seems ill-suited to Chinese conditions. They may well succeed in raising money, but then what? They’ll either need to learn to do smaller deals (of $10mn-$20mn) or bear the heavy risk of making investments in the few larger deals around in China.  

Any prospective Chinese LP should be asking Blackstone and the other large global private equity firms some very searching questions about their investment models for China. True, these firms all have excellent track records, by and large. But, that past performance, based on the leveraged buyouts that went well, is of scant consequence in today’s China. What matters most is an eye for spotting great entrepreneurs, in fast-growing industries, and then offering them both capital and the knowledge that comes from building value as investors in earlier deals. 

Prediction: raising huge wads of cash in China will turn out to be easier for Blackstone and other large global PE firms than putting it to work where it will do the most good and earn the highest returns.

Shenzhen’s Place in China’s Long History Mixing Sex and Commerce

Leave a Comment / November 1, 2009

Shenzhen night time, from China First Capital blog post

Shenzhen is such a relentless modern city that it’s often hard to discern the influence of 3,000 years of Chinese history and culture. The skyline is so futuristic that it often resembles the home planet of a higher civilization.(See photo above, of the City Center and buildings near CFC’s office). 

But, of course, this is still a part of China, with all its embedded messages and references to a history longer and richer than any other. It just takes a little wisdom to perceive it. I can’t lay claim to any such wisdom. Luckily, though, I have a friend here who has both the historical knowledge and scholar’s temperament to properly put modern Shenzhen into a more classically Chinese context. 

This friend, Zhen Qinan, has had a exemplary career in the financial industry, first as part of the working team formed in 1990 to establish the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, and then as head of a joint venture between four Chinese financial firms and Merrill Lynch, where he worked with leading Chinese companies like Huawei and Taitai Pharmaceutical. 

These days, Qinan is semi-retired. I try to spend time with him whenever I can. He’s warm and thoughtful, and I know now from experience that he’ll offer astoundingly wise insights to even my most mundane questions. How mundane? Over a meal at one of Shenzhen’s better Sichuan places, I commented on how lucky we were to be in a city with so many good restaurants, even by Chinese standards. 

If I had to come up with reasons why, I would settle for the fact Shenzhen is richer than other cities, and has a population drawn from all parts of China. Qinan, however, offered a much richer explanation, rooted in his learning and respect for Chinese history. 

Shenzhen is part of an unbroken tradition, reaching back at least 1,200 years, of commercial centers in China having the best food and also the most beautiful women. So, in their day, the great trading cities along the Grand Canal — Hangzhou, Suzhou, Yangzhou — were particularly renowned as places with the finest and most varied cuisine, and the most desirable women. This reputation has remained largely intact in those cities, even as the commercial locus of China shifted elsewhere. 

The reason then, and the reason now, is the same: in wealthier commercial cities, there’s a heightened appreciation, as well as larger audience, for the pleasures that money can buy. Qinan is from Xian, and to drive home the point, he drew the comparison for me between Shenzhen and his home city.

Xian was always a center of learning and political power, rather than a city with vibrant trade and a large, successful merchant class. As a result, the food, though still quite delicious, has always been a little more basic, less expensive, less intricate, less subtle than that of the trading centers to the east, along the Grand Canal. There’s just not enough money around to support a thriving community of top-quality chefs and restaurants. They migrate to where the money is. 

The same logic, of course, applies to why beautiful women are more prevalent in rich commercial cities in China. Traditionally, beautiful women went to Suzhou, Hangzhou or Yangzhou to find a rich patron to take them as a subsidiary wife. They then produced better-looking children, on average, so creating a virtuous cycle. Let the process run, uninterrupted, for several centuries and the results would be that the cities gained a reputation, probably grounded in fact, for having particularly good-looking ladies. 

To this day, Chinese will always aver that Suzhou has the most beautiful women in the country. I haven’t been to Suzhou in over 25 years, so I can’t say if the reputation is deserved or not. But, I do know that most Chinese believe this to be true of Suzhou, even though, of course, few will have ever been there to see for themselves. 

While concubinage is officially no more in China, there is still a similar process at work in today’s Shenzhen. Concubines are no more. Polygamy is outlawed. Today, the term is 二奶 “er nai”, or “second lady”. It’s analogous to a mistress. Shenzhen, I’m told, has more “er nai” than any other city in China. These tend to be pretty girls in their early 20s who come to Shenzhen from all over China, and often end up clothed, housed, fed and otherwise supported financially by an older, usually married man. Nowhere else in the world (not Paris, Milan, or other centers of mistress culture) have I ever seen so many dreary older men in the company of stunningly beautiful women. 

Shenzhen has more “er nai” both because it’s the richest city in China, and also because there are a lot of men from neighboring Hong Kong who either live or work here, during the week. Part of the standard “expat package” would seem to be taking a Chinese girl as a mistress. I’m told the going rate, in terms of monthly cash stipend, is at least $1,000 a month, with apartment, car and clothing budget extra. That’s about five times more than a woman of similar age can make working in one of Shenzhen’s factories.

One other difference from the China of yore: these women will usually return to their home village with quite a nice nest-egg, marry locally and start a family. This then creates a “job opening”. The man will now find a new “er nai” and so start again the process of clothing, feeding and housing an attractive woman new to Shenzhen.   

Food and sex. They are life’s two most basic drives, as well as the fuel that has kept China’s commercial centers buzzing for well over a thousand years.

 

 

The Closing of the American Mind: Seeing China As It Was, Not As It Is

2 Comments / October 31, 2009

China First Capital blog post -- Qing Dynasty dragon plate

I recently returned from a two-week stay in the US. I was very busy seeing friends and business colleagues, which means I was also very busy answering questions about China. 

China occupies a very special place in the minds of many Americans, including many who’ve never been. The level of curiosity in America about China is enormous. This contrasts notably with the indifference with which many Americans view the world abroad. For example, during the 14 years I spent in London, I never found my American friends to be very interested in what life was like in England. Not so China. 

But, this intense curiosity is not matched by a deep knowledge among Americans about the current situation in China. In fact, even among the most well-read and worldly-wise of my friends, the level of ignorance about today’s China is high. That’s largely because the American media, for the most part, does an execrable job covering China. The result is that most Americans have an excessive focus on what’s perceived to be “human rights problems” in China, and a vast under-appreciation of the monumental, positive changes that China is now undergoing. 

My local shoe repair guy in Shenzhen has a more nuanced understanding of the US than most educated Americans have about China. Every time I get my shoes polished, I end up discussing the genesis of the American credit crisis and the challenges President Obama faces in trying to change America’s health care system. In the US, the main topics of discussion about China reflect an exaggerated negative view of what’s going on. Nine times out of ten, people want to comment on pollution and product quality, as if China was one large Satanic mill turning out killer toys. 

Of course, the speed and scope of all the positive changes in China are so awesome it’s difficult for anyone, including Chinese, to fully appreciate just how far the country has come in a short time. But, in my experience, the American misapprehensions about China have a stale, time-worn quality about them, as if America’s view of China stop evolving about five years ago. 

A friend of mine, for example, writes about Chinese-American relations for a leading US publication. He talked about the issues he’s most busy writing about and what is of greatest concern to the Americans now guiding policy toward China. North Korea and Iran figured prominently in the discussion, and he relayed the US strategy to win China’s backing for the American position.

There was lots of talk of high-level diplomatic meetings and various quids-pro-quo. While all this is no doubt important to the safety of the world,  I couldn’t help feeling that it also demonstrated a lot of wishful thinking on America’s part, that China would still be, as it often once was,  highly responsive to America’s strategic needs. 

The US has long commanded significant leverage over China. But, that leverage is lessening by the day. One reason, of course, is China’s own rising economic and military power. But, less noticed and perhaps even more important is that China is less and less reliant on access to the US market to sustain its own economy.

China’s economy is increasingly driven by its own domestic market, rather than exports. This is why China could absorb without much dislocation the sharp fall in exports to the US over the last year. Exports will continue to play a larger role in China’s economy than in America’s. But, its economy is changing, and growing far more balanced. 

China will more and more resemble the US — a large, continent-sized economy that grows by meeting the needs of its own citizens, and providing a stable environment for business to invest. This change has many more years to run. The simple formula: China can listen less to what the US wants because it needs less of what the US has to offer in return. 

This, too, is a change that seems to have escaped the notice of most Americans, including those in a policy-making position. China isn’t simply being difficult or stubborn by failing to tow a US line. It’s also less concerned about calibrating its own policies to expand the markets for its exports to the US. The last time the US was in recession, China’s economy was also badly bruised. Not so this time. OEM exporters have suffered, but not the businesses that focus on selling to Chinese consumers. They’ve played a key role in keeping China’s economy healthy, while the US has faltered. 

Americans need to see China for what it is, not what it was. It’s a better, richer, cleaner, freer place than they think. Americans may just learn to like what they see..

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