China's patient crusader

China's patient crusader
耐心的中国改革者―单伟建

Weijian Shan is fighting to make Chinese business more normal
单伟建―为改善中国商业氛围而战
May 12th 2005 | from the print edition

          

TENDING pumpkins and hauling bricks in the Gobi desert as a young man, Weijian Shan kept recalling a line from the Chinese poet, Li Bai: "There must be a use for someone like myself." At the time, that did not seem obvious: banished there from Beijing during the Cultural Revolution when he was 15, Mr Shan spent six years in a poor farming village doing hard manual labour with little hope of getting out and no sense of a future.

单伟建喜欢引用李白的一句诗歌："天生我材必有用。"他年轻时在戈壁滩上看过南瓜藤、搬过砖块。不过，在那时候，他的才能并没显露出来。在他十五岁的时候，中国正在进行"文化大革命"，单伟建被从北京下放到戈壁滩。他在一个贫穷的农庄呆了六年，干着繁重的体力活，几乎看不到走出农庄的希望，对未来也没有半点概念。

Today, he has found a use for himself. Now 51, Mr Shan is a managing partner of Newbridge Capital, one of the most successful private-equity firms in Asia, and one of a handful of senior businessmen bringing western capital, ideas and management to the region's firms. While private equity is currently extremely hot in China, deals are risky, because of poor corporate governance and the absence of obvious exit strategies―that is, ways to realise the value of a successful deal. At a minimum, private-equity firms in China should control the board of a firm they buy, above all in banking, where corruption is rife. Last autumn Newbridge won final approval for an unusual―and perhaps one-off―deal, spending $160m on an 18% stake in Shenzhen Development Bank (SDB). This made Newbridge the largest shareholder. Mr Shan's formidable connections helped Newbridge also to gain control over management, a first for a foreign investor in a Chinese bank.

现在，他已经找到了施展自己才华的地方。现年51岁的他，是亚洲著名的私募股权投资公司新桥投资公司（简称"新桥投资"）执行合伙人，他也是为数不多的讲西方资本理念以及管理模式引人亚洲公司的先驱人物之一。当下，私募股权在中国如火如荼，交易风险极高，因为公司监管效力不佳，且无明确地投资退出战略。而这些正是一桩交易取得成功不可或缺的因素。至少，中国的私募股权公司在购买一家公司股权后，应该在该公司董事会中享有控制权，在腐败盛行的银行业中更该如此。去年秋天，新桥投资以1.6亿美元（约合 亿人民币）收购深圳发展银行（简称"深发展"）18%股权的交易最终获批，这是极为罕见的，也可以说是一次性交易。该交易完成后，新桥投资成为深发展最大股东。单伟建利用其不可思议的人际关系，帮助新桥获得了深发展的管理控制权，并使新桥成为第一家控股中资银行的外资机构。

Mao Zedong's purges halted Mr Shan's formal education at the age of 12. He risked punishment by spending evenings in the Gobi in a disused shed, perched on the handle of a spade, reading by kerosene lamplight. Education offered an escape. "Anyone can be lucky or unlucky," he says. "But I would have felt regret if there was an opportunity and I was not prepared." He read everything, from medical books and pesticide manuals to Chinese classics. Using Voice of America radio and an old dictionary, he taught himself English―though his pronunciation was so bad that when he first spoke it no one understood him. The desert taught him not to give up, and to wait. "Once you have experienced hardship―starvation is the worst―you don't think anything is hard anymore," he says. "You learn patience."

单伟建十二岁那年，毛泽东时代展开的政治运动中断了他正常的学业，使他一度失去了接受教育的机会。但他仍然冒着受罚的危险，晚上在戈壁滩一座废弃的小棚里，拄着铁锹，点着煤油灯自学。他说，"每个人都是幸运的，也可以说是不幸的；但是，如果机会来了，而我却没准备好，我会感到遗憾。"他读的书很多，从医学著作、农药说明书到中国典籍，他都读 。他还通过听美国广播、查旧字典自学英语。他刚开始说英语的时候，因为的发音不好，没有人能听懂他在说什么。在戈壁滩的生活教会了他坚持和等待。"在经历困难时，特别是面临饥饿这样的大困难时，你就会认为不会有比饥饿更困难的事了，你学会了有耐心。"他说。

Mr Shan's chance came in 1975. As the Cultural Revolution drew to an end, his work unit lobbied to get him a chance to study English in Beijing. He then moved to America, where he spent 12 years. He gained an MBA, a doctorate in business and a masters in economics; spent several months at the World Bank; taught as a business professor at Wharton in Pennsylvania for six years, where he founded a journal, the China Economic Review; and joined J.P. Morgan, becoming a managing director.

一九七五年，单伟建遇到了机会。随着文革接近尾声，他在工作单位的推荐下有了去北京学习英语的机会。后来，他又去了美国，并在那呆了十二年。在美国，他拿到了工商管理硕士（MBA）学位、经济学硕士学位和商科博士学位。他在世界银行工作了几个月，也在宾夕法尼亚大学沃顿商学院做过六年教授。在这期间，他创办了一本杂志―《中国经济评论》，后来他加入了摩根大通，并成为其董事总经理。

The bank sent him to Hong Kong, where he was snapped up by Newbridge, a spin-off from Texas Pacific Group, a big American private-equity firm that was just launching in the region. Buying and restructuring firms hit by Asia's economic crisis was then a popular strategy. One such deal, for Korea First Bank, which Newbridge bought from South Korea's government in 1999 and sold to Standard Chartered in January 2005 for $3.3 billion, almost quadrupling its money, put Newbridge on the map.
后来，他被摩根大通派驻香港。在港期间，他被美国私募股权公司德州太平洋集团（简称"ＴＰＧ"）旗下新桥投资公司看中。当时，ＴＰＧ刚刚在亚洲设立办事处。当时，购买和重组受亚洲金融危机打击的公司是一种很盛行的投资策略。一九九九年，新桥投资从韩国政府手中收购了韩国第一银行，之后又于二零零五年一月以三十三亿美元出售给渣打银行。该交易获利接近原始投资额的四倍，这也使新桥投资一战成名。

That experience, plus the backing secured by Mr Shan from China's top policymakers, gave the firm the confidence to bid for SDB, at a time when few outside investors were willing to touch a Chinese bank, riddled with bad loans and corruption. The takeover required all of Mr Shan's patience. There was a competing bid from Taiwan to see off, and the Shenzhen city-owned sellers kept changing their minds. All told, the process took over two years. Newbridge, fed up, nearly walked away. Mr Shan alone was willing to wait, but "if I had wanted to give up, nobody would have disagreed with me."

以上这些经历，再加上单伟建拥有的中国高层领导者关系背景，使新桥投资有信心为竞购深发展一搏。那时，很少有外国投资者愿意染指一家中国银行，因为中国银行坏账成堆、腐败成风。这项收购案，显示出了单伟建的耐心。当时，新桥还面临台湾一家对手的竞争，而深发展这个由深圳市政府所有的卖家也一直举棋不定。整个收购过程持续了两年多。新桥投资可谓是人困马乏，交易几近取消。只有单伟建一直在等待，他说，"如果我选择放弃，没有人会有意见。"

Mr Shan's patient determination―something his opponents find irritating―may say as much about his principles as his business ambition. In the rabidly anti-capitalist China in which he grew up, nobody aspired to a career in industry. "I never thought I would become a vulgar businessman," he laughs, rueing that in China wealth is becoming a yardstick of achievement and respect. Even so, his understanding of how modern China has evolved, from Confucianism to communism and now increasingly to capitalism, allows him to operate comfortably within it.

单伟建的耐心正是他的竞争对手们感到苦恼的东西，也许那更可能是他做生意的原则。他在坚决反对资本主义的中国长大，没有人想在行业里有所发展。他笑着说，"我从来没有想过我会成为一个庸俗的商人"。同时，他对财富正在成为评判中国人成功的尺码而遗憾。不过，他了解现代中国取得的进步。从孔孟之道到社会主义，再到今天的日益资本主义化，这也使得他能在此间如鱼得水。

The wisdom of the West

西方智慧

It has also led him to believe that he can make it work better, by introducing what he has learned in the West. For a Chinese businessman, Mr Shan is unusually outspoken, and sometimes prickly, as he seeks to change China's business culture by writing newspaper editorials, giving speeches and serving as an independent board director. On the board of Baosteel, a big steel firm, he successfully objected to its purchase of a finance operation from its unlisted parent, arguing that this had nothing to do with steelmaking. On the board of China Unicom, he questioned Beijing's decision to shuffle managers between the country's telecoms firms. On the board of Bank of China's Hong Kong arm, he played a crucial part in launching an independent inquiry after a scandal in 2004 over questionable loans.

单伟建相信，利用他在西方学到的东西，他能做的更好。和常见的中国商人不同，他常常直言不讳，有时可以说是言辞尖锐。为了改变中国的商业文化，他写新闻报道，发表演讲，在一些公司做独立董事。单伟建在中国大型钢铁公司宝钢担任董事时，他有效地反对了宝钢收购一家未上市的母公司的财务运营机构的提案。他指出，宝钢的这一举措与炼钢根本没有关系。担任中国联通公司董事时，他质疑中国政府调整中国电信企业领导人这一做法的合理性。出任中银香港董事期间，他在二零零四年香港问题贷款丑闻发生后成立的独立质询机构中扮演了重要角色。

Mr Shan's biggest concern now is China's current bank-financed investment binge, which he says is leading to huge capacity increases and profitless growth. The solution, he argues, is to clean up the banks and to introduce proper incentives for loan officers, weaning them off lending based on relationships not returns. That is what Newbridge did at Korea First, writing off bad debts, cutting risky loans to big firms and building a more profitable business in mortgages and credit cards. Using that model, a successful turnaround of SDB, now a weak second-tier lender, would create a much-needed oasis of rigour inside China's otherwise wretched banking system. Can it be done? Mr Shan understands the risks better than most―and, clearly, life has given him plenty of reasons to be hopeful.

现在,单伟建最担心的问题是，中国现行的无节制的银行金融投资行为导致资本疯长，却无利可图。他指出，解决这一问题的方法是整顿银行体系，向贷款机构引入合适的刺激机制，根除靠关系贷而不还的现象。新桥在收购韩国第一银行时撇消坏账、去除了向大企业提供的高风险贷款，并转而发展利润率更高的抵押贷款和信用卡业务。通过这一模式，目前还是二级贷款机构的深发展或将成功转型，为中国银行业注入新的活力，以避免产生糟糕的银行系统。这些举措是否能奏效呢？单伟建有着比别人更强的风险意识，也因为如此，生活总是让他有足够的理由充满希望。