Why the China rainmaker just won’t go away I The ins and outs of mandate hunting
Lee Zhang: at the top of the Deutsche tree I Fang Fenglei and Fred Hu: one bank, two rainmakers I Henry Cai: a new breed of dealmaker
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Zhang Liping: reputation built on getting deals done |
Zhang Liping and Janice Hu of Credit Suisse are China’s quiet rainmakers. Both shy away from the limelight, preferring to let their deal records speak for themselves. They also embody two diverse but equally effective strains of rainmaker.
Zhang seems to have been around for ever, having worked on many of the landmark stock sales of state-run mainland firms in the 1990s.
Like Merrill Lynch’s Erhfei Liu, another oft-cited China rainmaker who is currently moving to a more private equity-focused position at his bank, Zhang is not a so-called princeling, one of the coterie of bankers, financiers, and social and business climbers related to senior Beijing mandarins. His reputation has been built on a solid ability to get deals done, rather than rely on family connections.
Thin, wiry and ascetic, Zhang spent seven years in the 1990s with Merrill Lynch, where he completed several landmark transactions including the initial public offering of Shanghai Petrochemical, which in 1993 became the first mainland firm to list shares simultaneously in Hong Kong and New York.
