China Private Equity

The formula for success in private equity is simple the world over: make lots of money investing other people’s money, keep 20% of the profits and pay little or no taxes on your share of the take. This tax avoidance is perfectly legal. PE firms are usually incorporated as offshore holding companies in tax-free domains like the Cayman Islands.

Depending on their nationality, partners at PE firms may need to pay some tax on the profits distributed to them individually. But, some quick footwork can also keep the taxman at bay. For example, I know PE partners who are Chinese nationals, living in Hong Kong. They plan their lives to be sure not to be in either Hong Kong or China for more than 182 days a year, and so escape most individual taxes as well. Even when they pay, it’s usually at the capital gains rate, which is generally far lower than income tax.

The tax efficiency is fundamental to private equity, and most other forms of fiduciary investing. If the PE firm’s profits were assessed with income tax ahead of distributions to Limited Partners (“LPs”), it would significantly reduce the overall rate of return, to say nothing about potentially incurring double taxation when those LPs share of profits got dinged again by the tax man.

China, as everyone in the PE world knows, is very keen to foster growth of its own homegrown private equity firms. It has introduced a raft of new rules to allow PE firms to incorporate, invest Renminbi and exit via IPO in China. So far so good. The Chinese government is also pouring huge sums of its own cash into private equity, either directly through state-owned companies and agencies, or indirectly through the country’s pay-as-you-go social security fund. (See my recent blog post here.)

Exact figures are hard to come by. But, it’s a safe bet that at least Rmb100 billion (USD$15 billion) in capital was committed to domestic private equity firms last year. This year should see even larger number of new domestic PE firms established, and even larger quadrants of capital poured in.

It’s going to be a few years yet before the successful Chinese domestic PE firms start returning significant investment profits to their investors. When they do, their investors will likely be in for something of an unpleasant surprise: the PE firms’ profits, almost certainly, will be reduced by as much as 25% because of income tax.

In other words, along with building a large homegrown PE industry that can rival those of the US and Europe, China is also determined to assess those domestic PE firms with sizable income taxes. These two policy priorities may turn out to be wholly incompatible. PE firms, more than most, have a deep, structural aversion to paying income tax on their profits. For one thing, doing so will cut dramatically into the personal profits earned by PE partners, lowering significantly the after-tax returns for these professionals. If so, the good ones will be tempted to move to Hong Kong to keep more of their share of the profits they earn investing others’ money. If so, then China could get deprived of some experienced and talented PE partners its young industry can ill afford to lose.

It’s still early days for the PE industry in China. Renminbi PE firms really only got started two years ago. I’ve yet to hear any partners of domestic PE firms complain. But, my guess is that the complaining will begin just as soon as these PE firms begin to have successful exits and begin to write very large checks to the Chinese tax bureau. What then?

China’s tax code is nothing if not fluid. New tax rules are announced and implemented on a weekly basis. Sometimes taxes go down. Most often lately, they go up.  Compared to developed countries, changing the tax code in China is simpler, speedier. So, if the Chinese government discovers that taxing PE firms is causing problems, it can reverse the policy rather quickly.

The PE firms will likely argue that taxing their profits will end up hurting hundreds of millions of ordinary Chinese whose pensions will be smaller because the PE firms’ gains are subject to tax. In industry, this is known as the “widows and orphans defense”. Chinese contribute a share of their paycheck to the state pension system, which then invests this amount on their behalf, including about 10% going to PE investment.

PE firms outside China are structured as offshore companies, with offices in places like London, New York and Hong Kong, but a tax presence in low- and no-tax domains. But, there’s currently no real way to do this in China, to raise, invest and earn Renminbi in an offshore entity. Changing that opens up an even larger can of worms, the current restrictions preventing most companies or individuals outside China from holding or investing Renminbi. This restriction plays a key part in China’s all-important Renminbi exchange rate policy, and management of the country’s nearly $2.8 trillion of foreign reserves.

The world’s major PE firms are excitedly now raising Renminbi funds. Several have already succeeded, including Carlyle and TPG. They want access to domestic investment opportunities as well as the high exit multiples on China’s stock market. When and if the income tax rules start to bite and the firm’s partners get a look at their diminished take, they may find the appeal of working and investing in China far less alluring.

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For Chinese private companies, one obstacle looms largest along the path to an IPO in China: the need to become fully compliant with China’s tax and accounting rules.  This process of becoming “规范” (or “guifan” in Pinyin)  is not only essential for any Chinese company seeking private equity and an eventual IPO, it is also often the most difficult, expensive, and tedious task a Chinese entrepreneur will ever undertake.

More good Chinese companies are shut out from capital markets or from raising private equity because of this “guifan” problem than any other reason. It is also the most persistent challenge for all of us active in the PE industry and in assisting SME to become publicly-traded businesses.

My firm has just published a Chinese-language research report on the topic, titled “民营企业上市规范问题”. You can download a copy by clicking here or from Research Reports page of the CFC website.

The report was written specifically for an audience of Chinese SME bosses, to provide them both with analysis and recommendations on how to manage this process successfully.  Our goal here (as with all of our research reports) is to provide tools for Chinese entrepreneurs to become leaders in their industry, and eventually leaders on the stock market. That means more PE capital gets deployed, more private Chinese companies stage successful exits and most important, China’s private sector economy continues its robust growth.

For English-only speakers, here’s a summary of some of the key points in the report:

1. The process of becoming “guifan” will almost always mean that a Chinese company must begin to invoice all sales and purchases, and so pay much higher rates of tax, two to three years before any IPO can take place
2. The higher tax rate will mean less cash for the business to invest in its own expansion. This, in turn, can lead to an erosion in market share, since “non-guifan” competitors will suddenly enjoy significant cost advantages
3. Another likely consequence of becoming “guifan” – significantly lower net margins. This, in turn, impacts valuation at IPO
4. The best way to lower the impact of “guifan” is to get more cash into the business as the process begins, either new bank lending or private equity. This can replenish the money that must now will go to pay the taxman, and so pump up the capital available to expansion and re-investment
5. As a general rule, most  Chinese private companies with profits of at least Rmb30mn can raise at least five times more PE capital than they will pay in increased annual taxes from becoming “guifan”. A good trade-off, but not a free lunch
6. For a PE fund, it’s necessary to accept that some of the money they invest in a private Chinese company will go, in effect, to pay Chinese taxes. But, since only “guifan” companies will get approved for a domestic Chinese IPO, the higher tax payments are like a toll payment to achieve exit at China’s high IPO valuations
7. After IPO, the company will have plenty of money to expand its scale and so, in the best cases, claw back any cost disadvantage or net margin decline during the run-up to IPO

We spend more time dealing with “guifan” issues than just about anything else in our client work. Often that means working to develop valuation methodologies that allow our clients to raise PE capital without being excessively penalized for any short-term decrease in net income caused by “guifan” process.

Along with the meaty content, the report also features fifteen images of Tang Dynasty “Sancai“ ceramics, perhaps my favorite among all of China’s many sublime styles of pottery.

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I commend unreservedly the following article from today’s Wall Street Journal editorial page. It discusses US reverse mergers and OTCBB IPOs for Chinese companies, identifying reasons these deals happen and the harm that’s often done.

What’s Behind China’s Reverse IPOs?

A dysfunctional financial system pushes companies toward awkward deals in America.

By JOSEPH STERNBERG

As if China Inc. didn’t already have enough problems in America—think safety scares, currency wars, investment protectionism and Sen. Chuck Schumer—now comes the Securities and Exchange Commission. Regulators are investigating allegations of accounting irregularities at several Chinese companies whose shares are traded in America thanks to so-called reverse mergers. Regulators, and not a few reporters, worry that American investors may have been victims of frauds perpetrated by shady foreign firms.

Allow us to posit a different view: Despite the inevitable bad apples, many of the firms involved in this type of deal are as much sinned against as sinning.

In a reverse merger, the company doing the deal injects itself into a dormant shell company, of which the injected company’s management then takes control. In the China context, the deal often works like this: China Widget transfers all its assets into California Tallow Candle Inc., a dormant company with a vestigial penny-stock listing left over from when it was a real firm. China Widget’s management simultaneously takes over CTC, which is now in the business of making widgets in China. And thanks to that listing, China Widget also is now listed in America.

It’s an odd deal. The goal of a traditional IPO is to extract cash from the global capital market. A reverse merger, in contrast, requires the Chinese company to expend capital to execute what is effectively a purchase of the shell company. The company then hopes it can turn to the market for cash at some point in the future via secondary offerings.

Despite its evident economic inefficiencies, the technique has grown popular in recent years. Hundreds of Chinese companies are now listed in the U.S. via this arrangement, with a combined market capitalization of tens of billions of dollars. Some of those may be flim-flammers looking to make a deceitful buck. But by all accounts, many more are legitimate companies. Why do they do it?

One relatively easy explanation is that the Chinese companies have been taken advantage of by unscrupulous foreign banks and lawyers. In China’s still-new economy with immature domestic financial markets, it’s entirely plausible that a large class of first-generation entrepreneurs are relatively naïve about the art of capital-raising but see a listing—any listing—as a point of pride and a useful marketing tool. There may be an element of truth here, judging by the reports from some law firms that they now receive calls from Chinese companies desperate to extract themselves from reverse mergers. (The news for them is rarely good.)

More interesting, however, is the systemic backdrop against which reverse mergers play out. Chinese entrepreneurs face enormous hurdles securing capital. A string of record-breaking IPOs for the likes of Agricultural Bank of China, plus hundred-million-dollar deals for companies like Internet search giant Baidu, show that Beijing has figured out how to use stock markets at home and abroad to get capital to large state-owned or well-connected private-sector firms. The black market can deliver capital to the smallest businesses, albeit at exorbitant interest rates of as much as 200% on an annual basis.

The weakness is with mid-sized private-sector companies. Bank lending is out of reach since loan officers favor large, state-owned enterprises. IPOs involve a three-year application process with an uncertain outcome since regulators carefully control the supply of new shares to ensure a buoyant market. Private equity is gaining in popularity but is still relatively new, and the uncertain IPO process deters some investors who would prefer greater clarity about their exit strategy. In this climate, it’s not necessarily a surprise that some impatient Chinese entrepreneurs view the reverse merger, for all its pitfalls, as a viable shortcut.

So although the SEC investigation is likely to attract ample attention to the U.S. investor- protection aspect of this story, that is the least consequential angle. Rules (even bad ones) are rules. But these shares are generally held by sophisticated hedge-fund managers and penny-stock day traders who ought to know that what they do is a form of glorified gambling.

Rather, consider the striking reality that some 30-odd years after starting its transformation to a form of capitalism, China still has not figured out one of capitalism’s most important features: the allocation of capital from those who have it to those who need it. As corporate savings pile up at inefficient state-owned enterprises, potentially successful private companies find themselves with few outlets to finance expansion. If Beijing can’t solve that problem quickly, a controversy over some penny stocks will be the least of anyone’s problems.

Mr. Sternberg is an editorial page writer for The Wall Street Journal Asia.

The flow of money into private equity in China is fast becoming a deluge. Six months ago, new rules were introduced to allow the country’s insurance companies to invest up to 5% of their Rmb4.8 trillion of assets in PE funds investing in China. If fully invested, that would be Rmb240 billion ($36 billion) of new capital for an investment class that is already flooded with liquidity.  Insurance assets are growing by over 15% a year, which means at least another $5 billion a year available in coming years for PE investing.

The other fire hose of capital is the National Social Security Fund (NSSF), subject of a recent blog post of mine. The NSSF is pumping Rmb80 billion ($12 billion) into PE investing in China, and expects to add an additional $1.5 billion a year in new capital for same purpose. Never before, in the space of twelve months has so much new capital poured a single class of illiquid investing.

In part, these institutions are chasing returns. Insurance companies and the NSSF both have very large longer-term liabilities, mainly in the form of retirement pensions and life insurance policies. PE investing can jazz up overall returns for institutions that otherwise park their money in safe but tepid investments like government bonds.

PE investing in China has certainly been performing well lately. The more successful firms have been earning returns of +40% a year for investors. For insurance companies, that kind of performance (40% returns on 5% of its assets) would deliver 2% base annual return. For the NSSF, with up to 10% of its assets going to PE, the potential rewards would be higher.

The investments in PE also serve a patriotic purpose. By providing additional growth capital for Chinese entrepreneurs, PE investment should help increase employment and overall economic growth in China. The insurance companies are all majority state-owned.  The NSSF is a branch of government.  Invest carefully, earn a good return and contribute to building China. That summarizes the management goals for insurance companies and the NSSF alike.

Less clear is what overall effect of all this state-controlled money on the PE industry in China. Like any other asset class, the more capital that pours in, the lower the overall returns are likely to be. The insurance companies and NSSF aren’t the only – or even the main – source of capital for the PE industry. There is already billions of dollars available for PE firms from LPs in China, the US, Europe, Japan. By some estimates, as much as $30 billion in new capital has already flowed into PE firms over the last year for investment in China. This excludes the money from the NSSF and insurance companies.

All this new capital is enough to fund PE investments in over 5,000 companies, based on a typical PE deal size in China. Are there that many good deals out there? It’s hard to say. Overall,  I’m very bullish about the number of great private companies and great PE investment opportunities in China.

The big bottleneck is certain to be within the PE firms themselves. The good ones, currently, do anywhere from 10-15 deals a year, and look seriously at another 25- 40 companies. They don’t have the partners and skilled staff to review, close and manage many more deals than this a year. The irony here: while PE firms demand portfolio companies use PE capital efficiently and scale quickly after investment, PE firms generally have no such ability. Adding capital to PE firms is like adding salt to soup.  More is not necessarily better.

As the amount of capital has surged, the preferred deal size of the more successful PE firms in China has risen steeply, from $10 million per deal, to over $25 million now. But,  in China, bigger deals are not generally better deals. Often, the opposite is true. The best PE investment I know of, for example, was the $5 million investment Goldman Sachs made in Shenzhen pharmaceutical company Hepalink. Its investment rose 240 times in value, based on Hepalink’s IPO price last year.

More capital also can also skew the priorities and tame the animal instincts of PE firms. When money is easy to raise,  as it is now, PE firms can spend more time on this than hunting for great companies. It’s easy to understand why. For every $100 million they raise, a PE firm generally keeps $2 million in annual management fees. This management fee income keeps rolling in like an annuity, regardless of how well the PE firm is doing in its “day job” of putting capital to work on behalf of investors.

Insurance companies and NSSF can generally negotiate a lower management fee. But, the incentive is still there for PE firms to focus on raising money rather than investing it.

The PE industry in China is blessed, as nowhere else is, with abundant capital, stellar investment opportunities and favorable IPO markets. My view: over the next decade, PE deals in China will produce more wealth for entrepreneurs and investors that any other major asset class anywhere in the world. Anything less will mean many opportunities in China were squandered rather than seized.

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In my experience, there is one catastrophic risk for a successful private company in China. Not inflation, or competition, or government meddling. It’s the risk of doing a bad capital markets deal in the US, particularly a reverse merger or OTCBB listing.  At last count, over 600 Chinese companies have leapt off these cliffs, and few have survived, let alone prospered. Not so, of course, the army of advisors, lawyers and auditors who often profit obscenely from arranging these transactions.

Not before time, the US Congress and SEC are both now finally investigating these transactions and the harm they have done to Chinese companies as well as stock market investors in the US. Here is a Chinese language column I wrote on this subject for Forbes China: click here to read.

As an American, I’m often angry and always embarrassed that the capital market in my homeland has been such an inhospitable place for so many good Chinese companies. In fact, my original reason for starting China First Capital over two years ago was to help a Jiangxi entrepreneur raise PE finance to expand his business, rather than doing a planned “Form 10” OTCBB.

We raised the money, and his company has since quadrupled in size. The founder is now planning an IPO in Hong Kong later this year, underwritten by the world’s preeminent global investment bank. The likely IPO valuation: at least 10 times higher than what was promised to him from that OTCBB IPO, which was to be sponsored by a “microcap” broker with a dubious record from earlier Chinese OTCBB deals.

In general, the only American companies that do OTCBB IPOs are the weakest businesses, often with no revenues or profits. When a good Chinese company has an OTCBB IPO, its choice of using that process will always cast large and ineradicable doubts in the mind of US investors. The suspicion is, any Chinese entrepreneur who chooses a reverse merger or OTCBB IPO either has flawed business judgment or plans to defraud his investors. This is why so many of the Chinese companies quoted on the OTCBB companies have microscopic p/e multiples, sometimes less than 1X current year’s earnings.

The US government is finally beginning to evaluate the damage caused by this “mincing machine” that takes Chinese SME and arranges their OTCBB or reverse mergers. According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, “The US Securities and Exchange Commission has begun a crackdown on “reverse takeover” market for Chinese companies. Specifically, the SEC’s enforcement and corporation-finance divisions have begun a wide-scale investigation into how networks of accountants, lawyers, and bankers have helped bring scores of Chinese companies onto the U.S. stock markets.”

In addition, the US Congress is considering holding hearings. Their main goal is to protect US investors, since several Chinese companies that listed on OTCBB were later found to have fraudulent accounting.

But, if the SEC and Congress does act, the biggest beneficiaries may be Chinese companies. The US government may make it harder for Chinese companies to do OTCBB IPO and reverse mergers. If so, then these Chinese firms will need to follow a more reliable, tried-and-true path to IPO, including a domestic IPO with CSRC approval.

The advisors who promote OTCBB IPO and reverse mergers always say it is the fastest, easiest way to become a publicly-traded company. They are right. These methods are certainly fast and because of the current lack of US regulation, very easy. Indeed, there is no faster way to turn a good Chinese company into a failed publicly-traded than through an OTCBB IPO or reverse merger.

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For Chinese entrepreneurs, there has never been a better time to become a publicly-traded company.  China’s Shenzhen Stock Exchange is now the world’s largest and most active IPO market in the world. Chinese companies are also active raising billions of dollars of IPO capital abroad, in Hong Kong and New York.

The main question successful Chinese entrepreneurs face is not whether to IPO, but where.

To help entrepreneurs make that decision, CFC has just completed a research study and published its latest Chinese language research report. The report, titled “民营企业如何选择境内上市还是境外上市” (” Offshore or Domestic IPO – Assessing Choices for Chinese SME”) analyzes advantages and disadvantages for Chinese SME  of IPO in China, Hong Kong, USA as well as smaller markets like Singapore and Korea.

The report can be downloaded from the Research Reports section of the CFC website , or by clicking here:  CFC’s IPO Difference Report (民营企业如何选择境内上市还是境外上市)

We want the report to help make the IPO decision-making process more fact-based, more successful for entrepreneurs. According to the report, there are three key differences between a domestic or offshore IPO. They are:

1. Valuation, p/e multiples
2. IPO approval process – cost and timing of planning an IPO
3. Accounting and tax rules

At first glance, most Chinese SME bosses will think a domestic IPO on the Shanghai or Shenzhen Stock Exchanges is always the wiser choice, because p/e multiples at IPO in China are generally at least twice the level in Hong Kong or US. But, this valuation differential can often be more apparent than real. Hong Kong and US IPOs are valued on a forward p/e basis. Domestic Chinese IPOs are valued on trailing year’s earnings. For a fast-growing Chinese company, getting 22X this year’s earnings in Hong Kong can yield more money for the company than a domestic IPO t 40X p/e, using last year’s earnings.

Chasing valuations is never a good idea. Stock market p/e ratios change frequently. The gap between domestic Chinese IPOs and Hong Kong and US ones has been narrowing for most of this year. Regulations are also continuously changing. As of now, it’s still difficult, if not impossible, for a domestically-listed Chinese company to do a secondary offering. You only get one bite of the capital-raising apple. In Hong Kong and US markets, a company can raise additional capital, or issue convertible debt, after an IPO.  This factor needs to be kept very much in mind by any Chinese company that will continue to need capital even after a successful domestic IPO.

We see companies like this frequently. They are growing so quickly in China’s buoyant domestic market that even a domestic IPO and future retained earnings may not provide all the expansion capital they will need.

Another key difference: it can take three years or more for many Chinese companies to complete the approval process for a domestic IPO. Will the +70X p/e  multiples now available on Shenzhen’s ChiNext market still be around then? It’s impossible to predict. Our advice to Chinese entrepreneurs is make the decision on where to IPO by evaluating more fundamental strengths and weaknesses of China’s domestic capital markets and those abroad, including differences in investor behavior, disclosure rules, legal liability.

China’s stock market is driven by individual investors. Volatility tends to be higher than in Hong Kong and the US, where most shares are owned by institutions.

One factor that is equally important for either domestic or offshore IPO: an SME will have a better chance of a successful IPO if it has private equity investment before its IPO. The transition to a publicly-listed company is complex, with significant risks. A PE investor can help guide an SME through this process, lowering the risks and costs in an IPO.

As the report emphasizes, an IPO is a financing method, not a goal by itself. An IPO will usually be the lowest-cost way for a private business to raise capital for expansion.  Entrepreneurs need to be smart about how to use capital markets most efficiently, for the purposes of building a bigger and better company.

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Soon to be the world’s largest pool of investment capital for the private equity industry, China’s National Social Security Fund will be responsible for paying the pensions of hundreds of millions of workers in China. It will eventually need trillions of dollars to do so. The good news for workers in China, the NSSF is professionally, carefully and competently run. China’s huge pool of pension cash is in safe hands.

I recently talked to the partner at a Chinese PE fund that is soon to receive some of the NSSF money. The report: the NSSF, though new to the world of private equity investment, has a process for choosing PE firms that is as rigorous as many of the world’s most sophisticated and investment managers. There are multiple levels of due diligence, including outside lawyers, accountants, and consultants who assess the investment performance and strategy of a PE firm, interview PE partners at length, and then provide the NSSF with recommendations.

The NSSF has used Singapore’s much-smaller but very well-managed Central Provident Fund as a model. Workers contribute part of their pay, and the money is then managed and invested by the government fund to achieve a solid rate of return that will provide for a reasonable monthly pay-out at retirement.

In contrast, the public pension systems in the US and much of Europe are thinly-disguised forms of taxation. The government collects money with each paycheck, promising to pay workers a monthly allowance when they retire. Cash from current workers is used to pay the pensions of those who have already retired. The system works fine when pensions are kept to a modest level and there are always many more people working then retired. Neither of these are true in Europe and the US. These pension plans have enormous unfunded liabilities that can be met only through cutting pension payments in the future, raising taxes on current workers or both. It’s grim.

China, wisely, chose a much sounder method of funding public pensions, when it began introducing state pensions over the last decade. Cash is invested for the future, not spent as soon as it arrives. A 35 year-old Chinese worker has a far better chance of collecting a decent state pension in 30 years than an American one. The US system is technically insolvent. The Chinese one is rolling in cash.

The NSSF had Rmb 777 billion ($120 billion) in assets at the end of 2009.  The assets are growing swiftly. More Chinese each year join the urban workforce, and so have a percentage of their salary handed over to the NSSF. Salaries are also rising fast, which sends more money into the pension system each year. Either by the end of this year, or certainly by next, the NSSF’s assets should surpass those of CALPERS , and become the world’s largest pension fund and largest Private Equity Limited Partner (“LP”), as investors in PE firms are called.

Though a government agency, the NSSF is managed like a private pension fund. It invests its capital in a mix of assets, to earn a reasonable, safe, risk-adjusted return to meet pension obligations in the future. Depending on NSSF’s investment performance, its assets should be approaching $500 billion within five years.

Most of the NSSF capital is invested in low-risk and low-yielding bonds. The NSSF’s target is an investment return of at least 3.5% a year. As part of the asset mix, the NSSF is also planning to invest about 10% of its capital in “alternative assets”,  mainly with private equity firms investing in China. It has already begun placing capital with PE firms, including CDH, SAIF Partners, New Horizon Fund.

The NSSF will likely commit over Rmb20 billion ($3 billion) a year in new capital to private equity in China. That dwarfs the activity of all other LPs in the world, including pension funds, insurance companies, university endowments.

As long as the NSSF maintains its professional approach to choosing PE firms to invest with, I’m confident it will earn a good rate of return on its PE investments. The better PE firms are earning returns of over 33% a year from their investments in China. Looking out twenty to thirty years in the future, state pensions in China will be more secure and more generous because of the investment in PE funds.

There is no better risk-adjusted asset class in the world today than investing in private Chinese companies. This is precisely what Chinese PE firms do. They provide growth capital to companies that are usually already large, profitable and successful.  The only constraint is capital. PE firms provide it, generally at modest valuations of around ten times current year’s profits.

In two to three years, these same companies will IPO in China at valuations of at least forty times past year’s profits. It’s an investment formula that can reliably produce returns of 500%-800% over two to three years.  Nowhere else in the world can match China, both on the number of attractive private companies to invest in, and the returns from doing so.

China’s private companies, and their millions of customers and employees,  will benefit from the capital provided to PE firms by the NSSF. China’s entire working population will eventually benefit as well, as these companies grow larger, more successful, and become valuable public companies. Profits from the successful PE investments will flow back to the NSSF, to support the retirement of millions.

Of course, a PE firm needs to know what it’s doing, how to select good companies, and also how to assist them in making a successful transition to publicly-traded businesses. The good ones do. The NSSF’s screening process is designed to determine which firms are the best, and then place money with them.

The main coin of the realm in China, as everyone knows, is “guanxi”, or the personal relations that tie people together and form the basis for most business deals. Fortunately for China’s working population, the NSSF, from what I’m told,  is guided by fiduciary principles and best practices, not personal ties, in assessing where to put the nation’s savings.  Along with the interviews and legal scrutiny, the NSSF also hires FOF firms (“Fund of Funds”) to evaluate PEs on its behalf. It’s another smart move. FOF firms have the most detailed knowledge and experience choosing good PE firms, and monitoring their performance.

The NSSF is responsible for the long-term financial security of hundreds of millions of people. It’s an awesome responsibility. By all evidence, they are doing important work, and doing it well.

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This past Saturday, October 30,  marked the one year anniversary of the founding of the ChiNext (创业板) stock market. In my view, the ChiNext has been a complete and unqualified success, and should be a source of pride and satisfaction to everyone involved in China’s financial industry. And yet, there’s quite a lot of complaining and grumbling going on, about high share prices, high p/e multiples,  “underperformance” by ChiNext companies, and the potentially destabilizing effect of insiders’ share sales when their 12-month lockup period ends.

Let’s look at the record. Over the last year, the board has grown from the original 28 companies to 134, and raised a total of 94.8 billion yuan ($14bn). For those 134 companies, as well as hundreds more now queuing up for their ChiNext IPO, this new stock market is the most important thing to ever happen in China’s capital markets.

Make no mistake, without the ChiNext, those 134 companies would be struggling to overcome a chronic shortage of growth capital. That Rmb 94.8 billion in funding has supported the creation of thousands of new jobs,  more indigenous R&D in China, and provided a new and powerful incentive system for entrepreneurs to improve their internal controls and accounting as a prelude to a planned ChiNext IPO.

China’s retail investors have responded with enthusiasm to the launch of ChiNext, and support those high p/e multiples of +50X at IPO. It is investors, after all, who bid up the price of ChiNext shares, and by doing so, allow private companies to raise more capital with less dilution. Again, that is a wholly positive development for entrepreneurship in China.

Will some investors lose money on their investments in ChiNext companies? Of course. That’s the way all stock markets work. The purpose of a stock market is not to give investors a “one way bet”. It is to allocate capital.

I was asked by a Bloomberg reporter this past week for my views on ChiNext. Here, according to his transcript,  is some of what I told him.

“For the first time ever, the flow of capital in China is beginning to more accurately mirror where the best growth opportunities are. ChiNext is an acknowledgement by the government of the vital importance of entrepreneurial business to China’s continued economic prosperity. ChiNext allocates growth capital to businesses that most need and deserve it, and helps address a long-standing problem in China’s economy: capital being mainly allocated to state-owned companies. The ChiNext is helping spur a huge increase of private equity capital now flowing to China’s private companies. Within a year my guess is the number of private equity firms and the capital they have to invest in China will both double.”

A market economy functions best when capital can flow to the companies that can earn the highest risk-adjusted return. This is what the ChiNext now makes possible.

Yes, financial theory would argue that ChiNext prices are “too high”, on a p/e basis. Sometimes share prices are “too high”, sometimes they are “too low”, as with many Chinese companies quoted on the Singapore stock market. A company’s share price does not always have a hard-wired correlation to the actual value and performance of the company. That’s why most good laoban seldom look at their share price. It has little, if anything, to do with the day-to-day issues of building a successful company.

Some of the large shareholders in ChiNext companies will likely begin selling their shares as soon as their lock-up period ends. For PE firms, the lock-up ends 12 months after an IPO. If a PE firm sells its shares, however, it doesn’t mean the company itself is going sour. PE firms exist to invest, wait for IPO, then sell and use that money to repay their investors, as well as invest in more companies. It’s the natural cycle of risk capital, and again, promotes overall capital efficiency.

There are people in China arguing that IPO rules should be tightened, to make sure all companies going public on ChiNext will continue to thrive after their IPO. That view is misplaced. For one thing, no one can predict the future performance of any business. But, in general, China’s capital market don’t need more regulations to govern the IPO process. China already has more onerous IPO regulations than any other major stock market in the world.

The objective of a stock market is to let  investors, not regulators, decide how much capital a company should be given.  If a company uses the capital well, its value will increase. If not, then its shares will certainly sink. This is a powerful incentive for ChiNext company management to work hard for their shareholders. The other reason: current rules prohibit the controlling shareholders of ChiNext companies from selling shares within the first three years of an IPO.

The ChiNext is not a path to quick riches for entrepreneurs in China. It is, instead, the most efficient way to raise the most capital at the lowest price to finance future growth. In the end, everyone in China benefits from this. The ChiNext is, quite simply,  a Chinese financial triumph.

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If they gave medals for valor and distinguished service to the PE industry, SAIF’s Ben Ng surely earned one this past week. In a twelve hour stretch, he met with the laoban (Chinese for “boss”) of four different Chinese SME, at four different company headquarters, and probed each on the merits of their particular business.

The companies were at four different stages, from start-up to a 14-year-old company with a household name in much of southern China, and from four very different industries, from robotic manufacturing to a major fast-food chain, from agriculture to e-commerce.

Ben never wavered, never tired, never lost his genuine enthusiasm for hearing great entrepreneurs talk about what makes their businesses special, while explaining a little about his own company. As I found out later, Ben left a deep imprint with each entrepreneur, and in his understated way, showed each of them why SAIF is such an outstanding success in the PE industry in China, SAIF has backed more than 80 companies during its 10 year history, with $3.5 billion under management, and some of the more illustrious Limited Partners of any PE firm in the world.

By the end of the day, Ben was still full of life, mind sharp and mood upbeat. I, on the other hand, had a case of “PE battle fatigue”. I got home and almost immediately crawled into bed, trying to recall, without much success, which laoban had said what, and which business model belonged to whom. I’ve met a lot of company bosses in my 25-year career. But, I can’t recall ever having so many meetings at this high level in one day. Ben, on the other hand, mentioned he has days like this quite often, as he travels around China.

Ben is a partner at SAIF, with long experience in both high-technology and PE investing. He’s one of the professionals I most like and respect in the PE industry in China. I wanted these four laoban to meet him, and learn for themselves what top PE firms look for, how they evaluate companies, and how they work with entrepreneurs to accelerate the growth and improve the performance of their portfolio companies up to the time of an IPO, and often beyond.

Every great company needs a great investor. That about sums up the purpose and goal of my work in China.

I’d met these four laoban before and knew their businesses fairly well. In my view, each has a realistic chance to become the clear leader in their industry in China, and within a few years, assuming they get PE capital to expand, a publicly-traded company with market cap above $1 billion.  If so, they will earn the PE investor a very significant return – most likely, in excess of 500%. In other words, in my view,  a PE firm could be quite lucky to invest in these companies.

Will SAIF invest in any of the four? Hard to say. They look at hundreds of companies every year, and because of their track record, can choose from some of the very best SME in China. SAIF has as good a record as any of the top PE firms in China. According to one of Ben’s partners at SAIF, the firm has an 80% compounded annual rate of return.

That’s about as good as they get in the PE industry. SAIF’s investors might consider nominating the firm for a medal as well.

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How’s this for a monetary paradox: the world’s fastest-growing major economy, the second-largest economy in the world, with more billionaires than any country except the US, has a currency whose highest denominated bill is worth less than that of any developed country in the world, as well as many of the poorest ones. 

We’re talking, of course, about China. The largest denominated bill is the red 100 yuan note. At today’s exchange rate, it’s worth about $15. It’s been the largest bill in circulation for the last eleven years. During that time, China’s economy has more than tripled in size. ATM machines have become pervasive. Prices for many things have reached American levels. 

Credit cards are still rare. Chinese do most of their buying, even of big ticket items, in cash. It’s not uncommon, for example, to pay for cars and houses completely in cash – using enough cash to fill either the car trunk, or a kitchen refrigerator. Because hospitals in China take cash and demand upfront payment before any treatment, most Chinese keep a stash of emergency cash at home of many thousands of renminbi.

Among the affluent Chinese bosses I know, it’s common to carry both a wallet and a kind of “guy purse” where they keep Rmb30,000-Rmb50,000 in cash.  It’s like carrying around a small brick  – and just as obvious. 

Next door to me in Hong Kong, the highest bill is circulation is HKD1,000, worth over eight times the 100 yuan note. In Taiwan, the biggest bill in circulation is NTD2,000, worth five times more than the 100 yuan note. In Singapore, it’s a $10,000 note. To use renminbi to get one, you’d need 500 of the 100 yuan notes. 

For lots of reasons, macro and micro, China urgently needs larger denominated currency. Yet, it’s very unlikely to get it anytime soon. 

A main reason, as far as I can determine, is a justifiable fear of mass counterfeiting. In China, counterfeit bills are already rife. Before moving to China, I never knowingly handled a counterfeit note. Here, I’ve already twice been given counterfeit bills as change, and then got stuck with them. 

You’d think, of course, that most of the counterfeit Chinese bills would be the 100 yuan note. In fact, most of the fakes in circulation are 10 and 20 yuan notes, each worth so little it’s hardly worth the expense and risk of producing the forgeries. 

What’s going on here? Though it’s the highest denominated bill, the 100 yuan note has a very unusual pattern of circulation. It’s never given as change, since it’s the largest bill. As a result, individuals get their 100 yuan notes almost exclusively direct from the bank, either an ATM or at the counter. These bills are usually new, or nearly new, and all are checked to make sure they are genuine. 

When you then use the notes, they are usually checked again by the receiver to be sure they are not counterfeit. Since they can’t be used as change, whoever got the 100 yuan as payment will almost certainly return them to the bank. Any bills that are not in perfect condition get scrapped. This is particularly true in larger cities. One result is every time I go to withdraw money from an ATM, I’ll get only brand-new bills. Even in the rare cases when I’ve been given a lot of 100 yuan notes by someone, usually as repayment, they are also almost always in mint condition. 

If China ever did introduce a 500 yuan note (worth about $65), then the 100 yuan notes would start to be used as change. Counterfeiting would almost certainly explode. The incentives, compared to today, would be overwhelming. The logistics needed to combat it almost incomprehensible. Most stores, even small ones, have machines at every cash register to detect counterfeits. But, lots of commerce in China is still hand-to-hand, in wholesale and retail markets as well as street vendors. 

There’s no realistic way to protect these tens of  millions of small businesses and traders from the punishing risks of getting stuck with phony bills.  When the cost of wrongly accepting a single fake bill, as now, is usually 10 yuan ($1.50), it’s unfortunate, but manageable. If it becomes $15, it’s easy to foresee that these tens of millions of businesses would refuse to accept 100 yuan notes from customers. The result: lots of disruption to established patterns of trade across all of China. 

At its current pace, China’s economy will double again in the next seven years. Will the 100 yuan note still be the largest in circulation then? My money says it will be. 

Can a technology invented in the US by General Electric 48 years ago give China its best shot at worldwide technological leadership? There are a lot of Chinese companies, entrepreneurs, investors, as well as billions of dollars in Chinese government money betting this is the case.

The technology is the Light Emitting Diode, or LED. Since their invention a half-century ago in Syracuse, New York, lots of otherwise smart people have been predicting LEDs would replace the traditional incandescent lights perfected by Thomas Edison well over a century ago as a primary source of illumination.

LEDs have numerous advantages – the key ones being they last longer than traditional incandescent and neon bulbs and use much less energy to produce the same amount of light.

In other words, LED sound like a sure thing. Problem is, they are almost as tricky to manufacture as integrated circuits, and so exponentially more expensive to produce than conventional bulbs. LED technology has improved dramatically over the years, but they are solid-state devices, made using a complicated semiconductor-layering technique.

The lights require lots of complex circuitry and heat sinks, and are very susceptible to changes in temperature. Each individual LED is about the size of a Christmas light, and produces a relatively small amount of light. So, an LED  with the same output of a typical street light will actually have dozens of small LEDs pinched together on a single stalk.

Like the non-polluting 500-mile-per-gallon auto engine and supersonic passenger jets, the era of universal, efficient, energy-saving LED lighting is another much-predicted part of our future that never seems to arrive.

Except, that is, in China. Here, there is abundant optimism that the commercial market for LED lighting is about to explode, and that Chinese companies will be the worldwide leaders in a new multi-billion-dollar industry.

There are more LED companies in China, and more investment flowing into them, than anywhere else in the world. On Alibaba.com, there are about two million Chinese companies selling LED products, a hundred times more than Taiwanese companies offering LED products. In Shenzhen where I live, there are 280,000 companies listed on Alibaba offering LED lamps and bulbs.

Last year, I went to one of the main trade shows for the industry in China, and hundreds of companies were crowded into the exhibition space. The majority of them were offering LED street and traffic lights, and systems to control them.

Looking at this, you’d imagine that just about every busy intersection in China was already controlled by an LED traffic light. That isn’t so today. Though the technology is well-developed, LED traffic lights are still very rare. But, the Chinese government is looking to spend a great deal of money to make this a reality. This, in turn, is drawing companies into the industry at an ever-increasing clip.

One small measure of this enthusiasm. The bosses of two companies we work with, including one that’s a leader in the jewelry industry,  are now investing in LED street lighting projects. Lots of the venture capital and private equity firms we work with are eager to invest in China’s LED industry.

There are those outside China who share some of this optimism about LED’s future. But, nowhere else is the fever quite as widespread as it is here.

To be successful in the LED industry will require a synthesis of advanced scale manufacturing techniques and some sophisticated technological skills and innovative science. In other words, China has the two essential elements for success.

However, good science and good factories won’t solve the primary problem that LED lights remain uneconomic for most users. Even with the energy savings and longer life, the typical payback period for an LED is eight to ten years. Of course, some of the greenest of environmentally-conscious green buyers will pay that kind of premium.  But, the reality is there just aren’t that many businesses or households that will invest in LEDs when they need to wait so long just to breakeven compared to conventional incandescents.

That leaves only government as a likely big customer. No other government is quite as keen on LEDs as China’s. From the central government on down, there are plans in place now to replace all conventional street lights with LEDs.  In theory, this represents a market worth many billions of dollars. The millions of LED companies in China all seem to be chasing this one market.

Governments everywhere, not just in China, tend to be far less persuaded than private businesses by the logic of a cost-benefit analysis. China’s government wants to cut energy use and wants to foster the domestic LED industry. If successful, the large-scale government purchases in China would drive down manufacturing costs to the point where LEDs become cost-competitive everywhere. If so, China’s LED industry will truly become both world-beating and gargantuan in size.

I’ve yet to see a single LED street light in China. I have seen working prototypes, and they seem quite good. When big government orders will arrive and who will receive them remain collective guesswork in the Chinese LED industry.

That sums up precisely the dilemma of the LED industry. The companies are all reliant on a single, large and very unpredictable customer. When that one customer is government, equally large problems invariably intrude. Government purchases in China, as in the US and elsewhere, are slow to materialize, highly bureaucratic and favor companies with friends in high places, rather than those with the best products.

Buying from the lowest-cost supplier is often less important than buying from friends and cohorts. Basic LED technology is already very well-established and lots of companies can make the lights. The result: the government cash will likely get spread around widely, to thousands of small local firms. If this happens, the risk is that no one Chinese firm develops the scale economies to become truly efficient, and a potential global leader.

For LED lights to realize the huge potential first glimpsed when they were invented 50 years ago, they need to come down very dramatically in cost, to levels at least comparable with compact fluorescents. These CFL bulbs last eight to fifteen times longer than incandescents, and use only 30% as much energy. Their payback period is much quicker than LEDs, and they are already quite pervasive in homes and offices.

China has a chance to take the lead and take LED lighting to another level. I love all the excitement and entrepreneurial activity in the industry. Hope or hype, we’re likely to find out in the next three to five years.

Making things in China is cheap. Buying things in China is not.

People living elsewhere, or ones like me who move here, will be rather surprised  to find out how expensive prices are for many of the more familiar brand-name products on sale in China. At current exchange rate of 6.78 renminbi to the dollar, many goods and services in China are sold at prices similar to the US.

Years ago, the Economist came up with their “Big Mac Index” as a way to measure real exchange rates. In their most recent survey, the renminbi looks 48% undervalued, because a Big Mac costs $1.95 in China, compared to $3.73 in the USA.

Source: The Economist

Of course, those prices tell only part of the story. Chinese wages are about 1/15^th America’s. So, while it takes an average working American about ten minutes to earn the money to buy a Big Mac, in China, a reasonably well-paid office worker would need to toil about about four times as long to earn the Rmb 13 needed to buy a Big Mac. By this measure, the price of a Big Mac in China, to truly equal the price in the US, should be about 33 cents, and therefore the exchange rate should be over Rmb35 to the dollar.

Of course, the renminbi is never going to get that low. In fact, the overwhelming likelihood is that renminbi will get much stronger than the current rate of 6.78 to the dollar. Upward pressure comes from China’s $2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves and large balance of trade surplus with the US. As the renminbi rises in value, the prices of many goods in China will become even higher, when translated into dollars, than those in the US.

How expensive are things in China? To find out, I did a little comparison shopping at the Wal-Mart closest to my office in Shenzhen. As in the US, Wal-Mart in China is highly successful, and got that way by offering “low everyday prices”. Considering the big gap in income levels between US and China, it would be a fair assumption that prices at Wal-Mart in China would be appreciably lower than those at Wal-Mart in the US.

But, that assumption would be wrong, for the most part. Here’s a rundown of prices on some popular branded products at my local Shenzhen Wal-Mart — prices below are in renminbi and current dollar equivalent at prevailing exchange rate. Quite a few are Procter & Gamble products. P&G are very strong in China, and its products are often market leaders. As in the US, P&G enjoys a close relationship with Wal-Mart.

Source: Peter’s Shopping

A few days after my visit to Wal-Mart in Shenzhen I flew to New York on business. In between meetings, I did some comparison shopping. 

Wal-Mart is the largest retailer in the US, but does not have any stores in New York. One reason is New York City’s unfriendly labor laws that would make it hard for Wal-Mart to operate in New York without unionized workers. Instead, I checked prices at local Food Emporium supermarket, Walgreens and CVS. 

While there are some pretty good deals in China, for example Heinz Ketchup and Coke, most things on the list are in line with prices in the US.  In other words, they do not reflect the vast differences in average earnings and therefore purchasing power.

Chinese workers manufacture wholesale, but buy retail.

Prices in China are high, in part, because there is a VAT of 13% on most things. More important, retailing in China is not nearly as efficient as it is in the US. While Wal-Mart is successful in China, it doesn’t enjoy anything like the market share it does in the US. Smaller, but my guess is, far more profitable. Wal-Mart faces very limited low-price competition in China. Most stores are of the Mom-and-Pop variety, which keeps overall prices high. Urban real estate is also expensive, and that also has an underlying impact on consumer prices.

In China, it’s easier to make money selling than manufacturing. Retail margins are higher and less squeezed than they are in the US. This will likely be true for many years to come. For Chinese consumers, especially the +40% who live in cities, they will likely continue to pay prices on par with those in the US, while earning appreciably less.

Xinjiang is a big place, with a land mass the size of Western Europe. It occupies 1/6^th of China’s territory, yet contributes only 1.5% of its population. I think I now know why it’s so empty. All that space must be devoted to growing Hami Melons.

This fruit is Xinjiang’s most popular export to the rest of China. It’s high season now. Even here in Shenzhen, as far as one can travel from the melon-growing precints near the Gobi Desert in Xinjiang, the large Hami melons are pervasive – in fruit stores, supermarkets, pushcarts. You can also find them piled high on many streets all over the city, with each Hami hoard minded by a guy from Xinjiang with a long sharp knife and a small scale.

The melons are generally oval-shaped and weigh about 10 pounds each. I’ve bought segments of ones weighing twice that. The most popular way to eat the melon is as a snack on the street. A tall thin slice on a wooden skewer sells for Rmb 1.

For those who haven’t had the pleasure, a Hami tastes a lot like cantaloupe, but the flesh is much crunchier, almost like an apple’s.

This time of year, across China, Hami crowds every other fruit out of the marketplace. I can’t find any statistics on Xinjiang’s total production, but my guess would be it runs to the millions of tons. Imagine the logistics: a market of 1.4 billion all simultaneously ravenous for your perishable product, grown on the fringe of a desert in one of the most distant, infrastructure-starved corners of the country.

Just to supply the Chinese market must occupy the full-time summertime efforts of tens of thousands of farmers, packers, and shippers. The melons are grown, boxed and then shipped by road and rail to every corner of China. It seems like for every 100 melons exported from Xinjiang, one local Uighur must accompany the shipment, to run the impromptu sidewalk stalls selling the fruit.

If other parts of China also grow the melon, I’m not aware of it. To find buyers, they would probably have to falsely label their melons as coming from Xinjiang. In China, Hami belongs to Xinjiang the way champagne belongs to the Champagne region of northern France.

Shenzhen probably has a larger market for Hami, on average, than many other parts of China. It’s a rich city, and Hami melon is not cheap. Bought by the kilo, the price runs to around Rmb8 to Rmb 12, or about 70-90 cents a pound. I’m buying around 10 kilos a week.

You can also find Hami this time of year in Los Angeles, usually at Persian grocery stores. Parts of Southern California’s desert are similar to Xinjiang’s Hami growing region. But, the fruit is very much a minority taste in the US. It’s likely to remain that way. As big as it is, Xinjiang will never be able produce enough Hami to satisfy fully Chinese tastes, let alone an export market.

CFC has just published its latest Chinese-language research report. The title is 《私募基金如何创造价值》, which I’d translate as “How PE Firms Add Value ”.

You can download a copy here:  How PE Firms Add Value — CFC Report. 

China is awash, as nowhere else in the world is,  in private equity capital. New funds are launched weekly, and older successful ones top up their bank balance. Just this week, CDH, generally considered the leading China-focused PE firm in the world, closed its fourth fund with $1.46 billion of new capital. Over $50 billion has been raised over the last four years for PE investment in China. 

In other words, money is not in short supply. Equity investment experience, know-how and savvy are. There’s a saying in the US venture capital industry, “all money spends the same”. The implication is that for a company, investment capital is of equal value regardless of the source. In the US, there may be some truth to this. In China, most definitely not. 

In Chinese business, there is no more perilous transition than the one from a fully-private, entrepreneur-founded and led company to one that can IPO successfully, either on China’s stock markets, or abroad. The reason: many private companies, especially the most successful ones, are growing explosively, often doubling in size every year.

They can barely catch their breath, let alone put in place the management and financial systems needed to manage a larger, more complex business. This is inevitable consequence of operating in a market growing as fast as China’s, and generating so many new opportunities for expansion. 

A basic management principle, also for many good private companies, is: “grab the money today, and worry about the consequences tomorrow”. This means that running a company in China often requires more improvising than long-term planning. I know this, personally, from running a small but fast-growing company. Improvisation can be great. It means a business can respond quickly to new opportunities, with a minimum of bureaucracy. 

But, as a business grows, and particularly once it brings in outside investors, the improvisation, and the success it creates, can cause problems. Is company cash being managed properly and most efficiently? Are customers receiving the same degree of attention and follow-up they did when the business was smaller? Does the production department know what the sales department is doing and promising customers? What steps are competitors taking to try to steal business away? 

These are, of course, the best kind of problems any company can have. They are the problems caused by success, rather than impending bankruptcy.

These problems are a core aspect of the private equity process in China. It’s good companies that get PE finance, not failed ones. Once the PE capital enters a company, the PE firm is going to take steps to protect its investment. This inevitably means making sure systems are put in place that can improve the daily management and long-term planning at the company. 

It’s often a monumental adjustment for an entrepreneur-led company. Accountability supplants improvisation. Up to the moment PE finance arrives, the boss has never had to answer to anyone, or to justify and defend his decisions to any outsider. PE firms, at a minimum, will create a Board of Directors and insist, contractually, that the Board then meet at least four times a year to review quarterly financials, discuss strategy and approve any significant investments. 

Whether this change helps or hurts the company will depend, often, on the experience and knowledge of the PE firm involved.  The good PE firms will offer real help wherever the entrepreneur needs it – strengthening marketing, financial team, international expansion and strategic alliances. They are, in the jargon of our industry, “value-add investors”.

Lesser quality PE firms will transfer the money, attend a quarterly banquet and wait for word that the company is staging an IPO. This is dumb money that too often becomes lost money, as the entrepreneur loses discipline, focus and even an interest in his business once he has a big pile of someone else’s money in his bank account.   

Our new report focuses on this disparity, between good and bad PE investment, between value-add and valueless. Our intended audience is Chinese entrepreneurs. We hope, aptly enough, that they determine our report is value-add, not valueless. The key graphic in the report is this one, which illustrates the specific ways in which a PE firm can add value to a business.  In this case, the PE investment helps achieve a four-fold increase. That’s outstanding. But, we’ve seen examples in our work of even larger increases after a PE round.

The second part of the report takes on a related topic, with particular relevance for Chinese companies: the way PE firms can help navigate the minefield of getting approval for an IPO in China.  It’s an eleven-step process. Many companies try, but only a small percentage will succeed. The odds are improved exponentially when a company has a PE firm alongside, as both an investor and guide.

While taking PE investment is not technically a prerequisite, in practice, it operates like one. The most recent data I’ve seen show that 90% of companies going public on the new Chinext exchange have had pre-IPO PE investment. 

In part, this is because Chinese firms with PE investment tend to have better corporate governance and more reliable financial reporting. Both these factors are weighed by the CSRC in deciding which companies are allowed to IPO. 

At their best, PE firms can serve as indispensible partners for a great entrepreneur. At their worst, they do far more harm than good by lavishing money without lavishing attention. 

The report is illustrated with details from imperial blue-and-white porcelains from the time of the Xuande Emperor, in the Ming Dynasty.

“Five years ago, all I had to worry about was producing enough to earn a small profit. Now I spend time dealing with employment issues, environmental regulations, tax policies, trying to increase market share and staying ahead of competitors. The pressure is much worse. ”

Welcome to the suddenly changed and increasingly pressured world of Chinese corporate management. 

This comment comes from the boss of a large, integrated chemical factory in Shandong. He and I were talking recently. He is still a relatively young guy of around 40. But, in his 15 year career as first an engineer, then a manager and finally as factory boss, he has seen the purpose, methods, scope, goals and responsibilities of Chinese management change from top to bottom. 

Like much else in China, company management has undergone a lifetime’s worth of change in a matter of a few years. It’s a byproduct of larger forces at work in China’s economy – the withdrawal of direct state planning and control, the ascendancy of the private sector, China’s entry to the WTO and the opening of China’s markets to imports, the rise of a vibrant consumer market. All of these have made planning and decision-making far more intricate and the stakes far higher for Chinese corporate managers, both in state-owned and private companies. 

In the case of my friend in Shandong, he is working for a company majority owned by the state. In theory, that should make his management tasks far easier. In most cases, the Chinese government – whether at national, provincial or local level – is a very lenient shareholder. In fact, they would appear to the ideal owner for any manager who is looking for easy ride. 

In China as elsewhere, when the state is the owner, no one is really in charge. The Chinese government is not looking for dividends. Most profits stay inside the company.  

Here’s the paradox that Chinese managers all live with: as undemanding as the Chinese government is as a shareholder, they are increasingly demanding as a regulator and law-maker. That is a big reason why corporate management has gotten so much more complex in China. In a short space of time, China has gone from a more laissez-faire stance to one with strict environmental, tax and labor laws that rival those of the US and Western Europe. 

True, these tougher regulations are not yet universally applied or enforced. But, any Chinese manager who chooses to act in total disregard of these rules will eventually find himself in deep, deep trouble. Take labor laws. China continues to introduce new forms of workplace protection that give important new rights to hired staff and restrict the prerogatives of management. Any Chinese with a complaint over pay or conditions can complain directly to the Laodong Ju, or Labor Bureau, a quasi-state body that enforces labor laws. 

The process is not without its hiccups. Management can still intimidate and threaten workers who seek redress. But, the system does work. 

Example: a friend of mine worked for several years as a salesperson for an electronics company based in Shenzhen. She was paid part in commission. She did her job well. For months, then years, the boss held back the commission payments, claiming cash flow problems. This is old style China management: don’t pay, offer excuses. This boss assumed he could continue indefinitely with this trickery, in part because the general view is that female workers in China are more easily cowed or mollified. 

Instead, my friend quit without warning,  went right to the Labor Bureau, which made one call to her ex-boss. No investigation. Just a phone call and a stern warning from the Labor Bureau. My friend got her money – about $20,000 in total – within a week. The boss will now have a much harder time doing what he’s always done – pad his own take-home by cheating workers out of what they are entitled to. Tyrannizing workers is no longer a workable HR strategy for a Chinese management team. 

New environmental rules are, if anything,  even more disruptive of old lax ways of managing business in China. Managers who choose to improve margins by ignoring pollution standards are risking an early unpaid retirement. Example: a client of ours is the leading environmentally-friendly paper manufacturer in Shandong. Two years ago, he had 29 competitors in Shandong. Today, he has only three. 

The other 26 were shut down, virtually overnight, for violating environmental standards. The managers at those factories, most of which were around for many years, now likely understand better than most how much the craft of management has changed in China.  

Elsewhere in Shandong, my friend the chemical company boss, is now making another decision that was unimaginable when he began his career: he is working on a plan for a management buyout of the factory. The business is now 65%-owned by a large local coal mine, which in turn, is owned by the provincial government. 

The buy-out plan is still in its early stages. To succeed, he’ll need to persuade several levels of government – no one is quite sure how many – and also take over some significant liabilities, including debts of about $15mn.  It’s not clear if the current management will need to put up cash to buy the government’s controlling stake, or if, as preferred, they can pay in installments, using cash from the business. 

Servicing debt and having most of one’s wealth tied up in illiquid shares of one’s company are other adaptations now being learned by Chinese management. Each year, their working lives grow harder, more pressured and, for the more talented and nimble ones, far more financially rewarding.  Stride-for-stride with the modernization of China’s economy, Chinese corporate managers have gotten better faster than anywhere else, ever.