China Story
When Mark Qiu decided not to renew his
contract as CFO of Chinese offshore oil producer CNOOC, which
ended in January of this year, a company press release stated
that he was leaving “to pursue other personal interests.”
Those interests, it turns out, now have a name: China Renaissance
Capital Investment, a partnership that a group led by him
has forged with Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB), a unit
of Credit Suisse Group based in Zurich, to make private equity
investments in China.
The partnership will utilize Qiu’s
business and finance experience in China to seek out investments,
while CSFB brings its global network of private equity investors.
Both sides will participate in the management of the new company,
but Qiu will be the managing partner.
Qiu’s dealmaking as CNOOC’s
CFO involved mainly acquisitions of assets outside of China.
Nevertheless, he has both contacts in and a deep knowledge
of China. Said Dr Erwin Schurtenberger, an independent director
of the company, in a CNOOC press release: “[Qiu] has
an extraordinary talent to reconcile Chinese thinking-behavior
patterns with Western ones.”
He came to CNOOC from AsiaEC, an e-commerce
venture that he co-founded and served as president and CFO.
Before that he worked at Smith Barney, where he advised CNOOC
on its 1999 initial public offering, which was cancelled after
receiving a cool response from investors more interested in
dotcoms than oil. My, how that story has changed. 
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One of the benefits of working for a conglomerate
with size and diversity, like Singapore-listed Jardine Matheson,
is the almost endless opportunity for career growth. For Jim
Rush, who joined Jardine-owned Dairy Farm in 1998, that has
meant exposure to Indonesia, Australia, and Hong Kong. It
can also mean real challenges.
When Rush moved to Dairy Farm from PricewaterhouseCoopers
in 1998, he was immediately thrown into the fire, seconded
as CFO to Indonesian retailer PT Hero Supermarket, a 7.6 percent
stake in which Dairy Farm had purchased in February of 1998.
This was no ordinary time to be the CFO
of a retailer in Indonesia. Rioting and looting, sparked by
a plunge in the value of the rupiah which caused rising prices
of essential goods, destroyed parts of Jakarta and left 1,200
dead in May 1998. And in May 1999, with elections looming,
grocery retailers braced for a repeat, lowering inventories
and upping security. But riots weren’t the only worry
retailers faced. Of more concern was inflation that had hit
80 percent in 1998, US dollar-denominated rents, growing unemployment,
and contracting GDP.
Under Rush, Hero restructured, centralizing
its cash management, tightening its
budgetary controls, increasing the use of its central warehouse,
and promoting its private-label, high margin products. The
company sold off non-core, unprofitable units, taking extraordinary
losses, and cut its workforce to 8,500 from 12,000. The result?
Hero was one of the few Indonesian companies that continued
to service its foreign currency debt during this tumultuous
time. Its operating profit quintupled, and it gained market
share to 32 from 25 percent, albeit from a shrunken pie. Rush
left Hero in 2000, to join Dairy Farm’s head office
in Hong Kong. From there he was occasionally seconded to Australia
to work on special projects. He became group treasurer of
Dairy Farm, and, in May this year, group treasurer of Jardine
Matheson.
Rush replaces Simon Mawson, who moved
to Indonesia to become finance director at automotive conglomerate
PT Astra International on May 26. Astra has been a shining
star in the Jardine portfolio in recent years. Jardine Cycle
& Carriage began accumulating shares in Astra in 1999.
(Jardine Matheson holds more than 60 percent of Cycle &
Carriage.) Astra is the third-largest company on the Jakarta
Stock Exchange, and has a 45 percent share of Indonesia’s
car market and about half the motorcycle market. Mawson joined
Jardine Matheson from PricewaterhouseCoopers in London, and
was group treasurer since 2001.
Mawson replaces John Slack, who was finance
director of Astra since the end of 2000. Slack’s departure
is part of a reshuffle that follows Cycle & Carriage’s
latest acquisition of Astra shares, which brought its total
shareholding to 49.92 percent. When he joined Astra, Slack
was seconded as its finance director from Cycle & Carriage
Singapore in the early days of its investments into the car
company. He already had 23 years of experience in Indonesia,
and at the time he was hired to restructure Astra’s
finances had been CFO at US-based El Paso Energy in the Philippines
and Indonesia for five years.
As Astra’s CFO, Slack slashed to
zero the company’s debt which, when he joined, stood
at US$1.2 billion. He did this by restructuring and rescheduling
loans – without asking creditors to take losses. His
reforms were also helped along by Indonesia’s rapidly
improving economy, which saw car sales take off from just
68,000 units in 1998 to more than 430,000 in 2004. One of
his final acts as Astra CFO was to announce that the company
had paid off the last of its loans. Said Slack in the Australian
Financial Review: “It’s an achievement we’re
extremely proud of.”
Slack has joined the British International
School of Jakarta as Business and Administration Director,
where, he says, sound financial management will be a must.
He will oversee the school’s management and operation,
and its future direction. Slack was adamant that he stay in
Indonesia. “I am an Indonesia Hand,” he says.
“This is my home.” He adds: “I’m the
domino that fell off the table.”
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