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????凱雷投資集團(Carlyle Group)老板戴維?魯賓斯坦日前在紐約出席Buyouts New York活動時登臺演講。在(總體溫和的)訪談中，魯賓斯坦指出，他感到作為一個私募股權公司高管在中國比在華盛頓更受歡迎。正如魯賓斯坦所言： ????“假如毛澤東和理查德?尼克松死而復生，可能已分辨不出各自的資本，因為一個已變得非常資本主義，而另一個的資本主義程度有所減輕。” ????隨后，魯賓斯坦作了更有力的闡釋，他認為中國將私募股權公司看作提升企業效率和生產率的專家： ????“在我看來，他們并不認為我們所做的是‘金融工程’……須知在中國，大多數交易，事實上所有交易，都是沒有杠桿的。‘金融工程’這個詞在美國已被棄用或不受歡迎；如果有人說想長大成為化工工程師、機械工程師或結構工程師，人們會說，太棒了，我們希望你能達成自己的愿望。如果你說，我想成為一個金融工程師，人們會說，哦，這太糟了。因此，金融工程沒有受到同樣的尊重——不管什么樣的金融工程——但在中國，他們并不將此視為金融事務，他們認為你們是在幫助經理人和員工思考如何提高企業生產效率。” ????咚，咚，咚，魯賓斯坦用指甲敲打著腦袋，這可能是無意識的。相比美國官員，中國官員更能接受私募股權的理由之一恰恰是中國的交易通常不采用杠桿。 ????“金融工程”并不是為了丑化私募股權而捏造出來的虛幻之詞。它描述的是私募股權公司從買賣差價中獲取利潤的方式(采用大量杠桿、股息資本重組、交易費等等)。在中國，通常沒有這樣的差價。假如凱雷投資集團和其他公司將其美國或歐洲的交易形式調整至更接近中國的模式，他們在法律和公關方面遇到的阻力必將大減。反之，一旦私募股權公司琢磨清楚如何在中國復制傳統的杠桿收購模式后，也別指望北京還會熱烈歡迎。 |
????Carlyle Group boss David Rubenstein was on stage in New York yesterday, as part of the Buyouts New York event. As part of the (mostly softball) interview, Rubenstein noted that he feels more welcome in China as a private equity exec than he does in Washington. As Rubenstein put it: ????"If Mao Zedong and Richard Nixon came back from the dead, they wouldn't recognize their respective capitals because one has become very capitalist, and the other has become less capitalist." ????But then Rubenstein said something more telling, after arguing that China considers private equity firms to be experts in making companies more efficient and more productive: ????"I don't think they think that what we do is 'financial engineering'… Remember, in most deals, virtually all deals in China are done with no leverage. 'Financial engineering' is a phrase that's come into disuse in the United States or disfavor; yet people say I want to grow up and be a chemical engineer, a mechanical engineer, a structural engineer; people say, great, we'd love you to do that. You say I want to be a financial engineer, people say well that's terrible. But financial engineering, therefore, is just not as respected – whatever financial engineering is – but in China they don't really look at it as something that's a financial thing, they look at it as you're helping managers and workers figure how to make companies more productive." ????Ding, ding, ding. Rubenstein hit the nail on the head, perhaps without realizing it. One reason Chinese officials are more amenable to private equity than are their U.S. counterparts is precisely because deals in China typically don't use leverage. ????"Financial engineering" is not some phony phrase created to make private equity look bad. It's used to describe the ways PE firms turn profit outside of the differential between purchase and sale price (using lots of leverage, dividend recaps, deal fees, etc.). In China, there usually is no such differential. Were Carlyle and other firms to make their U.S. deals – or European deals -- look more like their China deals, they'd get a lot less legislative and public relations blow-back. Conversely, don't expect a warm welcome in Beijing once private equity figures out how to regularly replicate the traditional LBO model over there... |
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