Money Games by Weijian Shan

Author:Weijian Shan [Shan, Weijian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781119736998
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2020-10-13T00:00:00+00:00

Blum was the most politically astute, sensitive, and cautious among us, and he had an unerring knack for keeping us out of trouble. Obviously, if whatever we or our advisors did was authorized by the president, we could do no wrong, but sometimes it was difficult to tell if our political advisors were speaking with authorized people. Many people claimed to have the ear of the president or to have influence over the government's decision making. With the exception of Chairman Lee, it was very difficult for us to tell who in the government could or could not make a difference in our situation. The memory of the leak of our confidential briefing memo was still fresh. While we wanted to put pressure on Chairman Lee to act, we did not want to antagonize the FSC, which was both our counterparty for the transaction and our partner if the deal got done.

* * *

Things went quiet for about 10 days, while Chairman Lee was on vacation and we were all in Aspen for internal meetings. A number of my colleagues at TPG questioned why we had not walked away from the KFB deal when it appeared to be a hopeless situation. Many thought we were wasting our time. Indeed, the opportunity costs were rising; each day we spent waiting for the KFB deal to happen was a day we could not spend on some other transactions elsewhere. I was not ready to give up in spite of the skepticism, including my own. I thought if there was any hope at all, we should persevere.

Dan Carroll was more sanguine about it. He said that, considering all the dramatic ups and downs, twists and turns in the deal process, “at least we have earned the right to make a movie out of it.”

* * *

My family and I returned to Hong Kong on Saturday, August 15. The next day, I received a fax from Ambassador Hyun, who had apparently been trying to track me down since I'd left Aspen. The memo was rather formal and was signed simply “Kim & Chang,” as was customary for formal correspondence from the firm. I read it eagerly since I had not heard anything from the battlefront in nearly two weeks.

In a fairly roundabout way, the memo informed me that the timeline for our deal conclusion would likely be pushed back again, this time by a week and a half. Chairman Lee had been called to appear before various committees of the National Assembly to answer questions on the Daewoo crisis, and the coming week was already filling up with Daewoo-related meetings and conferences, including a public announcement that the chaebol had reached a restructuring agreement on its debt.

Chairman Lee, the memo continued, also wanted to make sure we were taking the five points he had raised on August 2 seriously. “Chairman Lee requested that we convey his wish that Newbridge give serious thought to these issues, as he explained that it would put him in

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