Money Machine

Chapter 13Making History

We finally received all the approvals, not a moment too soon. The closing took place on December 30, 2004. The entire process had taken 30 months, from start to finish—double the time we had spent on the Korea First Bank transaction. SDB hadn't required nearly as much in the way of actual negotiation as the KFB deal had, but I felt that the strain had been much greater, with all the ups and downs, the waiting games, and uncertainties and anxiety. It gave all of us at Newbridge great relief and comfort that the deal was finally done. And we really had made history. Given the grind of all the work, day in and day out, some of us might occasionally have lost sight of one basic fact: It had never happened before. No outsider had ever taken the reins of a Chinese national bank.

But if my Newbridge colleagues and I allowed ourselves a dose of pride, and some quiet celebration, the closing itself passed without fanfare. It was almost anticlimactic. The work had been done. There was no ceremony; the closing was processed quietly by the finance staff of Newbridge. On the day itself, I was in Malaysia chairing the last board meeting of Newbridge's holding company for KFB. We closed the year having agreed to sell our control in KFB to Standard Chartered Bank and having bought control of SDB from the Shenzhen government. Both of these events took place in the last week of 2004.

Why no big celebration? Why no champagne? The reasons were simple. First, for months ...