Money Machine

Chapter 23Turning Point

In the end, I didn't have to wait long. The turning point arrived much sooner than I had imagined.

On May 14, two days after that last email exchange, Ma called as I was driving through a tunnel on my way to the office. I slowed down a bit to pick up his call.

“Weijian,” he began, “are you talking with others?” He was referring to SDB, of course.

“Who told you?” I asked without answering his question. In fact, we weren't talking with anyone else, but it wouldn't hurt if he thought we were.

It turned out that a senior insurance regulator had told him that China Life and PICC, both major state‐owned insurance companies and competitors of PAIG, were talking with Newbridge to buy SDB. He asked if I could put a stop to those negotiations.

It was the first time I heard that these two insurance companies were interested in buying control of SDB. But they had taken an approach different from PAIG's. Instead of talking with us first, they were checking with the regulator to see whether such a deal would receive its blessing. Knowing there was potential competition, Ma was spurred into action. Suddenly he wanted to get a deal done as quickly as possible.

I didn't respond to his request that we call off discussions with the others—there was nothing to call off—but I didn't have to tell him that. I said only that our preference was to do a deal with PAIG, but we couldn't just wait around. “How about if we both make an effort to reach a deal in the next few days,” ...