中信里昂联姻 成败取决于两个人

The results of Citic Securities Co.'s acquisition of CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, announced on Friday, will depend heavily on two men with backgrounds as different as the companies they lead.

中信证券股份有限公司(Citic Securities Co.)收购里昂证券(CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets)的结果，将在很大程度上取决于两个背景差异之大不亚于各自所领导公司的人。收购消息是在上周五公布的。

Jonathan Slone is a straight-talking New Yorker who helped build CLSA into a force in Asian equities, and Yin Ke is a career finance executive in China who was involved in Citic's ill-fated deal with failed U.S. investment bank Bear Stearns.

施立宏(Jonathan Slone)是一个直去直来的纽约人，他和其他人一道把里昂证券打造成亚洲股市的一支生力军。殷可是一位中国职业金融经理人，曾参与中信证券收购美国破产投资银行贝尔斯登(Bear Stearns)的交易。那次收购没有成功。

Citic Securities, China's biggest brokerage firm by market value and revenue, said it will acquire Hong Kong-based brokerage CLSA Asia-Pacific from France's Credit Agricole SA in two stages for $1.25 billion.

按市值和收入计算，中信证券是中国最大的经纪商。该公司表示它将分两个阶段、以12.5亿美元的价格从法国农业信贷集团(Credit Agricole SA)手中收购香港经纪商里昂证券。

It is a bold move by Citic Securities to take advantage of global economic weakness to expand into new areas and become more competitive against Western rivals.

这是中信证券利用全球经济疲态向新领域拓展、在提高对西方券商竞争力方面采取的一项大胆举措。

The deal will give Citic Securities the ability to connect Chinese companies seeking to raise capital with the big Western investors that CLSA counts as its clients. That had been a role almost exclusively played by Western investment banks.

这笔交易将使中信证券能够为寻求融资的中国企业与作为里昂证券客户的西方大投资者之间牵线搭桥。在过去，这个角色几乎清一色地由西方投资银行扮演。

Citic Securities is listed in Hong Kong and Shanghai but is about 20%-owned by Beijing-headquartered conglomerate Citic Group Co., which is in turn owned by the Chinese government.

中信证券在香港和上海都有股票上市，但20%左右的股份为总部在北京的中信集团公司(Citic Group Co.)所有，中信集团归中国政府所有。

Mr. Slone, chief executive of CLSA, and Mr. Yin, Citic's vice chairman, are longtime acquaintances who have gotten close during the more than two years of negotiations.

里昂证券首席执行长施立宏和中信证券副董事长殷可已经认识很久，在两年多的谈判期间，两人的关系又进一步拉近。

They both speak the other's language, though they mostly speak in English, and say they have come to respect the other's organization.

殷可能讲英文，施力宏能讲中文，但大部分时间两人都讲英文。他们表示都对对方的公司产生了敬意。

'We love CLSA as a family,' Mr. Yin said. 'We don't want to lose any member of the family.'

殷可说，我们把里昂证券当作家人来爱，我们不想失去这个家庭的任何成员。

The two men say they meet for drinks once a month, no matter how busy they are. 'Sometimes, we just go to a coffee shop and chat,' Mr. Yin said. They traveled together to Paris and Beijing to persuade corporate executives and regulators to approve the deal.

两人说，不管多忙，他们每个月都要一起喝次酒。殷可说，有时候我们只是到咖啡店里坐坐，聊聊天。两人一同前往巴黎和北京，以便说服公司高管和监管机构批准这笔交易。

While the full management structure hasn't been set, Mr. Yin will join CLSA's board and Mr. Slone will keep running CLSA and continue to report to the board.

目前整个管理层结构还没有完全定下来，不过殷可将加入里昂证券董事会，施立宏将继续担任里昂证券CEO，并继续向董事会报告。

Cross-border financial takeovers are notoriously tricky because they are often followed by an exodus of top talent.

跨境金融收购是出了名的难办，因为在完成这类收购之后，常常会有高级人才大批离开。

The two managers are telling CLSA's often critical analysts that their independence will be respected and Citic Securities' staff that their jobs are safe despite potential overlap with CLSA.

施立宏和殷可对常常发表批评意见的里昂证券分析师们说，他们的独立性将得到尊重；并对中信证券员工说，虽然他们的岗位可能跟里昂证券有所重叠，但他们的工作是稳当的。

The stakes are high for both firms. Wall Street bank Morgan Stanley was a co-founder of China's biggest investment bank, China International Capital Corp., in 1995, but disagreements with the firm's management led to a rift that ultimately sidelined Morgan Stanley from decision making. It sold out in 2010.

这桩收购对两家公司都有着重大的利害关系。华尔街银行摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)在1995年与其他机构一道创办了中国最大的投资银行中国国际金融有限公司(China International Capital Corp.)。但由于跟公司管理层产生矛盾，摩根士丹利最终在决策方面被边缘化，于2010年卖掉了全部股份。

The backgrounds of Messrs. Slone and Yin couldn't be more different.

施立宏和殷可的背景差异很大。

Mr. Slone, 51 years old, has spent most of his working career in Asia and is happy to offer his strong opinions on markets, economics and politics. He has split his time among Hong Kong, Paris and New York.

现年51岁的施立宏职业生涯的大部分时间是在亚洲度过的。他喜欢就市尝经济和政治发表强势观点。他的工作主要在香港、巴黎和纽约三地展开。

He has an entrepreneurial streak: He founded electronic broker G-Trade Services in 1999, which was sold to Bank of New York in 2002. At CLSA, where employees own up to a third of the company, he is viewed as first among equals and staffers are encouraged to express their opinions to him. Under the deal, the employee owners will receive some equity interest but the structure wasn't clear.

施立宏有过创业经历：他在1999年创立了电子交易平台G-Trade Services，并在2002年将其出售给纽约银行(Bank of New York)。在员工持股比例高达三分之一的里昂证券，施立宏被视作最重要的一位员工，他鼓励下属向自己表达意见。根据收购协议，持股员工将获得部分股本权益，但股权结构并不清楚。

Mr. Yin, 48, worked his way up through China's domestic brokerage industry, starting as the assistant to the chief executive officer of the government-owned Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 1991. He came to Hong Kong 10 years ago with Citic Capital Holdings Ltd., which is also partially owned by Citic Group, to lead investment banking and private-equity investment businesses and was named Citic Securities' executive director in 2010.

现年48岁的殷可是从中国内地证券经纪业一路打拼上来的。他职业生涯的起点是在1991年作为政府所有的深圳证券交易所首席执行长的助理。2002年殷可加盟中信集团部分所有的中信资本控股有限公司(Citic Capital Holdings Ltd., 简称：中信资本)，并于同年来到香港。他负责中信资本的投资银行和私募股权投资业务，于2010年被任命为中信证券的执行董事。

He got a taste of the risks of international finance when he helped negotiate a 2007 deal in which Citic Securities and U.S. brokerage Bear Stearns were to buy nearly $1 billion stakes in each other and join each other's board.

2007年殷可参与了中信证券和美国券商贝尔斯登交叉持股谈判，两家券商均将斥资近10亿美元持有对方股权，并向对方董事会派驻董事。这笔交易让殷可领教了国际金融的风险。

The Bear Stearns deal was sealed in the months after two Bear Stearns hedge funds collapsed, one of the first major events of the financial crisis. But the deal was never completed because Bear Stearns collapsed the next March before Chinese regulators, in their characteristic slowness, approved the deal. Mr. Yin said he got to know Bear Stearns CEO James Cayne, a tough-talking onetime scrap-iron salesman, during that period.

上述交易是在贝尔斯登旗下两只对冲基金倒闭（这也是金融危机中首批出现的重大事件之一）之后的几个月中决定的。但交易最终并未完成，原因是在中国监管机构批准这笔交易之前，贝尔斯登就于2010年3月崩盘了（行事缓慢是中国监管机构的特点）。殷可说，双方接触期间他认识了贝尔斯登CEO凯恩(James Cayne)，一位言辞犀利的老总，曾经销售过废铁。

Mr. Slone said he and Mr. Yin talked about the Bear Stearns deal only once. One day, while they were walking in Beijing, Mr. Yin pointed out an expensive apartment that a top Bear Stearns executive had considered buying. Mr. Yin said the executive was lucky he hadn't bought the apartment.

施立宏说，他和殷可只谈过一次中信与贝尔斯登的交易。一天，他们两人在北京散步时，殷可指着一套高档公寓说，贝尔斯登一位前高管曾考虑购买这套公寓。殷可说这位高管应该为自己最终没有买下公寓感到庆幸。

For Citic Securities, the current deal in some ways makes up for the failed Bear Stearns deal. The plan had been to build a joint venture in Hong Kong to handle overseas initial public offerings of Chinese companies, much as the CLSA deal is designed to do.

对于中信证券而言，收购里昂证券在某些方面弥补了同贝尔斯登交易失败所带来的遗憾。按照原先计划，如果同贝尔斯登的交易成功，两家公司将在香港成立一家合资券商，专门负责中资企业海外上市交易，很像此次中信证券收购里昂证券以后的打算。

Mr. Yin in particular will be under pressure to make the deal work. Chinese investments in Western financial firms haven't done well, and Citic is paying more than two times book value for CLSA, which is struggling to make a profit due to falling commissions and weak trading volume.

殷可尤其将面临压力，他需要使此次收购达到预期目的。中国此前对西方金融企业的投资结果并不理想，而中信证券此次收购价是里昂证券账面价值的两倍多。由于佣金下降、交易量萎缩，里昂证券难以盈利。

'CLSA needs to have other ways of making money,' Mr. Slone says. Citic Securities is hoping that the volume of Chinese IPOs it can sell through CLSA's network will boost trading commissions.

施立宏说，里昂证券必须拓宽收入来源。中信证券希望其通过里昂证券网络所销售的中资企业新股将会提高里昂证券的交易佣金。

The combination brings together CLSA's 1,500 professionals, mostly in 15 Asian-Pacific cities, London and New York, with Citic Securities' political connections in Beijing and its close links with Chinese companies such as Citic Heavy Industries Co., which it helped list in Shanghai. Citic Securities had more than 400 institutional clients, more than 700 corporate clients and 3.5 million retail clients as of May.

此次两家券商联姻后，里昂证券主要分布在亚太地区15个城市以及伦敦和纽约的1,500名专业人士将为中信证券所用，而里昂证券也能共享中信证券在北京的政界人脉以及它同中信重工(Citic Heavy Industries Co.)等中资企业的密切关系。中信证券刚刚帮助中信重工在上交所上市。截至今年5月，中信证券拥有400多家机构客户、700多家企业客户和350万零售客户。

They are already teaming up on some deals. CLSA participated in Citic Securities' US$1.6 billion October initial public offering in Hong Kong. In May, CLSA also worked on Huadian Fuxin Energy Corp.'s US$319 million Hong Kong IPO, a deal where Citic Securities was a lead adviser.

双方已经在一些交易上展开合作。里昂证券参与了中信证券去年10月在香港16亿美元的首次公开募股(IPO)交易。今年5月，里昂证券还参与了华电福新能源股份有限公司(Huadian Fuxin Energy Corp.) 3.19亿美元的香港IPO交易，中信证券在此次交易中任主要财务顾问。