WHEN LOOKING FOR OVERSEAS INVESTORS, NOT ALL THAT GLITTERS IS GOLD
When it looks like a rose and smells like a rose, is it really a rose?
One of the biggest time wasters in international business is pursuing what I call the Potemkin village opportunities (after Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin who erected ornate fake villages to impress Catherine the Great when she toured Ukraine and Crimea). So many things appear glamorous and outsized. But talk of fast money in the air is usually plagued with scams, promoters, crooks, gangsters, dreamers and time wasters. Common characteristics of a booming market, they are no different than the fast talking stock promoters of the Gold Rush, the railroad boom in England, or the Internet bubble.
So here are some proven tactics, which will help you avoid time wasters.
Be many times more skeptical towards any project abroad than you would be evaluating a similar project at home. Do not be dazzled by official looking letters with seals and wink-wink promises that the promoters have “everything under control.” Demand the due diligence upfront. If it is not available to your satisfaction, walk away. And if it sounds even remotely too good to be true, run, don’t walk, because it definitely is.
Develop a broad in-country network of contacts and run any potential projects by them. You will be surprised how small most of emerging markets really are and how well informed the people in them are.
Scour the Internet and poll your contacts that do business abroad about the typical scams prevalent in your target country. Learn about them, how they work and avoid them like the plague. (Excerpted from the Fluent In Foreign Business Ch 17 ) The article below is a very good illustration on the importance of doing one’s due diligence when seeking to attract a foreign investor who “glitters” on the surface.
Confidence Ebbs in Chinese Tycoon’s Ambitious Deals
By JAMES T. AREDDY, The Wall Street Journal
SHANGHAI—When Liu Han threw lifelines to struggling mining companies in Australia and the U.S. in recent years, they say his confident manner struck them as proof he wielded power in China.
The Wall Street JournalLiu Han
Now, Mr. Liu is locked up in China. Police alleged on March 22 that he helped a younger brother evade arrest on a warrant for a 2009 gangland-style triple murder at a teahouse in their hometown.
Since then, mining deals valued at some $2 billion that Mr. Liu has pledged to support have come under doubt. On Thursday in Australia,Sundance Resources Ltd. said Mr. Liu’s company, Sichuan Hanlong Group, missed a payment related to its $1.4 billion buyout bid for the Africa-focused miner, triggering a countdown to scuttle the deal within days. A spokeswoman for Hanlong said she wasn’t aware of the matter.
Hours earlier, Mr. Liu’s U.S. strategic partner said alternative backers are being explored for financing for a $1.3 billion mine in Eureka, Nev.
Mr. Liu’s situation and whereabouts are unclear. Police declined to comment beyond an initial statement. His employees said they have no information. It isn’t unusual for Chinese authorities to detain a person for extensive periods without charge.
The 47-year-old Mr. Liu led the sort of flashy lifestyle that now appears out of sync with new leadership in Beijing, which is championing austerity. In interviews with The Wall Street Journal, more than a dozen government officials, colleagues and businesses associates who know Mr. Liu cited his confidence. “He’s a mover,” said Derek Fisher, an Australian mining executive who got to know Mr. Liu while running a company he acquired, Moly Mines Ltd. MOL.AU -4.35%
For an interview with the Journal just over two years ago in Chengdu, the southwestern Chinese city where Hanlong is based, Mr. Liu arrived in a new Ferrari wearing a mink jacket that draped to his knees. The tycoon talked of sizable bets on natural resources: he would control one-third of the world’s molybdenum resources and a billion tons of uranium. “Liu Han always wins. Liu Han never loses,” he said then.
Mr. Liu also rolls the dice at casinos, according to industry sources and his friends. He is well known to casinos in Australia, according to people familiar with the matter, and has gambled $1 million or more on trips to Macau, said another person familiar with the matter.
Mr. Liu’s decisiveness helped convince Bruce Hansen, chief executive of Evergreen, Colo.-based General Moly Inc., GMO +0.99% that he could count on Hanlong to win Chinese government backing needed to fund its $1.3 billion Nevada mine project. Mr. Hansen said in interviews last year and in 2010 that Mr. Liu kept promises, so he didn’t dwell on Mr. Liu’s personality or background.
“Our focus is clearly on, ‘can they deliver?’ ” Mr. Hansen said at the time.
On April 3, Mr. Hansen said in a statement that finding another Chinese strategic partner now “provides the most promise.”
In Mr. Liu’s December 2010 interview with the Journal, he described a career that often cut close to the law. For instance, he said he paid fines to Chinese regulatory agencies for manipulating futures markets in the 1990s when he was building his fortune. He discussed a February 1997 incident when shots were fired at his empty car. “If they wanted to kill me they should have,” Mr. Liu said.
Police later connected that shooting, which didn’t harm Mr. Liu, to a $12 million loss in sorghum-futures trading suffered by another of China’s richest men, Yuan Baojing, according to court documents. As Mr. Liu explained it, he angered Mr. Yuan by rejecting an offer of almost $2 million to reverse market positions that forced Mr. Yuan into the red.
Mr. Yuan was later convicted of murdering another man who blackmailed him over the failed hit on Mr. Liu, according to court documents. In 2006, Mr. Yuan was executed in northeast China after a brief court appearance where he was pictured in handcuffs and an all-white jumpsuit.
“He had a petty mind,” said Mr. Liu. “Liu Han is the only one who survived in this market. Some went to jail, others disappeared.”
Last year in Australia, a clutch of Mr. Liu’s top deputies and their family members were charged with trading on inside information about his planned investments in locally listed companies. A government official with direct knowledge of the continuing investigation said the evidence shows Mr. Liu wasn’t involved and therefore he isn’t a suspect.
Still, it offered a glimpse into his circle. One former Hanlong executive in Australia, Calvin Zhu, confessed to insider trading and is now serving a 27-month prison sentence. In a court affidavit last year, Mr. Zhu testified he feared Mr. Liu, describing his former boss as a “warlord” with ties to Sydney’s Chinatown gangs and who is “successful in business, politics and the underworld.”
Neither Hanlong nor attorneys for Messrs. Liu or Zhu responded to requests for comment on Mr. Zhu’s affidavit. The others charged have denied wrongdoing.
In their brief statement, Chinese police said only that Mr. Liu is suspected of violating criminal law by shielding his recently arrested brother.
According to a Ministry of Public Security wanted notice, the brother, 43-year-old Liu Yong, who is also known as Liu Wei, was sought as the suspected gunman in a bloody 2009 shootout at a teahouse in the Lius’ hometown of Guanghan. He couldn’t be reached.
An official account published soon after the event by the Sichuan Propaganda Department described it as a gunfight between gang members. In addition to three dead, two were badly wounded. The account twice referred to the younger Mr. Liu as the brother of a Guanghan business tycoon.
Both Lius are well known in Guanghan, where official records list each in the metals business with a shared address and telephone. When Sichuan suffered a major earthquake in May 2008, Liu Han won national praise for having funded school buildings that didn’t collapse like many others. Weeks later, Liu Wei was given the honor of running the Olympic torch through the devastated area.
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