William Lee, Ph.D.

MANAGING DIRECTOR

As a native Chinese, Dr. Lee received his postgraduate education in USA, holding Ph.D. from MIT did post-graduate study at Harvard. He published a book on Chinese politics by UC Berkeley and several research articles in prestigious academic journals. After returning to China over ten years ago, Dr. Lee has been active in the field of M&A. First, he joined Asimco (a major US direct investment company in China with USD 400m under management) as its assistant president, responsible for acquiring businesses, setting up joint ventures, and post-acquisition integration in the sectors of automotive components and beer brewery. One of his major accomplishments was masterminding and negotiating a successful sale of Five-Star Beer, the best brand in Beijing market, to Tsingtao Beer, which was the largest M&A transaction in the industry at that time. His rich, challenging, and thought-provoking experiences at Asimco were well documented in "Mr. China", a best seller authored by Tim Clissold.

After Asimco, Dr. Lee worked for McKinsey as a senior associate for 2 years, gaining extensive exposure to various industries (oil and chemicals, FMCG, electronics, and international trade) and functions (business strategy, organization, performance management, sales and marketing), thus significantly sharpening his analytical skills.

In the past 3 years prior to joining TCG full time, Dr. Lee headed up TNT China's strategy department, responsible for China strategy, M&A and alliances. Thus, Dr. Lee has gained in-depth knowledge of China's logistics, mail, and express sectors. During his tenure with TNT, Dr. Lee's most important achievement was successful acquisition of Hoau, which was by far the largest and the best privately-owned LTL road transportation company in China. (Profile of Hoau: 2006 revenues RMB1.5 billion, an extensive national network of 1,100 depots covering 400 major cities, and a workforce of 12,000 employees.)

This acquisition is a highly significant event for cross-border M&A activities, in that Hoau is typical of the vast majority of Chinese successful private businesses, in terms of complex organization, aggressive and creative management, strong local culture, and un-transparent financials by Western standards. The success of this deal depended largely on personal trust, mutual respect, honest communication, open-mindedness, creativity, and perseverance.

Other Team Members