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"I like being on the buy side, I like making money, and making a difference"
Gita Wirjawan |
GITA WIRJAWAN MIGHT well be the Barack Obama of corporate Indonesia.
Bright, polished, accessible and youthful, JPMorgan’s former country head in Jakarta even looks a little like the US Democratic nominee for the White House. Like Obama, who happened to be schooled in Jakarta as a youth, Wirjawan preaches fundamental root-and-branch change to how his country runs and presents itself. Although he has spent much of his life outside Indonesia, Wirjawan is no less Indonesian for the experience. A rare cleanskin in Jakarta’s business hornet’s nest, Wirjawan is a true believer in what Indonesia can be.
Where Obama’s platform is politics, Wirjawan’s is business. He toyed with a political career a few years ago but his bumping up against Indonesia’s rancid political culture left him a little bruised and disillusioned. Having brought his children back to Jakarta to be raised as proud Indonesians, he now believes the change Indonesia so sorely needs can be effected by properly directed business.
Hence Wirjawan’s new venture, Ancora Capital. "I’ve been wanting to do this for around three years or so, but I’ve been thinking about it for a long time," he says.
He says he has seen a lot of colleagues move into private equity in recent years. He too nursed a yearning but for different reasons. "I’ve spent a lot of time thinking how I’m going to make it different from everybody else," he says. "I wanted to get funding from people that I think would be challenging for Indonesians to get money from."
That meant spending the past 12 to 18 months cultivating relationships with Muslim financiers. He wanted his firm to be Shariah-compliant and Indonesia-centric. He ran his vision past contacts, and his JPMorgan colleagues, and says the response was: "‘Great, why did you wait so long to do this? Let’s do it.’ The guys at Morgan were very supportive. I kind of like being on the buy side, I like making money, and making a difference for people around me and for Indonesia."
At Ancora, he has joined forces and contact books with Briton Ivor Orchard, JPMorgan’s almost legendary resources pointman. Orchard has moved his Hong Kong base to the beachier climes of Sydney, to be closer to the rampant resource sector down under. Ancora Capital has eight executives in three offices: Jakarta, Hong Kong and Sydney. Orchard is the co-chairman of the fund, out of Sydney. His former job as country head has gone to Rizal Prasetijo, JPMorgan’s former Indonesia research head.
The two JPMorgan escapees have targeted mainly Muslim investors from the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Brunei in the first $300 million raising. "We’ve been able to get money from countries which rarely think of Indonesia," he says.
Though it sounds vaguely Bahasa, the name Ancora speaks to Wirjawan’s love of music connections: it is Italian for encore. Wirjawan is an internationally noted jazz musician and producer. (As an aside, the last prominent Indonesian to use an Italian term in public life was the republic’s charismatic founder president Sukarno, who employed the Italian words "vivere pericoloso" in the mid-1960s. To "live dangerously" has today become the political leitmotif of that turbulent era.)
To some extent it still is. "It’s tough selling Indonesia," says Wirjawan.
He laments the "whole CNN syndrome" that afflicts Indonesia. "You talk to the guys in London and New York until your blood runs out and people are still going to think Indonesia is just corruption and earthquakes and tsunamis – poverty.
"But it is so deadly true, and one way to change it fast is to be in a position of capital, not in a position of agency, which is why we have set up Ancora."
One of a new breed
Educated at the University of Texas in Austin, Wirjawan joined JPMorgan in Jakarta in 2004, around the time of the election of ex-general Susilo Bambanmg Yudhoyono as president. Wirjawan has since served on various committees advising Yudhoyono. While at JPMorgan, Wirjawan was involved in nearly every big corporate player in the country. He has arranged debt and equity financing for Indonesia’s politically connected Bakrie Group, and advised on the merger of two Indonesian banks, PT Bank Niaga and PT Bank Lippo. At Goldman Sachs in Singapore, Wirjawan advised Temasek Holdings on its telecom investments in Indonesia.
Wirjawan has long been slated as a rising politician, one of a new breed of cleanskins to break with and cleanse the country’s rancid political culture. In 2005, Yudhoyono offered him the challenging task of cleaning up and turning around the troubled state oil company Pertamina, which had long been a vehicle of state abuse. He went through the initial parliamentary procedures but stepped away, confronted by insurmountable vested interests. The experience displayed the limits of power in Indonesia and left Wirjawan bruised, dispirited and disenchanted with the belief that politics is the remedy to Indonesia’s many ills.
"My perspective has changed a bit," he says. "It’s pretty clear now that I’m not going to do anything [in politics]."
The US credit buffeting notwithstanding, the timing on Indonesia taken alone might be fortuitous. Under the five-year Yudhoyono presidency, Indonesia has enjoyed its most stable political environment since the May 1998 fall of Suharto. Its economy, which effectively collapsed during the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, grew by 6.3% last year, about the level it needs to sustain employment and basic human development indicators but, still, its best growth in a decade. Still, after financial train wrecks like the mid-1990s economic meltdown, the $14 billion Asia Pulp and Paper default, five presidents in 10 years and chronic corruption, Indonesia is certainly not Switzerland.