Mary MacLeod is busy. She might also have, right now, the most interesting job in investment banking in the world.
New Zealand born and Australia trained, MacLeod jumped companies and cultures early last year, swapping a super-steady job in Hong Kong as Asia-Pacific chief operating officer at Deutsche Bank for the uncharted and politically shark-infested waters of ICBC International (ICBCI), the foreign division of Beijing’s largest lender, ICBC Bank.
In so doing, deputy CEO MacLeod became the most powerful foreign banker in the People’s Republic of China, in charge of hiring and firing at a brokerage that sees itself as China’s premier global investment bank and the natural heir and successor to Goldman Sachs. No pressure there, then.
Not that the concept of stress seems to exist in her lexicon. Meeting at her offices in Hong Kong’s Three Pacific Place, MacLeod appears the epitome of a cool head. She arrives looking unflustered, clutching only a sheaf of notes.
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Mary MacLeod, ICBCI |
MacLeod has little time for tomfoolery or small talk. Time restrictions mean it’s straight down to business, and she briefly outlines ICBCI’s ambitions. "In the short to medium term, our aim is to become the leading investment bank in greater China, then to be the leading investment bank in Asia," she says, settling quickly into a rhythm. "Longer term, ICBC Bank is globalizing its operations, so it makes sense that its investment bank, ICBCI, would follow the same trajectory."
Not that this means emulating the west’s troubled, retrenching investment banks. Beijing, post-financial crisis, has grown to resent, even ridicule, the brokerages (with the exception of Goldman Sachs) that it once lauded and courted. Imitating a financial model it views as both failed and barbarically imperialist would be a step too far.
So MacLeod adds a sizeable caveat. "We aren’t trying to turn ICBCI into a western investment bank. Our aim is unquestionably to build a global investment bank with Chinese characteristics. We want to build a culture that is uniquely our own, that is both global and Chinese, that can sit comfortably in any part of the world."
There is, however, no doubting the sincerity of ICBCI’s aspirations. This is an organization that genuinely sees itself as a future great: a brokerage that will one day advise on global mega-mergers and underwrite stock listings from London to Lagos. And it sees this as its time in the sun. ICBC Bank chairman Jiang Jianqing regularly refers to 2012 as the year of investment banking in speeches and internal memos.
As Chinese corporates expand into markets once dominated by the west, Beijing wants party-directed lenders such as ICBC to channel funding into asset-hungry mainland corporates. In the same vein, it wants the likes of ICBCI to advise those corporates on who to buy and where, and to help them load up on fresh equity and debt as they take on the world.
"Ten years ago," says MacLeod, "Chinese companies sourced around 3% of their non-debt corporate funding from the capital markets. Today, it’s 18% and growing. As China’s corporate landscape changes and as PRC corporations expand their global needs, we want to be there alongside them."
Such a shift in the fabric of global investment banking would have seemed preposterous a few years ago. Now, the prospect of a global Chinese broking powerhouse doesn’t seem outlandish.
However, global domination is a way off. ICBCI is still learning how to walk. As recently as late 2008, the brokerage was still clad in the moth-eaten clothing of its stodgy forerunner, ICEA Securities, a Z-list brokerage with an empty mandate book and less appeal than roadkill.
So ICBC Bank decided to do the humane thing, killing off ICEA and resurrecting the brokerage as ICBCI, adding an I to the group acronym to denote its global aspirations. In doing so, the brokerage followed the lead set by Bank of China International (BOCI) and since copied by every mainland lender with global ambitions.
After its inauguration, the brokerage barely paused for breath before splashing its cash. According to one insider with knowledge of the situation, ICBCI has spent "tens of millions of US dollars on new bankers", and is preparing to spend "tens of millions more" next year.
Lee Zhang was the first to join. The 47-year-old rainmaker left Deutsche Bank in April 2010 for a dual role that saw him become a senior executive vice-president at ICBC Bank and chairman at the new ICBCI.
Huang Mingxiang, a "tough and commercially-savvy banker", according to one insider, was appointed chief executive officer and vice-chairman at ICBCI. Huang, like Lee, also maintained his ties at group level (essential for such a bureaucratic and political institution) thanks to his role running the bank’s sprawling operations in the southern Guangdong province.
MacLeod joined early last year after a long courtship to oversee hiring and administration across the front and back end. The rest of the year saw a steady inflow of origination bankers with solid pedigrees, and a smaller number of execution specialists.
Wang Zhonghe (Charles Wang) also moved over in September 2011 from Deutsche, where he had most recently served as CEO of the German bank’s mainland joint venture, Zhong De Securities, becoming a second deputy CEO at ICBCI alongside MacLeod.
Gary Chan was encouraged to leave an ailing Macquarie to head the global equity capital markets team, while Wu Gang, a mainland-born banker with a plummy accent thanks to a private English education, was hired from RBS to run the mergers and acquisitions team.
And still they came. Ma Dongjun served his time at Lehman Brothers and Nomura before joining in May 2010 as ICBCI’s head of investment banking.
Lance Chen came in as head of execution in September 2011, having worked in investment banking for 20 years, most recently as a managing director at JPMorgan’s mainland China operations. Born in Taiwan (as is his wife, Yu Pei-pei, Goldman Sachs’s president of operations in Taipei), Chen was drawn to ICBCI as much by the higher salary-bonus package (rumoured to be $2 million, against an estimated $1.2 million at JPMorgan) as by a big dangling carrot – namely, the chance to rise more rapidly up the corporate ladder.
