September Weather

After record temps in Shenzhen this fall, the weather is finally starting to get in tune with the seasons, however mild they may be here.  As the weather cools and jackets find their way out of closets, it seems that business too is cooling, even as we hunt for new clients and new opportunities.  The global economic situation has altered the investment strategies of even some of the largest capital firms as they rethink plans in China and the region.  Interesting and frustrating at the same time, but I digress from my main point of this little post.

I'll preface by talking about the gut instinct.  There's a fair bit of science and a heap of pseudo-science backing this as a more legit thing now that they've discovered a relatively large neural network down there. I can't back this up with citations so I'll relegate my comments to the 'crazy' sphere of the web.  Regardless, they say you cannot teach or train a gut feeling, but you can learn how to heed its warning.  We were recently made aware that a client had filed for bankruptcy even when their balance sheet was clean and they had a steady business model that was generating revenues that would give no indication of duress.  What we had no way of knowing, short of full disclosure by the company's chairman, was that the chairman himself had taken out 8 million USD in personal loans backed by the company, off balance sheet.  Yaayy.

I cannot in good faith say its a lesson we've learned because the deal had always been less clear than we would have liked, but a retainer can do wonders to calm the nerves.  Once that dried up, we poked and prodded, and 2 months later discovered this issue that I write about today. Would a strong gut instinct have prevented us from taking on this client: perhaps, but I'll wager that our experience through it has been worthwhile and that in hardships, new opportunities present themselves.  Our opportunity is now to structure an outright sale of this client, and in a shortened time frame as well.  We will continue to see how this situation unravels and are pushing to keep our ship upright.

On a side note, I've managed to compound several small incidents on the soccer field into a nice mural of bruises on the lower half of my leg.  I consider to be my painful homage to the colors of fall we so sorely miss out here in china.  Quite literally covered in all the most beautiful autumnal hues of purple brown red and orange.  Unfortunately this has rendered my leg  useless as a serious heel bruise combined with a lower calf collision has combined to seize up most of the goings on down there.  Fortunately! I discovered through an American friend a sports therapy place.  I would post photos but I feel a shot of a bruised leg with 15 needles hooked up to an electro-stim machine might stir up some of that gut feeling stuff I was blabbing about before.