Private equity is by its nature and up and down business, but few tales hold a candle to that of Weijian Shan, the Chinese-born dealmaker who clinched one of the most unlikely and successful deals of the early 21st century. Shan, who never went to high school and labored as a teenager in the Gobi Desert during the Cultural Revolution, would go on to spearhead the first purchase ever of a Chinese bank by any foreign investor, the acquisition of Shenzhen Development Bank (SDB) by an arm of famed buyout firm TPG. The subsequent rescue operation transformed SDB from a basket case into a veritable money machine. The deal—which netted investors 14x their money in 5 years—is the centerpiece of Shan’s new book “Money Machine.”
