By Ken MacFadyen
Peter Yu’s career path into private equity didn’t follow a traditional route. He never spent time as a consultant and didn’t put in long hours as a junior banker. Before heading to Wall Street, he spent a good portion of his early career in Washington, notably as a law clerk under outgoing Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens and then later, during the Clinton administration, as director to the National Economic Council, the White House office that develops and coordinates economic policy.
It’s this background in diplomacy and compromise that prepared Yu for the challenges of buying companies and investing in emerging markets. He is not a proponent, for example, of seeking control as a way to mitigate risks. Rather, he takes the opposite tack, using minority-stake deals to align interests. This kind of “soft power” approach would make most PE investors bristle, especially in countries where the rule of law may not be consistent or entirely clear.
Download the full article as a PDF here .
Source: Mergers & Acquisitions – The Dealmaker’s Journal
Photo: Manhattan skyline by Simone Roda from Italia, BY 2.0, via wikimedia