When I open the door of our conference room, I meet the
counterparty for the first time - an older American gentleman and
his Chinese (female) business partner. He has built a very
successful global business, and has given her a carte blanche to
run operations in China. Our client intends to buy all his
non-Chinese activities and expressed interest in the China business
as well, but only wants to decide after thorough due diligence.
We're not even five minutes into the meeting when she suddenly
starts shouting at her business partner that she hasn't seen
any money yet, so she doesn't understand why he wants to give
our client all kind of information about their business.
Once things have calmed down, we walk them through our bilingual
due diligence questionnaire: 'Audited accounts over the past
three years?' 'We don't have this.' 'Labor
contracts?' 'All verbal.' 'Contracts with your
customers?' Sometimes in writing, but usually all done over the
phone. By the way, we
