跟敌人喝酒，必须选择时间
2018-03-13 07:45阅读：
上星期，在香港。某君约我和他的两个朋友喝酒。我们互换名片。其中一个英国人看到我的名字，一愣！”你，你 ...
就是张化桥？” '本人便是”。
他大声说，”十八年前，我在香港跟你打过官司！还记得吗？”
我翻过他的名片一看，可不是吗？他作为香港一个上市公司和其董事长的代表律师，在香港高等法院状告我本人和我的雇主，瑞士银行。我当研究部主管时，写报告质疑了这个上市公司的真伪。官司打得天昏地暗，终于庭外合解。可惜这个上市公司几年后灰飞烟灭，其董事长也入狱十多年..
在唏嘘感叹之中，我忘记了我喝的是啤酒，还是葡萄酒。临走时，我告诉这个律师，我准备原谅他了。回到家里，我翻出2015年我发表在英国金融时报的这篇文章，电邮给了这个律师。
十七年前，另一个做假账的香港上市公司也曾经扬言，要聘这个律师，告我和瑞士银行。可惜，没来得及。原因:
你知道的。
Financial Times, 21 May 2015,
by Joe Zhang,
When polluters go unpunished, we must be willing
to live in a toxic environment, writes Joe Zhang
Fifteen years ago, as the head of China research at
UBS, I was threatened by two Chinese companies listed on the Hong
Kong Stock Exchange. One of the two, Greencool Technology, sued me
and my employer for libel. The other, Euro-Asia Agricultural
Holdings, was equally threatening. I had written negative research on both companies, and their
stock prices had tanked as a result.
Within two years, both companies, which boasted market values of
billions of dollars at their peak, had gone bust. And then the
chairmen of the day — Gu
Chujun of Greencool and Yang
Bin of Euro-Asia — were put behind bars in
China.
Was justice served? No — at least, not completely. Both chairmen
were punished for their criminal offences. But in neither case was
their fraud in the capital markets mentioned, let alone punished.
The large numbers of investment bankers, auditors, directors,
corporate executives involved have escaped proper scrutiny. Worst
of all, neither the relevant government departments nor the public
have learnt a lesson.
To me, sleepless nights were not the only damage I suffered from
the case. I have endured censure from many of the hundreds of
retail and even institutional investors. They blamed me for their
financial losses: had I not raised questions about these troubled
companies, they might have unloaded the stocks in good time and in
doing so booked tidy profits — or so they argued. Many questioned
my motives; some even asked whether my employer held short
positions in the shares, meaning it would benefit from plunging
prices.
In those days, despite the high-profile court cases and
widespread media coverage of my role, no government agency ever
asked me about my doubts regarding the two companies. They never
inquired about the investigative field trips — to check out
whether, say, certain factories were indeed producing the widgets
they said they were producing — that sparked my concern. I was
largely left to fend for myself. Having become known as a “black
mouth” — someone who calls public attention to corporate wrongdoing
— I received strange, sometimes hostile, stares of recognition on
the streets of Hong Kong and big Chinese cities.
My employer, UBS, was one of my few sources of support. It not
only funded my legal bills but also allowed me to continue in my
job. My colleagues in the equity sales, wealth management and
investment banking departments also faced negative comments from
customers, including rich individuals, fund houses and corporate
clients.
Today, I am the chairman of a company that is publicly quoted in
Hong Kong, and I sit on the boards of others. Laws and rules for
public companies and their directors are clear, if tedious. But in
my view there is still far too much tolerance in the government and
among the Chinese public at large about illegal and improper
behaviour in the capital markets.
Everyone seems to agree that stealing money is both a crime and
ethically wrong; yet when it comes to stealing money from crowds
(the market), or from a large number of strangers (again, the
market), our moral judgment is somehow less clear if we are not the
direct victims. Even when we are the victims, the sense of
grievance fades very quickly. Illegal and improper behaviour is
sometimes even admired as financial engineering or deft use of
ingenious skills.
When large numbers of people throw rubbish in the street and we
tolerate it, we should not be surprised to find that our streets
are as dirty as they are. When polluters go unpunished, we must be
prepared to live in a toxic environment — and we do. Likewise when
the regulators clamp down on stock market manipulation, many in the
public seem at best uninterested — with predictable consequences.
When the anti-corruption drive began to unfold in China two years
ago, parts of the business world seemed concerned mainly about a
negative effect on the health of the economy. They invoked the old
saying: “If the water is too clean, you will not catch any fish”;
or, to put it another way, the creatures will survive only in
“muddy waters”. The inference is: “Do not be too
hard on crooks or corrupt officials. Do not be too strict on
friends. No one is perfect.”
Corporate governance has greatly improved in this part of the
world in the past 15 years. But in my judgment there is still much
more the regulators can do. Some kinds of wrongdoing in the capital
markets are almost public knowledge. The only thing the government
needs is more resources, more talent and more determination. A
market overseen by tough regulators benefits all.
The writer is chairman of China Smartpay Group Holdings
Limited and author of ‘Inside China's Shadow
Banking’
