Source: Money journal Author: Gu Huiyan
Gao Feng returned from the Antarctic continent only about two weeks before the interview. The 17-day journey made him feel great, “It’s altogether another world there.” He told the reporter, he also urged the reporter to spare time for a trip. Despite his young age, he is already VP of Meridian Capital China. His travel this time also served another purpose, i.e. to personally experience a tourism enterprise intending to make investment.
In the investment circle, Gao Feng is more like a traveler, for it seems he has a natural affinity with travel. Thanks to his previous job, he has traveled to many cities that common people would hardly have the chance to visit, such as Altay, Jinchang, Shizuishan, Tonghua, Bayuquan……Long distance travel brought him a sense of calmness and tranquility, which coincide with his conservative and cautious investment style.
“I like playing by nature, the industries I’m concerned with are exactly those I’m very interested in and I can experience personally, I personally tried nearly every business of my investment project. As a result, I feel very happy to become an investor, in the early days of my career I dealt with different machines, now I deal with different people and different industries.” Gao Feng said.
Since graduation from The National University of Singapore in 2005, Gao Feng took a job related to sewage treatment, his university specialty, in Singapore. After returning to China, he worked as Deputy General Manager and Operation Director at VSL Capital Limited, responsible for M&A business. In 2011, he joined Meridian Capital.
Our faithful readers must be familiar with Meridian Capital, Ji Wei (Tracy), partner of Meridian Capital China, once “visited” this column. Headquartered in Singapore, it is a private equity investment fund, the first investment immigration fund with Chinese background approved by Singapore Economic Development Board, focusing on investment in sectors related to information service, education service, financial service, tourism service and cultural entertainment service in the modern service industry, its partners have invested in a number of classical cases including Ctrip, Home Inns, Allyes, Focus Media, www.eastmoney.com. At present, Gao Feng is mainly responsible for investment in tourism, consumption and other sectors in China.
Up till now, Meridian Capital has completed Phase III fund-raising, and plans to cooperate with the largest fund of fund in China in 2013 to kick off a new round of fund-raising, it is expected the target of the new round of fund will reach 500 million yuan.
Cultural industry: M&A exit will become the mainstream trend
Meridian Capital is famous for its focus on the cultural industry in the investment circle, yet today this sector is attracting attention from a growing number of investors due to policy dividend effect.
Since the state government put forward the proposal of “speeding up the development of cultural industry, promoting cultural industry to become a pillar industry of national economy”, governments in all regions one after another introduced policies to support cultural industry development, and cultural industry instantly became a hot land for capital overnight.
According to a report by ChinaVenture Group: “The key measure of the state government to position cultural industry as a pillar industry of the nation will stimulate investment enthusiasm of investment institutions toward the cultural industry, meanwhile driven by consumption upgrading, people’s demand for cultural industry will rise continually, and ultimately enable our country’s cultural industry to meet the next investment peak.”
Today, a “swarming” investment pattern has emerged in the investment in cultural industry. Accordingly, forums about cultural industry activities become frequent, investment and financing matchmaking symposium focusing on culture industry as theme are also on the rise, signaling that numerous investment institutions are heading for this hot land.
“According to incomplete statistics, there are over 10000 various private equity investment organizations in China.” Gao Feng said, “Since the second half of last year, the investment situation seemed to have gradually improved. In a certain sense, at least the demand of common population has been ignited, public interest in this sector is favorable, and this sector has the chance to expand and grow. However, there were many restrictions in the past, for instance private publishing enterprises have no license, foreign investment cannot enter internet industry and so on; it is believed that restrictions in these aspects will be gradually relaxed in the future. Therefore, overall speaking the investment opportunities will continue to multiply. ”
Nevertheless, Gao Feng also indicated that, Meridian Capital will not follow “swarming” style investment trend, instead it would focus on the entire industry, and look for certain point in the refined sectors of the industry to make deployment, “we have our own tempo, instead of following the popular trend.”
"No desire is just” investment mentality
“No desire is just” is a catchphrase of Gao Feng in speech; in his view, if one has not too much desire and requirement, one will naturally become open-minded.
Despite his calm mindset, Gao Feng has a package of investment rules with individual character, he clearly told the reporter that two kinds of people would absolutely fail his assessment, one is those particularly obstinate, the other is those with poor physique. According to his explanation, business startup is a very tough task, only those with strong body can stick to the end.
He said jokingly that for a certain period in the past, he also cared about the marriage status of the entrepreneurs; this is because the stability of family holds significant meaning for work performance. “Back then we tended to hire married candidates, but later when we saw the founders of some enterprises experienced problems in marriage, we realized this criterion perhaps was not too reliable, for if divorced, it’s disturbing to see half of one’s assets being taken away; now it seems that marriage with child is relatively stable, but more often than not after marriage and childbirth, one’s energy will be diversified and weakened compared with the case before marriage.”
Nor would he agree with projects depending on concept alone to sway investment decision. He said frankly: “I can’t understand why some investors will invest in some projects that are slow to produce profit, such project investors have no idea when they will see result after splashing out the money, then what is the meaning of investment? After all, profit-earning is the only final yardstick to judge the performance of a project!"
In the eyes of Gao Feng, Meridian Capital’s partners all have very conspicuous character label. “Outside her working hours, Tracy is a person very mindful about life quality, and also a person very easy to get along with; but when entering the work mode, she is also a person demanding high performance from employees. It is rumored that no one in Meridian Capital has ever received approval for their work from Tracy at the very first attempt. On the other hand, Xong Xiangdong is more like the spiritual leader of Meridian Capital, for he possesses an uncanny instinct toward projects, when discussing projects, he would often straightforwardly tell you where the problem of this project lies, whether or not it deserves investment, and the reasons, and such ability purely comes from accumulation of experience.”
Perhaps it is exactly due to such investors and teams with distinct features that Meridian Capital can accurately hit the target in the loose and diversified cultural industry.
(www.meridiancapital.com)
