Word: taipan
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Hong Kong it is known as the princely hong, or trading house, and its leader is the taipan, the big boss. Throughout most of its 156-year history, Jardine Matheson & Co. has been the foremost trader in the colony, and as readers of Novelist James Clavell know, it has been run not so much by a series of executives as by a dynasty of merchant-rulers. Now the succession has taken its strangest turn. Instead of drawing from the small Scottish knot of the founders' families, Jardine Matheson has announced that Brian Powers, 38, a former New York investment banker...
...turbulence of the times may have prompted Jardines to turn to a hyperfast-tracking American as the new taipan. Born in Massapequa, N.Y., Powers graduated from Yale, where he played football, and got a law degree from the University of Virginia in 1974. He began his career with the blue- chip Manhattan law firm of Debevoise & Plimpton, then worked as a money manager for the Ford Foundation and as an investment banker for James D. Wolfensohn Inc. At Wolfensohn, Powers put together several deals for Simon Keswick, the outgoing taipan...
Keswick (pronounced keh-zik), the seventh taipan of that name to run Jardines since its founding in 1832, was impressed, and persuaded Powers to join the company in 1986 as chief strategist. Powers helped engineer a ! restructuring that reduced the firm's debt load and bolstered its earnings. The company's profits surged 64% in 1987, to a record $100.4 million...
...absorbed a lot of the 19th century trader's ethos. Regarding future acquisitions, he declares, "We don't care what industry it's in, as long as it's a good buy." To keep its far-flung empire flourishing, Jardines may have picked just the right taipan...