In a high-end hotel near 57th Street in Manhattan.
Lin Fan chatted happily with a middle-aged Chinese man in his forties, with a thin face and gold-rimmed glasses.
"Mr. Jiang, I've actually been dating you for a long time, and I finally found a chance to meet you today."
Jiang Ping waved his hand, "Just call me Peter!"
Lin Fan nodded, "Okay, Peter, I'm going to meet you today mainly because I want to talk to you about cooperation."
Jiang Ping nodded. In his opinion, the other party was still very sincere.
A few months ago, a headhunter contacted him.
He said that a Chinese hedge fund company that had just been founded planned to invite him to join.
But when he asked, he found out that the fund management scale was only over 30 million US dollars, and he was speechless. He made more money than this in a year.
The headhunter told him that behind this fund there was a young technology tycoon named Darren Xia, who was very promising.
Then he checked it out and found out that he was actually the boss of Facebook and YouTube.
This aroused a lot of interest in him.
However, Facebook and YouTube had not completed Series B financing with a valuation of tens of billions of dollars at that time, so they can only be said to be pretty good.
After thinking deeply, he still rejected the olive branch offered by Lin Capital.
Unexpectedly, a few months later, Lin Capital once again commissioned a headhunter to find him.
This time he did not refuse, but chose to meet with Lin Fan before talking.
"Peter, Lin Capital is setting up a second hedge fund - Manzhong Fund."
Lin Fan looked at the other party and said slowly: "This fund has reached fundraising intentions with more than six institutions, and the intended amount exceeds 300 million US dollars.
According to our plan, this fund will raise a minimum of US$500 million, with no upper limit!"
Jiang Ping's expression was normal, without any fluctuation.
Lin Fan thought of the other party's identity and said with a smile: "Of course, I know that this asset management scale is not worth mentioning in front of Lehman Brothers.
But what I emphasize is that this is a Chinese hedge fund.
The manager of our first hedge fund was also a Chinese, his name was Liu Hai.
What I can guarantee is that at Lin Capital, there is no promotion ceiling for yellow people and they will not encounter racial discrimination or unfair treatment."
Lin Fan's words were very simple, but every word touched Jiang Ping's heart.
He joined Lehman Brothers in 1995 and has worked there for a total of ten years.
During this decade, the global economy was in turmoil, and it was difficult for fund managers to deliver stable results.
However, his investment performance has remained stable at an annualized rate of return of 30% to 100%.
With this achievement, he became one of the traders with the greatest contribution to Lehman Brothers.
However, his efforts were not proportional to his gains.
During his ten years at Lehman Brothers, his average commission was between 3% and 4%.
It was not until last year that 11% was mentioned, and the cash portion only accounted for 3%.
You must know that on Wall Street, commissions are usually 10% to 15% based on performance.
During his ten years at Lehman, he helped the company earn more than a billion dollars.
But all this did not win the company's attention. Even people with lower levels than him received higher performance commissions than him.
The company promoted him to the so-called senior vice president, SVP. This kind of position is everywhere on Wall Street. Goldman Sachs has 12,000 VP vice presidents.
In fact, he had long been dissatisfied with Lehman Brothers, but he had been reluctant to leave for many reasons.
The most important thing is that I haven't found a good home.
The management scale of Lam Capital's Autumn Harvest Fund is only over US$30 million, and it had only been established for half a year when he was invited.
If it had a scale of several hundred million dollars, maybe he would have agreed to join at that time.
But it was not too late. He heard Lin Fan say that the scale of the Mangzhong Fund was at least US$500 million, and he immediately became interested.
It's just that he has a cold personality and doesn't like to show his mood on his face.
Jiang Ping said: "Can I ask what types of products this fund invests in?"
Lin Fan replied: "It hasn't been officially finalized yet. If you serve as the fund manager, I can leave it to you to make the decision."
Jiang Ping smiled lightly, which showed that the other party still fully trusted him, otherwise he would not have given such high authority.
Lin Fan smiled and said: "I have inquired very clearly about your past work experience.
The reason why I am here today is because I believe that cooperation between the two of us is a win-win situation!"
Lin Fan knew this person very well.
Born in 1965, when he was less than 16 years old, he entered the University of Science and Technology of China with the top score in the Yangzhou College Entrance Examination, and then studied at Princeton and received a doctorate in chemistry.
Later, he studied finance by himself and then entered Stanford to obtain a master's degree in finance.
In addition to his working experience at Lehman, he joined the leading hedge fund SAC in 2006 as a managing director and ranked among the "Top 100 Global Traders" with an annual income of more than 100 million US dollars.
But within two years of working there, he was pushed out of the company due to internal strife, and was accused of unfounded charges such as "insider trading" and "sexual harassment of male subordinates."
Later, I simply started my own business, established an asset management company, and took care of my own assets, which was successful.
He certainly has the ability, but his talents are not recognized and he has not found a platform that is most suitable for him.
"I'm a little curious. Isn't the size of your first fund just over 30 million US dollars?
Just one year later, the second fund has grown to at least US$500 million?”
The matter was of great importance, so Jiang Ping did not accept the invitation hastily and wanted to know more carefully.
Lin Fan took the handbag next to him, took out a stack of information, and handed it to Jiang Ping.
Jiang Ping took it and looked at the fund performance report in his hand, frowning more and more.
"In one year, 36.25 million turned into 100 million? Almost 7 times?"
Lin Fan nodded, "Yes, this is the return on investment of our first fund."
Jiang Ping originally thought that most of the money from the Mang Zhong Fund came from Lin Fan.
After seeing this pile of information, he changed his view.
And the most exaggerated thing is that this is a stock-oriented hedge fund, and all of them are long-term.
He is engaged in finance, so he naturally knows how awesome this is, it is almost too awesome to be true.
As if seeing the confusion on the other person's face, Lin Fan smiled and said: "You can also go to our company and have a look. After all, seeing is believing and hearing is false."
"Is this good?"
Jiang Ping felt that it was inappropriate to go and see other people's secrets before he even agreed to join Lin Capital.
"It doesn't matter. I can't show you the most sensitive ones at the moment. You can look at the investment records we have cleared."
Jiang Ping felt itchy in his heart. He really wanted to take a closer look at this company, so he said cheerfully: "Okay, I'll take the liberty then."
Three years after its establishment, the office of Lam Capital has changed drastically.
The original office of one or two hundred square meters was moved to a new office building, and an entire floor was leased, with an office area of more than 1,500 square meters.
When you get out of the elevator, you will see the huge and eye-catching company logo and signboard at the front desk.
The four Chinese characters "Lin's Capital" were carved in small seal script by a domestic epigraphy master. Many Chinese people, let alone Americans, saw it and couldn't recognize it. It was like a ghost drawing a talisman.
It's okay if you can't recognize it. This is the effect you want, full of style.
There is also a row of English "lin capital" below the small seal sign, which is the American name of Lin Capital.
There was a security consultant in front of the glass door. When he saw the boss leading someone out of the elevator, he quickly swiped his card to open the door.
After entering the company, Lin Fan took Jiang Ping around.
While walking around, I introduced to Jiang Ping the quantitative trading research department, portfolio management department, trading department, research department, risk control and compliance department...
Although the sparrow is small, it has all five internal organs.
Although the Autumn Harvest Fund only has more than thirty people, the various functional departments are clearly divided and everything is in order.
After taking Jiang Ping to see the Autumn Harvest Fund, Lin Fan took him to Guyu and Beginning of Autumn Fund to have a look.
"Guyu Fund is a VC fund that currently manages nearly 30 million U.S. dollars in assets and has invested in Tesla, LinkedIn, China's Frame Media, Ganji.com, Tudou.com and other start-up companies..."
Guyu Fund is mediocre, small in scale, with not many employees, only about ten people.
This is Jiang Ping's first impression.
"Liqiu Fund is a PE fund with an asset management scale of US$800 million. Currently, there is an investment case in which it acquired a mobile operating system company called Android for US$50 million..."
When wandering to the Liqiu Fund, Jiang Ping heard Lin Fan's introduction.
Jiang Ping looked at the empty office with only one person working, and asked: "Eight hundred million US dollars? Just one employee?"
Lin Fanfeng said calmly: "There are four people, and three more are going to participate in the due diligence of Android."
Jiang Ping nodded, indicating that he understood.
"The main PE funds have only been established recently, and many positions have not yet been filled."
Jiang Ping asked: "Does Vision want to become an investment group like Blackstone and KKR that covers the entire investment chain?"
Lin Fan nodded and said calmly: "Yes, covering the primary and secondary markets, from the head to the tail."
Jiang Ping has been in the financial industry for ten years and has rich experience. He didn't ask any more questions and already fully understood the ambitions of the young boss in front of him.
Taking Jiang Ping to the conference room, Lin Fan asked an employee of the Autumn Harvest Fund to bring in a laptop and began to show Jiang Ping investment records.
The most typical cases are Shanda and Sina. All the stocks of these two companies were sold out and they are no longer held.
Jiang Ping adjusted his eyes, got close to the computer screen, and observed it carefully.
Lin Fan sat aside and waited quietly for the other party.
After a while, Jiang Ping took off his glasses, rubbed his sore eyes, then put them back on and said, "Sina, Shanda's two investments are event-driven strategies, right?"
When there are major political or economic events in the market, or when companies have major events such as mergers and acquisitions, bankruptcy, reorganization, and major changes in capital structure, due to the complexity of the event and the uncertainty of the outcome, the market's digestion and feedback of the information will be "difficult"
"Invalidity" makes the prices of stocks, bonds and other related securities likely to be overvalued or undervalued.
The event-driven strategy is to capture this opportunity to obtain profits through the control and analysis advantages of event-related information.
Lin Fan, a loser, likes to play this trading strategy the most.
Lin Fan nodded, "Yes!"
Jiang Ping smiled and said: "The timing is very good to sell. Do you think the merger will fail?"
After a few months, Shanda's acquisition of Sina has already been sentenced to death.
Jiang Ping is also Chinese. He has followed the two companies for a while and is a little curious about the story of Lin Fan and these two companies.
"I didn't have much contact with Sina, but during the Lunar New Year, I had a chat with Chen Tianqiao in Shanghai."
Jiang Ping answered: "Then you judge that it will fail?"
Lin Fan nodded.
There is nothing new under the sun, so Jiang Ping had more or less guessed the py transaction inside.
In particular, Lin Capital's operation of selling Sina stocks was obviously in collusion with Shanda.
As a result, this person did not trust Shanda in the end and sold Shanda.
This operation was very smooth and should be the biggest winner in this trading activity.
Like several other institutions, Morgan Stanley and others sold Sina shares to Shanda, but because they did not sell Shanda shares in time, Shanda's acquisition failed and the stock price fell, giving up a lot of profits.
Anyway, from Jiang Ping's point of view, this trading activity is very visionary.
Jiang Ping did not continue to ask. He knew to some extent the strength of the boss in front of him. He was not just a hands-off shopkeeper, and he had very good financial literacy.
This made him a little curious. Didn't this person drop out of school very early and devote himself to running Facebook?
Are you like me, self-taught in finance?
He made a mental comparison and realized that before enrolling in Stanford's finance major, he would most likely not be as good as Lin Fan.
After reading several investment cases, Jiang Ping was almost moved.
He took the initiative and said: "What I am best at may not be stock investment, but foreign exchange, followed by bonds."
Lin Fan smiled. He knew that the other party started his career in foreign exchange, and this was exactly his shortcoming. He chose to recruit Jiang Ping because of this aspect of the other party.
"It doesn't matter. As I said, it's up to you to decide what financial products to invest in."
Jiang Ping nodded and asked, "What do you think of the domestic stock market?"
"This year 2005 happened to be a bear market, and the domestic stock market was wailing..."
Lin Fan said: "But it also happens to be an opportunity. Many high-quality stocks have a price-to-earning ratio of less than 10 times, while earnings are growing by 20% to 30% every year.
In addition, the bank deposit interest rate is less than 2%, and huge deposits may be transferred to the stock market.
Also, I found that a large amount of foreign capital has flowed into China through various channels in order to speculate on the appreciation of the RMB..."
Jiang Ping listened and nodded from time to time.
After Lin Fan finished speaking, he said: "I agree with many of your points.
In fact, I have been paying attention to the domestic stock market.
If there is an opportunity in the future, I hope to invest in China."
Lin Fan said: "There will be opportunities. I hope this kind of investment can be long-term and valuable."
"I have the same view as you." Jiang Ping smiled.
The more we chatted with Lin Fan, the more we became more and more interested, and several hours passed unknowingly.
The two learned about foreign exchange and various financial derivatives from stocks, and then talked about the American market and emerging markets in Asia.
Jiang Ping felt that he had not had such a pleasant chat in a long time, and the other party was also Chinese, with similar cultures and many similar investment views.
Perhaps joining Lam Capital would be the right choice.
"Okay, I am willing to join Lin Capital!"
After thinking about it, Jiang Ping no longer hesitated and took the initiative to bring it up.
Lin Fan smiled and said, "I haven't mentioned the treatment yet, and you just agreed directly?"
Jiang Ping smiled lightly, "Just like investing, I trust my intuition!"
Lin Fan said: "The Manzhong Fund contributes 20% of the company's profits, which can be used as your performance commission."
"Is this too much? In fact, I am very satisfied with 15%."
Lin Fan gave him a 20% commission as soon as he came on board. This gesture really shocked Jiang Ping and made him feel like he was being taken seriously.
If Wall Street can get 15%, it is considered high, but 20% is almost rare.
Lin Fan waved his hand, "It's not much, you are worth the price."
Jiang Ping stopped refusing and nodded, "Okay, I'll quit my job when I get back."
The two only discussed performance commissions, not basic salary and franchise fees.
Awesome traders are so awesome, they even have a settling-in fee when they join the job.
Jiang Ping didn't mention these things, because for those who have the ability, performance commissions are the big deal.
Even if he is not given a basic salary and has a 20% commission, it will still be several times better than what he did at Lehman.
Of course, Lin Fan would not exploit talents like this.
I didn’t mention it on purpose because I was going to give some extra rewards.
