The New Zealander heading big Russian investment firm Renaissance Capital is helping place Chinese funds in natural resources companies across Africa and the former Soviet Union in a push to be the biggest multi-regional emerging-markets bank.Renaissance
The New Zealander heading big Russian investment firm Renaissance Capital is helping place Chinese funds in natural resources companies across Africa and the former Soviet Union in a push to be the biggest multi-regional emerging-markets bank.
Renaissance is hiring bankers in Beijing and opening an office in Hong Kong, said NBR Rich Lister Stephen Jennings, 49, who co-founded the bank in 1995 and is now its chief executive.
The firm advised African Minerals on a stake sale to China Railway Materials Corp this week and Moscow-based United Co Rusal on its share offering to Chinese billionaire Li Ka-shing in April, he told the Bloomberg newsagency.
Mr Jennings founded Renaissance with former bankers from Credit Suisse Group after moving to Russia, initially to advise on the privatisation of the Bolshevik Biscuit Factory at the height of New Zealand's move to pro-market forces polices.
He is now turning the bank to China after it survived the 2008 credit crisis by selling a 50% stake minus one share to Mikhail Prokhorov, the Russian billionaire owner of the New York Nets basketball team.
Renaissance is in the process of getting a licence for operations in Hong Kong and has predicted the centre of global capital for emerging markets will move from London to Hong Kong within three years.
"The Chinese need to buy large iron ore reserves and deposits," Mr Jennings said. "Who will find and package these things? It won't be a bunch of guys sitting in New York. You have to be out there on the ground and be very specialised."
Renaissance's role in China will mostly be to find buyers for assets outside the country rather than to sell Chinese assets, he said.
