This article published yesterday in The Recorder (Law.com) details the healthy balance sheets of new Chinese companies and the country’s banks and their….
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The Recorder introduce their article thus…
M&A lawyers, grab your China handbooks.
With American companies suddenly affordable, young, private Chinese businesses — many of which went from zero to making millions in just a decade — are looking to buy.
Outbound investment has surged in China even as investment into the country plummeted 21 percent through April because of recessions in the United States and Europe. In 2008, overseas investment doubled to $52.2 billion, and this year has already outpaced that figure, according to China’s Ministry of Commerce.
And there’s more to come.
In the past few months, China’s central government has made major policy changes to encourage outbound investments. It has even embarked on a public relations campaign and revived a decade-old slogan urging companies to "go global."
"We are really sitting here at a crossroads of the investments flowing both ways," Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker’s Maurice Hoo said from Hong Kong.
"I don’t think the interest of foreign investors in China has necessarily gone away. In the past, in terms of who had the capital to invest, it only went one way. Now, the Chinese have joined the party, that’s all."
China has made overseas acquisitions before, but it used to be only by large, state-owned corporations. Morrison & Foerster’s Thomas Chou said "a determined and selective cadre of Chinese companies are coming west" and Silicon Valley companies will be targets.
