FT年度女性評選獎項得主 孫瑋

Though Wei Christianson is one of the most powerful figures in Asian investment banking, her entry into the industry was a bit of an accident.

儘管孫瑋(Wei Christianson)是亞洲投行界最有權勢的人物之一，但她進入這一行卻有一點兒偶然。

Five years before she became a banker, Christianson was at a party in Hong Kong. She was talking to a neighbour who suddenly said: “You’re a godsend.”

孫瑋曾在香港參加過一個派對，五年後她成爲了一名銀行家。在那場派對上，她與旁邊的人聊天時，對方突然說：“你真是上天派來幫我的。”

“To do what?” she asked.

“幫你做什麼事？”

“To list Chinese companies in Hong Kong,” came the reply.

對方回答說：“讓中國企業在香港上市。”

The neighbour was a senior official at Hong Kong’s market regulator, the Securities and Futures Commission, which was preparing for the first overseas listings of Chinese companies in the then-British colony. The SFC was looking for someone with Christianson’s skills to join its corporate finance department.

此人是香港市場監管機構——證券及期貨事務監察委員會(Securities and Futures Commission)的一名高官，因爲當時該機構已開始籌備第一批中國企業赴香港海外上市的工作，所以正在物色有孫瑋那樣技能的人加入其企業融資部。當時的香港還是英國殖民地。

Christianson, who is now Morgan Stanley’s Beijing-based China chief executive, says: “I don’t believe that women in the financial services sector are treated very differently in China than they are in the US or Europe,” she says. “Banking is only one portion of my job right now. I spend a lot of my time focusing on supervision of all our business platforms and building our management team.”

常駐北京、現任摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)中國區首席執行官的孫瑋說：“我認爲，中國金融服務行業的女性受到的對待與美國和歐洲沒有太大的不同。現在銀行業務只是我職責的一部分。我花很多時間專心監督我們所有業務平臺，並建設我們的管理團隊。”

Her role is twofold. She chases deals and represents Morgan Stanley’s Asia and China franchises globally. At the same time, Christianson must oversee the development of Morgan Stanley’s overall China business. This encompasses a wide range of joint ventures – in everything from asset management to securities and trusts – in which foreign investment banks can only hold minority stakes.

她的職責是雙重的。她要在全球爲摩根士丹利贏得交易，並作爲摩根士丹利亞洲區和中國區業務的代表。與此同時，孫瑋必須掌管摩根士丹利全部中國業務的發展，既涉及一系列合資企業，又涵蓋從資產管理到證券和信託的各個領域——外國投行在這些業務中只能持有少數股。

“The restriction on [foreign] ownership is unfortunate,” she says. “We’re lucky in the sense we have great partners . . . Hopefully it will open up soon. I’m cautiously optimistic.”

她說：“限制外資持股令人遺憾。所幸我們有着很好的合作伙伴。希望限制不久就能放開。對此我持謹慎樂觀態度。”

Christianson grew up in China and came of age just as Deng Xiaoping was consolidating his grip on power, ushering in a long period of political stability and economic growth. That translated into an opportunity to go to university in the US – at Amherst College in Massachusetts – after which she studied law at Columbia University and worked as a corporate lawyer in New York.

孫瑋在中國長大，她成年的時候，鄧小平正在鞏固權力、帶來長期政治穩定和經濟增長。於是，她有了機會去美國讀大學——就讀於馬薩諸塞州阿默斯特學院(Amherst College)——之後又在哥倫比亞大學(Columbia University)學習法律，然後在紐約擔任一家公司的律師。

In 1992, Christianson and her American husband, also a corporate lawyer, moved to Hong Kong for his job. She, meanwhile, was contemplating a career change. “After giving birth [to my first child] I realised there was no way I could travel; but if you were a corporate lawyer in Hong Kong, you travelled,” she says. “I wanted to have more kids and build a family, so I had to do something else but I didn’t know what.”

1992年，同爲公司律師的美國丈夫因爲工作關係要去香港，孫瑋便和丈夫一起到了香港。與此同時，她也在考慮改變職業。“在生下（第一個）孩子之後，我意識到我不能出差，但在香港當公司律師就少不了出差，”她說，“我想再要幾個孩子，把家庭照顧好，所以我必須換個工作，但當時我不知道該做什麼。”

That’s where her new neighbour came in. Christianson understood both the law and the securities business, and was fluent in Mandarin and English. “My neighbour said, ‘You’re hired.’ I said, ‘Wait a minute, I have to see how much you pay – I’ve got to support a family,’ ” she recalls. “The next day I went to their offices and got the job.”

這個時候她遇到了新的鄰居。孫瑋精通法律和證券業務，漢語和英語都很流利。她回憶說：“鄰居說，‘你被僱用了。’我回答說，‘等一下，我想知道你們支付多少工資，我還要養活家庭呢。’第二天我來到他們的辦公室，於是就得到了這份工作。”

Christianson’s husband, however, felt she had a brighter future ahead of her as poacher rather than gamekeeper. “He said I don’t see you thriving as a regulator,” she says. “He put the idea in my head to become a banker. I was intrigued but I didn’t really know what it entailed.”

然而，孫瑋的丈夫認爲她當“偷獵者”比當“獵場看守人”更有前途。“他說我當監管者沒有前途，”她說，“他建議我當一名銀行家。我很好奇，但我並不知道這意味着什麼。”

In the late 1990s, she joined Morgan Stanley’s investment banking arm and – apart from a detour from 2002 until 2005, to run Credit Suisse’s China business and then to Citigroup – has steadily climbed up the ranks. This year, Christianson’s China investment banking team advised Shuanghui International on its successful $7.1bn takeover of Smithfield Foods, America’s largest pork producer, the largest US acquisition by a Chinese group.

上世紀九十年代末，她加入了摩根士丹利的投行部——除了2002年到2005年期間先是負責瑞士信貸(Credit Suisse)的中國業務，然後加入花旗集團(Citigroup)——她一直是穩步上升。今年，孫瑋的中國投行團隊爲雙匯國際(Shuanghui International)以71億美元成功收購美國最大豬肉製造商史密斯菲爾德食品公司(Smithfield Foods)提供了諮詢。這是中國集團對美國公司完成的規模最大的一宗收購案。

For her generation, the broader sweep of Chinese history is never far away. Christianson’s mother was a doctor who joined the communist revolution in 1939, and later became a hospital administrator. Her father was in the military.

對於她這代人來說，中國歷史的深刻印記從來都沒有遠去。她母親是一名醫生，1939年參加共產主義革命，後來成爲一名醫院管理人員。她父親是軍人。

“I was raised during the cultural revolution, when people didn’t have many options,” she says. “But sometimes there was a little light at the end of the tunnel and you had to work really hard and persistently towards that light . . . I was old enough to remember but young enough not to participate. I was not in the Red Guards but I have other memories . . . ” She stops herself, careful not to reveal too much. But the subject lingers. “I am amazed, thinking back to how horrible everything was,” she suddenly adds. “It all seems quite sad now and yet there were sparks of optimism because of this very strong desire [people had] to try to make something out of nothing . . . I don’t want to get into personal stories but I can tell you one thing – what I’ve learnt from my parents is the toughness of the human spirit. No one can defeat you but yourself.”

她說：“我在文革時期長大，當時人們沒有太多的選擇。但有時候隧道盡頭還是有一線光明的，你必須非常努力、堅持不懈，才能看到那束光。那時我已記事，但還做不了什麼事。我沒有參加紅衛兵，但我也記得其他一些事。”她謹慎地停下來，不想透露太多。但話題開始轉移。她突然補充說：“回想起一切曾經是那麼地可怕，讓我感到吃驚。一切都那麼悲劇，但人們那種絕處逢生的強烈願望，卻閃耀出樂觀的火花。我不想說具體故事，但我可以告訴你一件事：我從父母那學到的就是人類精神的堅韌。除了你自己，沒有人可以打倒你。”