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By Nicholas Lord
Last week, Jennifer Li, CFO of Chinese search engine Baidu, was appointed to the board of Philip Morris as an independent director. According to company insiders, LI's role will be to act as a bridge between Philip Morris and China, a country that is 40 percent of the global tobacco market.
Li is one of the new breed of Chinese professionals that studied abroad, spent formative years in international companies (in Li's case 14 years in finance functions at General Motors) and yet has a deep understanding of Chinese business culture. Her appointment follows that of Edward Tian to the board of MasterCard in 2006 and last year's appointment of Liu Jiren to the board of Harman International.
Li will be the only Chinese national who is a director of an S&P 500 company, but many more are expected. In anticipation of this trend, industry bodies in Singapore today released a Chinese language version of the “Guidebook for Audit Committees in Singapore”. The book is produced by KPMG's Audit Committee Institute and the Monetary Authority of Singapore, along with the Singapore Exchange and the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority of Singapore. It covers areas such as risk management, how to put together an audit committee and what warning signs to watch for in case of fraud.
(See the guidebook here)
The book, like Li's appointment, shows the growing importance of Chinese business internationally and the need to bring Chinese finance professionals into the global system. The aim is to get a cultural synthesis of the best of China and international best practices, rather than imposing a set of Western business practices on the Middle Kingdom.
Discussing her appointment, Li said, "I hope to learn new perspectives and best practices that I can apply and contribute to Baidu's long-term growth and to the Chinese business community."
This shows that not only will the shareholders of Philip Morris benefit from her appointment, but the shareholders of Baidu will do so as well. One might call it a sino-symbiosis made in the heavenly kingdom.
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