the black China hand

About two ago I got asked by a friend if I would be interested in some freelance legal work with a local entrepreneur. Naturally, I agreed to at least meet with the person and see what "freelance" legal work was all about. We three met at a ritzy Japanese coffee spot and after some small talk we got down to business. The entrepreneur, whom I'll call Mr. H, was in his early-mid fifties and ran a small outfit that found buyers for machine parts but was now expanding in actually producing the parts himself for sale. He had some mid-sized clients mainly in North Asia and some in Europe but nothing especially eye-popping and nothing with a US company … which is why he was interested in me. Somehow, some massive US multinational, which I'll call  Big C, had become interested in perhaps doing some business with him and were due to arrive the next week for a due diligence/meet and greet. He wanted to hire me as his corporate counsel, English teacher to his staff and all-around business consultant. Shocked (but not so much) at the audacity of what he hoped to get out of me I agreed to a second meeting at his office the next day. I knew something was fishy though when the bill came he couldn't find his wallet which left me (the potential employee to foot the bill).

His office was located in one of the city's prime locations for office buildings (which struck me as odd for such a low-level player) and as we rode up in the elevator I began to think perhaps I was a bit too harsh on Mr. H after all. But as we exited the elevator and moved on to his office I knew I should have been harsher. It was a nice office … the only problem was that it was a mess. Books, files and papers were scattered everywhere and construction guys were running in and out. I asked Mr. H what the deal  was and he told me that he just rented the office a week ago and was rushing to get it set up for the meeting next week. I asked why doesn't he just use his old office and he said he wantedso much to impress Big C to get the contract that he thought it best to get a new "model" office. Ah ha … no wonder the office locale.

I was then introduced to his staff which consisted of three 30-something women and his wife (an ex-PLA officer). They all (except his wife) had big titles like VP of Marketing, VP of Business Development and Senior Engineer but that as I spoke with them it was clear that their titles did not reflect any deep expertise. I learned that the Senior Engineer and VP-Business Development were just hired a couple of weeks earlier and the VP of Marketing was brought over from his other office.  The two new hires knew very little about the company, the product or the business plan or what exactly they were doing there and the VP of Marketing was brought over because she worked in Sales. (Can a sales person be a good marketer?)
(to be continued in the next post)

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