UK-China Dialogue with Tim Clissold (Webinar)

Tim Clissold,
Author

Tim Clissold has three decades of business experience in China, with a unique background in complex corporate governance issues, contract negotiation and dispute resolution. He graduated from Cambridge University in 1982 before qualifying as a Chartered Accountant (ICEAW, 1986) and moving to China. Since then, he has accumulated more than thirty years experience operating in China in foreign-direct investment, turn-around, distressed asset recovery and dispute resolution. Over that time, he has personally completed more than 100 transactions with value in excess of $1 billion. He was one of the founders of Asian Strategic Investments Corporation, which invested more than $400 million into China’s manufacturing industries in the early 1990’s. He then led Goldman Sachs NPL recovery business in China, before he co-founded and another business to originate carbon offsets in China under the UN Clean Development Mechanism with start-up capital of €100 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust. He is currently a director of a London Stock Exchange premium listed investment trust, Henderson Far East Income, and a Senior Research Associate at the Jesus College China Centre at Cambridge University. He has written three books on China. The first, Mr China, was described by Time Magazine as ‘an instant classic’ and has been translated into fifteen languages. It is currently under development by Lionsgate Films. After his second book was published, the Financial Times Shanghai Correspondent wrote: “Read Tim Clissold, the British businessman whose Mr China (2004) is probably the best I have ever come across about China. Now he has written another called Chinese Rules; it’s about what makes China tick — for foreigners who can clearly hear it ticking but can’t quite figure out why.” Later this year, the Commercial Press of China will publish his third book, Cloud Chamber, in bilingual format with both English and Chinese. Cloud Chamber is the first book written by a foreigner to be launched in China for a Chinese audience. The book gives a Westerner’s look at Chinese poetry, placing the poets and their work into the context of Chinese history and society through the eyes of a foreigner. It also includes new translations by Tim of 72 poems dating from the eighth to thirteenth centuries. These were selected on the basis of their popularity in China, but also for their appeal and accessibility for a foreign readership, since the next step is to publish the book internationally.