凯雷投资集团(Carlyle Group)老板戴维•鲁宾斯坦日前在纽约出席Buyouts New York活动时登台演讲。在(总体温和的)访谈中，鲁宾斯坦指出，他感到作为一个私募股权公司高管在中国比在华盛顿更受欢迎。正如鲁宾斯坦所言：

    “假如毛泽东和理查德•尼克松死而复生，可能已分辨不出各自的资本，因为一个已变得非常资本主义，而另一个的资本主义程度有所减轻。”

    随后，鲁宾斯坦作了更有力的阐释，他认为中国将私募股权公司看作提升企业效率和生产率的专家：

    “在我看来，他们并不认为我们所做的是‘金融工程’……须知在中国，大多数交易，事实上所有交易，都是没有杠杆的。‘金融工程’这个词在美国已被弃用或不受欢迎；如果有人说想长大成为化工工程师、机械工程师或结构工程师，人们会说，太棒了，我们希望你能达成自己的愿望。如果你说，我想成为一个金融工程师，人们会说，哦，这太糟了。因此，金融工程没有受到同样的尊重——不管什么样的金融工程——但在中国，他们并不将此视为金融事务，他们认为你们是在帮助经理人和员工思考如何提高企业生产效率。”

    咚，咚，咚，鲁宾斯坦用指甲敲打着脑袋，这可能是无意识的。相比美国官员，中国官员更能接受私募股权的理由之一恰恰是中国的交易通常不采用杠杆。

    “金融工程”并不是为了丑化私募股权而捏造出来的虚幻之词。它描述的是私募股权公司从买卖差价中获取利润的方式(采用大量杠杆、股息资本重组、交易费等等)。在中国，通常没有这样的差价。假如凯雷投资集团和其他公司将其美国或欧洲的交易形式调整至更接近中国的模式，他们在法律和公关方面遇到的阻力必将大减。反之，一旦私募股权公司琢磨清楚如何在中国复制传统的杠杆收购模式后，也别指望北京还会热烈欢迎。

    Carlyle Group boss David Rubenstein was on stage in New York yesterday, as part of the Buyouts New York event. As part of the (mostly softball) interview, Rubenstein noted that he feels more welcome in China as a private equity exec than he does in Washington. As Rubenstein put it:

    "If Mao Zedong and Richard Nixon came back from the dead, they wouldn't recognize their respective capitals because one has become very capitalist, and the other has become less capitalist."

    But then Rubenstein said something more telling, after arguing that China considers private equity firms to be experts in making companies more efficient and more productive:

    "I don't think they think that what we do is 'financial engineering'… Remember, in most deals, virtually all deals in China are done with no leverage. 'Financial engineering' is a phrase that's come into disuse in the United States or disfavor; yet people say I want to grow up and be a chemical engineer, a mechanical engineer, a structural engineer; people say, great, we'd love you to do that. You say I want to be a financial engineer, people say well that's terrible. But financial engineering, therefore, is just not as respected – whatever financial engineering is – but in China they don't really look at it as something that's a financial thing, they look at it as you're helping managers and workers figure how to make companies more productive."

    Ding, ding, ding. Rubenstein hit the nail on the head, perhaps without realizing it. One reason Chinese officials are more amenable to private equity than are their U.S. counterparts is precisely because deals in China typically don't use leverage.

    "Financial engineering" is not some phony phrase created to make private equity look bad. It's used to describe the ways PE firms turn profit outside of the differential between purchase and sale price (using lots of leverage, dividend recaps, deal fees, etc.). In China, there usually is no such differential. Were Carlyle and other firms to make their U.S. deals – or European deals -- look more like their China deals, they'd get a lot less legislative and public relations blow-back. Conversely, don't expect a warm welcome in Beijing once private equity figures out how to regularly replicate the traditional LBO model over there...