品牌建设和无耻的营销。

界限在哪里？

My post in LinkedIn today.

How much spinning is ethical?

As an analyst and deal-maker at several investment banks in the past 26 years, I’ve always felt uncomfortable when I hear words like packaging, carve-out, or spin the story.

We tell our children stealing is immoral. But we do a lot of stealing in the capital markets. Or at least we attempt to steal. So much cosmetics is used in IPOs, for example. Maybe stealing from strangers is somehow acceptable? Maybe stealing from fund managers who have a lot of money is somehow acceptable?

Ditto branding and marketing of luxury goods.

Last year I agreed to speak at a big conference of investor relations professionals on how to “spin a story”. But I wiggled out one day before the show, to the annoyance of organisers who had invited me because of my public fight with two fraudulent companies listed in Hong Kong many years ago. I bailed out because, I feared, my advice might not be what their CEOs wanted them to do.