When Stephanie Hui first joined Goldman Sachs in 1995 she only planned to stay one year. Having just graduated from Harvard with a biology degree, Hui took a job at the US bank to help pay for medical school.
But she quickly took to Wall Street and enjoyed meeting young business people to hear their pitches. “Every week I would see 10 to 15 entrepreneurs, all with their exciting ideas and passionate attitudes about whatever they were doing. They were so eager to share with us how brilliant their company would become,” Hui told FinanceAsia. “Some of them were living pay-check to pay-check and are now [millionaires] or even billionaires. It’s been amazing to watch their journeys.”
Fast-forward 20 years and Hui is head of merchant banking for Asia Pacific ex Japan for Goldman Sachs, overseeing approximately $3 billion-worth of investments in small- to large-size companies.
Having been brought up through Goldman Sachs’s farm system — she left briefly in 1998 to get an MBA from Harvard Business School before rejoining again in 2000 as an associate — Hui was appointed an executive director in 2003, a managing director in 2006, and a partner in 2010. She became head of merchant banking in Asia ex Japan in 2012.
Goldman Sachs’s merchant banking unit — which acts as the group’s private equity investing arm — invests in a variety of sectors, including financial institutions, healthcare, consumer products, industrials, and technology companies.
Notable deals under Hui’s stewardship include Woowa Brothers Corp, a Korean start-up that operates the country’s most popular food-delivery mobile smartphone app service; Daesung Industrial Gases Co, one of Korea’s top industrial gas producers; Taikang Life Insurance, one of mainland China’s largest insurance companies; Hepalink, a leading pharmaceutical company in China; and Shanghai-based eHi Car Rental, a car services and automobile rental provider.
Back in 2000 most Chinese companies listed in Hong Kong were in manufacturing. Hui was part of the team that invested in Yue Yuen, a shoemaker that supplies major global brands such as Nike and Adidas. But since 2000 she has been seeking out companies with an end-market in China as the economy slowly shifts from being export-driven to consumption-focused.
Healthcare is one such sector on Hui’s radar. Healthcare stocks only account for 2% of the Hong Kong stock market capitalisation compared with 13% in the US as of last April, but that looks set to change as healthcare spending in China booms.
Goldman Sachs, along with GIC, invested $100 million in iKang Healthcare Group in 2013. iKang, which floated its shares in Hong Kong in April 2014, has jumped 32.1% since its listing. Hui, a mother of three, also serves on a number of boards, including the Women’s Foundation in Hong Kong, a charity that focuses on improving the lives of women and girls in Hong Kong.
FinanceAsia’s 2015 honour roll of the most influential women across the Asia Pacific region spans investment and commercial bankers.
Published as a feature in the July / August 2015 print edition of FinanceAsia, the series also presents leading women in new areas of finance such as fintech where Asian companies are among the fastest-growing in the world.
We also canvassed corporate financiers for exceptional women working in deal advisory including lawyers and accountants. In the process of researching the series, we found evidence of progress in creating more diverse workplaces in the region.
