East Goes West is a series of podcasts focused on the challenge of Asian businesses coming to Europe and the US. Abhay Pande and conducted a series of interview with senior Asian leaders to understand a little more of the cultural complexity that exists across the Asian landscape, recognise the key differences and start to think about what an Asian owner might expect of a European and American  business.

The interviews are about 25-30 minutes long and then there is a 5-10 discussion between Abhay and myself, debating the key learnings from the interview.

Our first interviewee is Clement Woon, a Singaporean born and educated business leader with extraordinary experience in both Asia and in Europe, You will hear about his career path on the interview but the thing that makes him extremely unusual is the fact that he has risen to the top of both European and Asian businesses firstly as President at Leica Geosystems (Switzerland) President, before returning to Singapore to become President and CEO at SATS at a time of considerable change, which he managed extremely effectively. He then went back to Switzerland to lead Oerlikon Textile (a major global textile manufacturer) and oversaw the sale of one of their divisions to Jinsheng Group. Most recently he has been appointed CEO of Saurer Group.

• How does it look from over there? The perspective of Asian buyers / leaders on M&A in Europe and the USA
• East goes West – interview with Han Meng Chan, ADL Capital

Categories: Change management, China, Compliance, Corporate Culture, Creativity, Culture clash, Employee Engagement, Family owned businesses, Governance, human behaviour, Human Capital, Key influencers, Mergers & acquisitions, National Culture, Politics, post acquisition integration, Strategy, Transformation

Tags: Business, China, communications, creativity, culture, Europe, leadership, Management, regulation