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 second interview is with Han Meng Chan. Han Meng is a Malaysian citizen of Malay Chinese origin. He spent the early of his career in the investment banking world with Standard Chartered and ABN Amro before starting up his own advisory and investment business, ADL Capital with a focus on investing in power, infrastructure, waste and biomass, clean energy and energy efficiency businesses across SE Asia and into China. However, the area which is of particular interest to many is his work in Myanmar as the first co-investor in the 1st-ever IPP, 1st 100% foreign-owned IPP and 1st-ever project finance transaction in that country – a 120MW gas-fired combined cycle turbine power plant in Yangon.

Han Meng brings a knowledge of western financial services organisations from his own personal experience and talks extremely knowledgeably about the differences and challenges of investing in Asia.

• East Goes West – interview with Clement Woon
• East goes West – Interview with Martin Lau, Managing Partner, First State Stewart

Categories: China, Communication, Corporate Culture, culture change, Culture clash, emerging markets, human behaviour, Myanmar, National Culture, Regulations, Transformation

Tags: communications, culture, Governance, leadership