Columbia alumni Michael Pettis (’81SIPA, ’84BUS) and Charles Saliba (’00CC) discussed current events in China, from financial markets to rock and roll, over a private brunch* with an intimate group of fellow Columbians and Asian Cultural Council guests. 

One of the world’s top economists and foremost experts on the mainland’s financial markets today, Michael Pettis (’81SIPA, ’84BUS) is a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a finance professor at Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management, where he specializes in Chinese financial markets. He has taught, from 2002 to 2004, at Tsinghua University’s School of Economics and Management and, from 1992 to 2001, at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business. Michael has worked on Wall Street in trading, capital markets, and corporate finance since 1987, when he joined the Sovereign Debt trading team at Manufacturers Hanover (now JP Morgan). Most recently, from 1996 to 2001, he worked at Bear Stearns, where he was Managing Director-Principal heading the Latin American Capital Markets and the Liability Management groups. He has also worked as a partner in a merchant banking boutique that specialized in securitizing Latin American assets and at Credit Suisse First Boston, where he headed the emerging markets trading team. Besides trading and capital markets, Michael has been involved in sovereign advisory work, including for the Mexican government on the privatization of its banking system, the Republic of Macedonia on the restructuring of its international bank debt, and the South Korean Ministry of Finance on the restructuring of the country’s commercial bank debt. Michael is a member of the Institute of Latin American Studies Advisory Board at Columbia University as well as the Dean’s Advisory Board at the School of Public and International Affairs. He received an MBA in Finance in 1984 and an MIA in Development Economics in 1981, both from Columbia University. Read the recent BusinessWeek profile of Michael Pettis here: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_09/b4121050739249.htm.

Charles Saliba (’00 CC) is a founding partner of Beijing music club D-22, and Maybe Mars Records, the second largest independent music label in China. He spent four years working in technology consulting in New York and London after Columbia. He moved to Beijing in early 2004 at the insistence of his friend and business partner, Michael Pettis. In early 2006 he helped open D-22 and it quickly became a home for Beijing's underground musicians. Within a year of opening it started receiving accolades and international recognition. As a former New York resident, Saliba enjoys the frequent comparisons to the old CBGBs. D-22 is credited by many, most recently by The Economist, as being the epicenter for Beijing's burgeoning alternative music scene. Maybe Mars was started by artists who had found a home at D-22. In its two years of existence, it has already signed more than 20 different rock, experimental, noise and folk musicians, including most of the acts at the forefront of China’s music underground. Despite their youth, several bands on its roster have collected an impressive list of accomplishments including extensive tours of Europe and Asia, opening for Sonic Youth, and being chosen by Time magazine as 'one of the 5 bands to watch in Asia'. Charles Saliba graduated from Columbia College in 2000 with a BA in Political Science and is pursuing a Master's in International Development at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

*Included in the cost is a buffet brunch, unlimited coffee, tea, and juice, and a choice of a Mimosa or Bloody Mary