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Jean Eric Salata

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2026-06-12

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2026-06-12

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1. “They said, well, you're a little young and inexperienced. It's not what we're expecting. We're going to slash the capital that we commit to this from 300 to 25.”

   2026-06-12 · Masters in Business · Riding Global Tailwinds with EQT's Jean Eric Salata · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “What happened in my case is that there were supposed to be three of us that were coming across to start the business. There was two very senior guys from AIG, actually, that were poached by bearings to start their business for them in Asia. And they asked me, the young kid who was doing all the number crunching to join them to do the actual work. And I said, I'd be delighted to because it's such an exciting entrepreneurial opportunity. Here I am a young junior analyst and I get a chance to be potentially a partner in this startup. So I thought I raised my hand. As we are about to get started, the two senior guys got a counter offer from Hank Greenberg who called them up and say, hey, you guys are too important. We want you to stay. Here's all this money and equity to convince you to stay. But he didn't make me a counter offer. He just cut me loose. So those guys accepted the counter offer. I was there left on my own and I went back to the ING folks and I said, here I am. I'm ready to do this.”

   2026-06-12 · Masters in Business · Riding Global Tailwinds with EQT's Jean Eric Salata · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “It was okay, but then it is until it isn't, right? So that's what happened. And so that blew out and it caused a tremendous financial crisis across the whole region. And this is in the middle of when we were getting started. So I remember we're writing the first PPM, the first private placement memo to go raise capital. And the whole story was in 96 was about growth in Asia, the growth story. And halfway through writing the PPM, we had to basically change the BPM and change the strategy to become more of a distress strategy on how we're going to capitalize on the dislocation in Asia to invest in great companies that have bad balance sheets, which is sort of what we did with that first $25 million that we started with. Because what happened was that ING gave us that seed capital to get going with, which was the 25 million. They were supposed to give us 300, but it ended up not coming through. So we started with 25.”

   2026-06-12 · Masters in Business · Riding Global Tailwinds with EQT's Jean Eric Salata · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “So the Asian contagion was the. It was thought, it was the Indonesian sort of high yield market as well that blew up. People were basically borrowing dollars because it was cheaper to do so, using that money to then invest in their businesses in Asia, thinking that they could make the spread and kind of capture that.”

   2026-06-12 · Masters in Business · Riding Global Tailwinds with EQT's Jean Eric Salata · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “Initially, we were starting off, and again, it was 1997, 96, 97. So if you recall 1997 was actually the Asian financial crisis, as I referred to, which was a terrible period of huge currency devaluations, starting with the ruble in Russia, but then sort of a contagion effect throughout.”

   2026-06-12 · Masters in Business · Riding Global Tailwinds with EQT's Jean Eric Salata · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “So, the fact that you're often thrust into situations you don't expect, and it kind of boils down to how you end up responding to them and looking for the best possible outcomes or the best way out of a situation can sometimes lead to huge opportunities, which is what happened here, because that confusion of the takeover by ING of Bearings resulted in bearings essentially figuring that they didn't need to have some of these non-core businesses. And so I approach the new Dutch owners and ask them if it was okay if we spun our business out at the time, which we did. It was a very small business. It was a $5, we had $25 million of assets under management, which even in those days was not a lot of money. And we were really just getting started. And they agreed. And so we ended up establishing an independent small private equity business called Bearing Private Equity Asia.”

   2026-06-12 · Masters in Business · Riding Global Tailwinds with EQT's Jean Eric Salata · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “He broke the bank out of Singapore, actually, trading Japanese stock futures and kind of covering up his losses, which eventually brought the whole bank down. It was a 300-year-old bank. And one of the most prominent firms. So what ended up happening is that the Dutch firm ING took over bearings famously for one pound and assumed all their liabilities. And they took it over. This was around the time that I had joined. And at the time, I remember thinking this is very unsettling. I don't know what I'm going to do. I was very worried. I just decided to leave AIG and join this new company bearing private equity. In hindsight, sitting here today, I can tell you it's probably one of the best things that ever happened to me was to be able to step into a situation that was going through a lot of change. And I think it is an important lesson in life, actually, that there are these times when you go through, there's serendipity, number one, so luck.”

   2026-06-12 · Masters in Business · Riding Global Tailwinds with EQT's Jean Eric Salata · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “Do I have the timeline right? Yeah It was a very, very volatile period. Actually, if you recall what was going on at the time, so two things happened. In 1995, Nick Leeson, this is just around the time that I was joining Bering Private Equity, Nick Leeson, who is a name that some of your listeners may recognize, others may not. He brought down this 300-year-old”

   2026-06-12 · Masters in Business · Riding Global Tailwinds with EQT's Jean Eric Salata · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “I got into Harvard Business School actually, and I was about to start at Harvard. I literally was there, registered. I'm actually in the picture book ready to go. And that's when I got the job offered to come back and work for this private equity division of AIG, which I decided ultimately that's really what I wanted to do rather than go back to school again having gone to undergraduate for a business degree already. And so I decided to defer my business school, go back to work in Asia in private equity, and ultimately I actually never ended up really coming back to school.”

   2026-06-12 · Masters in Business · Riding Global Tailwinds with EQT's Jean Eric Salata · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “It was a sizable business, and it was a good experience for me because it sort of helped me shape in the very formative years of my career an appreciation for both sides of the spectrum. On the one hand, you have the need to be analytical, rigorous, understand global trends and sort of the way you'd look at things as a business school student.”

    2026-06-12 · Masters in Business · Riding Global Tailwinds with EQT's Jean Eric Salata · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “Yeah, actually, that happened before I left to do the private equity. So it was Vane, then Shu Wing, and then AIG. But the Shoe Wing experience, it's a part of my background that is a little bit different because it's really, it's a family business that is an industrial company, very traditionally run. It's actually my wife's family business. Oh, really? Yeah, it's really, it was a very different experience. I went from, I can imagine. Yes, I went from Bain and Company sort of business school type. Very button down, you know, everybody has similar backgrounds, very analytical to the opposite end of the spectrum, which is a family business. Everybody who's in management is related to each other. And then you're making decisions based on sort of traditional ways of doing things.”

    2026-06-12 · Masters in Business · Riding Global Tailwinds with EQT's Jean Eric Salata · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “Yeah, it was. It was early days. It was interesting because the whole region was really starting to boom. It was the golden period of globalization, you know, with the emergence of not just China, but Southeast Asia, Thailand, Indonesia, Taiwan, Korea, all these markets were starting to really develop and industrialize. And there was a lot of requirement for capital, for growth. And so we were really growth investors in those days, putting money to work behind companies and helping them to grow.”

    2026-06-12 · Masters in Business · Riding Global Tailwinds with EQT's Jean Eric Salata · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “No, AIG was essentially an insurance business. AIG, some of your listeners might recall Hank Greenberg, who's the little legend, who really kind of started. He actually didn't start that business, but was the founder that grew the business beyond the founder CV Stars initial starting of the business in Shanghai, of all places. And that became a large global insurance company. And in those days in Asia, there really wasn't a private equity industry, but there were insurance companies like AIG that had long dated liabilities and they needed to find long-dated assets. And so you had stock market and fixed income and so on, but in the private markets, there wasn't really a fund to invest in per se. So they started making their own investments off their balance sheet into companies to match their long-dated liabilities. And so it was really working for AIG in their internal private equity group that got me started in the industry.”

    2026-06-12 · Masters in Business · Riding Global Tailwinds with EQT's Jean Eric Salata · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “That's already happening in the US. And that's sort of what led me to eventually leave consulting, get into private equity in the early 90s, which was really very early in an Asian context in the private equity industry. And from there, sort of to start building the business.”

    2026-06-12 · Masters in Business · Riding Global Tailwinds with EQT's Jean Eric Salata · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “Yeah, I sort of have always felt a little bit like an outsider in the way I look at things. I never felt like I was exactly part of the community or the sort of the consensus view of things. I was always thinking about things a little bit more differently, I guess, given the background. I was always comparing things. When I was growing up in the US, I was always comparing things in the US to the way things were in Chile and saying, oh, this is different or that's different. Then when I moved to Hong Kong, I had the same perspective. I was thinking, wow, there's a lot that I see happening. All my friends working on Wall Street or in private equity firms in the late 80s, early 90s, that's not yet happening here in Hong Kong. There felt like there was a gap. It felt like there was a gap there. And that always intrigued me and got me motivated and interested in thinking about starting something new that would sort of try to take advantage of it or take advantage of that opportunity created by that gap of what's eventually made me coming to Asia.”

    2026-06-12 · Masters in Business · Riding Global Tailwinds with EQT's Jean Eric Salata · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “Quite a different perspective on life and the world than a lot of the people I was at school with. And so I was interested in pursuing that. And as luck would have it or fate would have it, I ended up meeting my girlfriend at the time who's now my wife, who's from Hong Kong. And I ended up moving there right after I graduated, a year after I graduated from college, and ended up really building my career in Asia as a result of that.”

    2026-06-12 · Masters in Business · Riding Global Tailwinds with EQT's Jean Eric Salata · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “Well, yes, investing was always the career plan. That's not how I ended up in Asia, but the idea in going to Wharton and becoming an investor was something I always wanted to do since I was a young boy. I remember reading a lot of biographies when I was a kid of business people and being very intrigued by that. I remember having my first paper delivery route when I was like 10 or 11 years old and really enjoying the idea of making money. And then actually started investing that money as a young kid in the stock market as well and kind of understanding how that worked. And then when I ended up at Wharton undergraduate and studying finance and management, I got very intrigued with global business outside the US. I come from an international background. My family would grew up in South America. My grandparents actually came from Eastern Europe and were sort of refugees that ended up in South America. So generation to generation, we've been moving around quite a bit. I always felt like I had a”

    2026-06-12 · Masters in Business · Riding Global Tailwinds with EQT's Jean Eric Salata · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source