It’s pretty obvious they didn’t do months of DD nor did Paulson with Sino forest.
With regard to Piper/PWC, after doing what he did, Cheng wants to seen to be doing what he should for shareholders.
What he did was rip shareholders off. He wants to seem to be doing what’s expected of him, to protect his back probably or maybe make some more money from stock he has bought at rock bottom, since he alone knows how much of a business this is.
Ping Lou visited China for 4 weeks, came back and wrote up reports on 15 – 20 companies that she talked to and people believe that she actually had time to also singlehandedly check out and confirm 50% of CCME’s customer base! I don’t see how her ‘reports’ can be given much credence.
I think she got fired for not actually doing independent DD but relying on management statements and referrals to those who would lie to her, for a bribe = china business practice.
The person that should have been fired was Dorothy Dong who - unlike Jackie Lam, who had no authority in the company to even check the bank balances – she had, with the large Starr investment, much more authority to be asking questions and demanding answers to assure the security of Greenberg’s investment, than she obviously did.
Starr know next to nothing more than you and I, except that they’ve been ripped off, as Greenberg virtually admitted yesterday. Seems we give these big investors too much respect for their so called DD.
