Jack Perkowski is a

Wall Street Wall Street is an eight-block-long street in the Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It runs between Broadway in the west to South Street and the East River in the east. The term "Wall Street" has become a metonym for t ...

veteran, author, and the founder and Managing Partner of JFP Holdings, Ltd. He is also the former

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

and

Chairman of the Board The chairperson, also chairman, chairwoman or chair, is the presiding officer of an organized group such as a board, committee, or deliberative assembly. The person holding the office, who is typically elected or appointed by members of the grou ...

of ASIMCO Technologies, an automotive components company in China. He was one of the main characters in the Tim Clissold book, ''Mr. China'', which detailed how the

private equity In the field of finance, the term private equity (PE) refers to investment funds, usually limited partnerships (LP), which buy and restructure financially weak companies that produce goods and provide services. A private-equity fund is both a ty ...

fund he ran invested over US$400 million into China as the country first opened up to

foreign direct investment A foreign direct investment (FDI) is an investment in the form of a controlling ownership in a business in one country by an entity based in another country. It is thus distinguished from a foreign portfolio investment by a notion of direct co ...

.''Mr. China'' by Tim Clissold

Amazon.com Amazon.com, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational technology company focusing on e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. It has been referred to as "one of the most influential economi ...

The book chronicled the numerous ways the fund lost money.Gady A. Epstein
China flies the flag
''Forbes'', April 25, 2008, In the end, the fund lost almost all of its money.Scott Cendrowski
Businesses Going Into China Need to Know These Rules First
Fortune, December 3, 2016

Early life and education

Originally from

Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, United States, and the county seat of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, Allegheny County. It is the most populous city in both Allegheny County and Wester ...

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

, Perkowski is a graduate of

North Catholic High School , motto_translation = Strong in faith , address = 1617 Route 228 , region = , town = Cranberry Township , county = Butler County , state = Pennsylvani ...

. He attended

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

on a

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

scholarship and received the Gordon Brown Memorial Prize, which is awarded each year to the outstanding member of the Junior Class. After graduating from Yale in 1970, he attended

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA p ...

, where he received an

MBA A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as accounti ...

degree with high distinction and was designated a Baker Scholar.

Career

Perkowski spent 21 years as an

investment banker Investment banking pertains to certain activities of a financial services company or a corporate division that consist in advisory-based financial transactions on behalf of individuals, corporations, and governments. Traditionally associated with ...

Paine Webber PaineWebber & Co. was an American investment bank and stock brokerage firm that was acquired by the Swiss bank UBS in 2000. The company was founded in 1880 in Boston, Massachusetts, by William Alfred Paine and Wallace G. Webber. Operating with ...

, where he raised $300 million of

equity Equity may refer to: Finance, accounting and ownership * Equity (finance), ownership of assets that have liabilities attached to them ** Stock, equity based on original contributions of cash or other value to a business ** Home equity, the dif ...

for Paine Webber in the immediate aftermath of the stock market crash of October 19, 1987 known as

Black Monday Black Monday refers to specific Mondays when undesirable or turbulent events have occurred. It has been used to designate massacres, military battles, and stock market crashes. Historic events *1209, Dublin – when a group of 500 recently arriv ...

.Premiere Speakers Bureau
/ref> In 1994, Jack Perkowski founded ASIMCO (), an automotive components company based in

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. Under Perkowski's leadership, ASIMCO was twice named one of the “Ten Best Employers in China,”ranking third, in the last survey conducted by Hewitt Associates and ''21st Century Business Herald''. In 2008, he was named one of "30 Outstanding Entrepreneurs in China's Auto Components Industry Over the Country's 30 Years of Economic Reform," by ''China Auto News'', the only foreigner to receive such distinction. In 2009, Jack Perkowski established JFP Holdings, a

merchant bank A merchant bank is historically a bank dealing in commercial loans and investment. In modern British usage it is the same as an investment bank. Merchant banks were the first modern banks and evolved from medieval merchants who traded in commodi ...

for China, to help global companies develop and implement their China strategies and to assist Chinese companies develop global footprints. Jack Perkowski was mentioned in ''The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century'' by journalist and Pulitzer Prize winning author

Thomas Friedman Thomas Loren Friedman (; born July 20, 1953) is an American political commentator and author. He is a three-time Pulitzer Prize winner who is a weekly columnist for ''The New York Times''. He has written extensively on foreign affairs, global tr ...

. In 2008, he authored ''Managing the Dragon: How I’m Building a Billion Dollar Business in China,'' published by Crown Business. Periodically, Perkowski contributes to the Morning Whistle newspaper owned by 21st Century Media.

Bibliography

*''Managing the Dragon: How I’m Building a Billion Dollar Business in China'' (Crown Business; 2008)

References

External links

Managing the DragonJFP Holdings website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Perkowski, Jack Living people Economy of China Harvard Business School alumni American male writers Yale University alumni American chief executives Year of birth missing (living people)