Goldman Sachs faced years-long power struggle over China venture, FT says

In the early 2000s, Goldman Sachs (GS) made an alliance with Fang Fenglei, a mainland investment banker with connections to the Communist party elite, with the intention of only staying in this collaboration for a few years until Wall Street institution was permitted to directly own its securities and investment banking business in China, FT reports. Instead, the arrangement lasted for mainly two decades, with Fang Fenglei garnering most of the benefit. Interviews with over a dozen of Fang’s associated and bankers, as well as hundreds of pages of documents, show how Goldman’s partner wove himself into its Chinese operations and forced it to pay more than it had expected to gain full ownership.