Peregrine (including Peregrine Investments Holdings Limited and Peregrine Infrastructure Investments Limited) was an investment company based in Hong Kong. It was liquidated following the downturn of the Indonesian economy during the Asian financial crisis, and was acquired by BNP Paribas.
History
The Founding of the Company
Peregrine was founded in 1988 with an initial investment of $38 million by former race car driver Philip Tose and Francis Leung. They had both worked with Citibank in the past and had a large number of connections to Hong Kong's business elite including Li Ka-shing, Gordon Wu and Larry Yung. The company's goal was to profit from the expanding Asian economy by underwriting stocks and bonds to provide capital for the Asian countries, especially the East Asian Tigers.
Culture
The company was characterised as "arrogant", and thrived on taking risks. Commenting on their investing during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, Leung said, "These events were just a hiccup. We decided we wanted to take advantage of depressed market conditions at the time". In 1994, to create an Asian bond market, they hired Andre Lee from Lehman Brothers to head their fixed income department. Lee, a French Canadian-Korean who grew up within the American military presence in Seoul, was described as a "wild man" and "a salesman who could 'sell snow to the Eskimos.'" By 1996, Lee's operations provided one half of Peregrine's profits.
Financial Collapse
In 1998, financial markets were changing. Peregrine underwrote the bond issue by Steady Safe, an Indonesian taxi company of US$265 million, half of Peregrine's capital