2009-2-16

Continuing from last year’s recruitment of Ellen Gao, who used to lead Red Herring Asia 100 initiatives as the Chief Representative in China, and Peter Peng, who was previously Vice President in Greentech research at ThinkPamure (ex-ThinkEquity), WI Harper Group announced that Dr. Jackson Hu, Dr. Ahmad Bahai, and Dr. Kang Sun joined the team as Venture Partners. Prior to joining WI Harper, Dr. Jackson Hu was Chairman and CEO of UMC and President and CEO of SiRF, Dr. Ahmad Bahai was CTO of National Semiconductor and Dr. Kang Sun was President and COO of JA Solar.

Meanwhile, WI Harper Group also announced former Venture Partner Dr. Francis Chen as the new Vice Chairman. David Lam, previously Vice President of Carlyle Group joined WI Harper as a new Partner.

“We believe that there are more opportunities for Venture Capital during economic depression. In the meantime, we have strong faith in the recovery and sustainable growth of the Chinese economy,” said Peter Liu, Chairman of WI Harper Group. “By having top-notch industry players on board, we are very pleased and confident in our capabilities to execute, especially within the rising sectors of Cleantech and Core Technology in China.”

Both Dr. Hu and Dr. Bahai have been friends with Peter Liu for over 10 years. Since then, they have been working with him and the Firm in many consulting and advising capacities. Dr. Hu said, “I have known Peter for a very long time. He has always shown support ever since he invested in S3 and SiRF. I trusted him completely.”

“I really believe that there is a bright future in the Cleantech industry worldwide and especially for China,” said Dr. Sun. He recently left JA Solar, and before that, he was Chief Strategy Officer of New Business at Applied Materials. He said, “I was attracted by WI Harper’s global benchmarking investment philosophy, overseas-China bridging capability as well as the team dynamics. WI Harper is at a unique position to really help Chinese companies enter the global technology market and bring leading technologies back to China from all over the world.”

During the current economic downturn, while many other players are passively observing and waiting, WI Harper took action and expanded its team with world leading experts in their respective fields. Witnessing its motto of “the fuel in need” and “win with joint forces,” WI Harper brought new blood into the Chinese venture capital world once again.