From Financial Times :
While the situation at Bear Stearns was deteriorating this past week, Donald Tang, its Los Angeles-based vice-chairman, was in Beijing, trying desperately to get Chinese regulators to approve the ailing investment bank’s tie-up with Citic Securities – a deal that Mr Tang had been pursuing for two years.
When the talks began in March 2005, the deal was seen as a share exchange between an established Wall Street powerhouse and a young Chinese firm. By last autumn, though, Bear had become the weaker of the two, and the Chinese brokerage’s market value was much bigger.