20 Questions with
Jerry Zhiyuan Peng AS MANAGING DIRECTOR of Goldman Sachs’ Investment Banking Division in Hong Kong, China, Jerry Zhiyuan Peng focuses on the origination of financing and derivatives business. He joined Goldman Sachs in 2009 and worked as managing director of the Securities Division before assuming his current position. Prior to Goldman Sachs, Peng worked at Morgan Stanley as executive director and head of China onshore sales for the Fixed Income Division from 2007 until 2009. Peng returned to China in 2004 and started his career at Standard Chartered Bank, where he became senior vice president, director and head of China large corporate banking. He said he knew the true value of his Darden education on his first day at Standard Chartered. He worked overnight to deliver a draft of their long-overdue China large corporate strategy and underwriting standard. His draft was immediately adopted and part of it is still being used today. “The exercise was just like crunching another Darden case,” said Peng. Peng received a Bachelor of Economics degree in finance from Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1995 and an MBA from the Darden School in 2003. He is the co-president of Darden’s China Alumni Association and he serves on the Darden School Alumni Board of Directors and the Dean’s Global Advisory Council.
WILLIAM DUNKLEY
(MBA ’03)
What was your first job?
What’s your motto?
How do you unwind?
Project manager and co-founder of a joint venture ostrich farm in Kenya.
Do our best, and follow the destiny.
Parenting, reading, swimming, gardening and relaxing with loved ones.
What’s the best advice you have ever received? Build on people’s strengths.
When and where do you do your best thinking? While swimming in the pool, or in the evening in my study room.
What’s your current state of mind? I’m looking for the next cause that will light me up.
What’s your favorite business book of all time? The Book of Tao and Teh, the 5,000-word Chinese masterpiece of profound wisdom written over 2,000 years ago.
How do you stay ahead of the competition? Find the blue sea. As a principle, I don’t work on RFPs (Requests for Proposal) or blind bids.
What characteristics do you look for in people? What’s the best thing that has happened to you in the last year?
Who’s your favorite action hero?
I finally got the dream house for my boss at home.
What do you consider your greatest achievement? Being a great daddy. And inspiring other young talents.
My mother, who is 76, and at 8 she lost her parents in a conspiracy murder. She grew into a self-educated engineer and a national star of innovation, and survived China’s Cultural Revolution and a 32-year fight against cancer with a brave and joyful soul.
A happy family and great, lovely kids.
THE DARDEN REPORT | FALL/WINTER 2012
What do you lose sleep over? I almost never lose sleep.
What is your most treasured possession?
I’d live in Charlottesville and Beijing. Ideally the commute between the two would take less than three hours.
Loyalty, passion and accountability.
Which living person do you most admire?
44
If you could live anywhere, where would it be?
What have you recently uploaded onto your iPod? “To Fly Higher” and “A Blossoming Life” by Chinese rock star Wang Feng.
Bruce Lee.
What’s your favorite food and beverage? Rice and water.
Which class at Darden influenced you the most? “Financial Derivatives” with Professor Bob Conroy, “Leading Strategic Change” with Professor Alec Horniman and “Bargaining and Negotiation” with Professor Sherwood Frey.
Looking back, is there a class you should have attended and didn’t? “Corporate Finance” with Dean Bruner.