Bing Zhao

’92, ’94

Mr. Bing Zhao grew up in China and received a BS in mechanical engineering from China University of Science and Technology. He came to the US to attend the Illinois Institute of Technology, where he received a master’s degree in applied mathematics. He then went to study operations research with Professor Yao at Columbia, where he did his dissertation on stochastic variables and modeling. Mr. Zhao desired to be a professor but went into finance because of the job market at the time.

After he completed his dissertation at Columbia, Mr. Zhao got a job at Salomon Brothers in New York, designing trading models; he left as a vice president in 1997, when he and a few Salomon colleagues launched their own hedge fund and where he worked until 1999. That year, he helped launch Simplex Capital Asia Limited, a Hong Kong-based investment advisory firm, where he has served as a managing director since its founding. His focus area is in the structuring and placement of asset-backed securities involving credit enhancement arrangements.

Mr. Zhao has also been chief financial officer and a director of China Mineral Acquisition Corp. since 2004. He is also a co-founder and has been a director of Capital Bridge Investment Ltd., a Chinese company specializing in mergers, acquisitions and distressed debt financing in China, since 2003. Mr. Zhao has also taken up a role at New Faith Enterprise in Hong Kong.