About John LThorntonJohn Thornton was born in New York of the United States. When he was fourteen, he enrolled in Hotchkiss, an allboy boarding school, whose students mainly came from wealthy families. Hotchkiss was also a school that pays great attention to the cultivation of its students character. During this period when John Thornton was in Hotchkiss, he not only made remarkable achievement in academic area, but had very good performance in sports － he held a concurrent position as the captain of both school basketball team and tennis team. Therefore, since the day John Thornton entered into the school gate of Hotchkiss, he displayed certain quality that is doomed to distinguish him from his ancestors. Brought up in such a family that most of its family members were lawyers, Thornton should have be an excellent barrister as well.
When John Thornton was still in his youth, he spent eight years time to get the bachelor degree of history, master degree of law and master degree of administration study in Harvard University of the United States, Oxford University of Great Britain and Yale University of the United States respectively. Not following his familys tradition to be a lawyer, he mainly focused his attention on investment and financial field when he was hunting a job at the age of 26. In 1980, John Thornton got a position in Goldman Sachs Corporation that had a history of more than 100 years. Like any other neers, he experienced and gradually got rid of all the confusions and diforts as he first entered into society and became a partner of thepany at the age of 34. From a ordinary employee in the merging and acquisition department at the headquarter located in New York to the second most important figure in Goldman Sachs Corporation, Thornton has stayed in thepany for 22 years and closely affiliated his personal career with Goldman Sachs.
As the expert on merging and acquisition affairs, Thornton revived the sluggish London market in the 1980s by utilizing some ingenious strategies. Hereafter, he established his reputation and made a great stride toward being a world famous investment banker.
From Operating Independently to Win the First Battle to ‘Cross the River by Groping for the Stone’
Thorntons bestknown contribution to Goldman Sachs Corporation is that he widened thepanys international business. As a matter of fact, Goldman Sachs Corporation to a great extent was still an internal firm nearly without international business at the time when Thornton joined it. But under the leadership and the guidelines of Thornton, the original International Business Sector with only fifty employees at first developed into a major department with more than six thousand employees.
In less than 10 months after he joined thepany, he told his superior that he wanted to take charge of a project by himself. Maybe, taking into consideration of his background as a neer, his superior only gave him a project with little hope for success. The client of this project is world famous gum product manufacturer who hope to sell out thepany at a reasonable price. But in the past two years before they came to contact Goldman Sachs Corporation, Thorntons client had already negotiated with more than two hundred different firms without success. Thats why Thorntons superior thought that the project did not have much chance for success.
Having investigated the project, John Thornton found that the 200oddpanies his client had contacted were all from the United States. Suddenly, an idea flashed through his mind: why not try thepanies outside America. Thus, he chose six foreignpanies that he thought might have the intention to purchase his clientspany. Thomas Tilling Corporation was one of them. And the board chairman of thispany happened to have the plan to open up American market. He showed great interest in John Thorntons advice and finally bought his clientspany.
The success of the project enlightened John Thornton. Since then he diverted his attention to British economy as well as the development trend of the whole European economy. So he put forward an application for an opportunity to go to London for the purpose of tapping European market. “When I told my colleagues that I was going to London, they all said I was crazy”, recalled John Thornton. He continued, “Actually even I myself was not sure whether European economy had the evidence of revival, or in what speed Europeans would take to reform their economic system, or whether American investment bank would like to go to Britain to set up branch organizations. Moreover, there were not any experiences or lessons I took as a reference in open up British market. All I could do was to cross the river by groping for the stone.”
‘American Model’ Remold London to a Modern City
At the end of 1982, John Thornton moved to London with the plan to provide investmentcounseling service to European firms and help them to open up American market.
‘Indeed, nothing is easy at very first’, John Thornton said so when he looked back on the time the situation as he just arrived at London. He recollected that, ‘at that time, I just worked in the investment bank for less than 3 years. And I still had not had my 29th birthday. You know, it is not easy to be a successful investment consultant at that age’. In order to attract the attention of British enterprises, John Thornton made out two strategies for himself. First, try everything to make himself the investment consultant of the wellknown enterprises and entrepreneurs in Britain, which enable him to set up his reputation as a successful investment consultant. Second, find those British enterprises whose market value was underestimated by stock market, because it was quite possible that thesepanies would end up with hostile takeover. Very soon, people could always found this American at the lunch table of the British security bankers. He always came without anyones invitation and always came straight to talk about cooperation and business.
Sometimes, you have no choice but believe an old saying: without coincidence there would be no stories.
The very first day when John Thornton just arrived at London, he just got the ‘gift’ endowed by God. At that time, he just picked up and began to skip that days newspaper at hand. Suddenly a news title jumped into his eyes － The Hostile Takeover to Thomas Tilling Corporation. This article mentioned that the purchasing price was about ￡ 630 million, over four times higher than the highest purchasing price (￡ 150 million) in British history. In terms of this issue, many people held that this acquisition had no chance for success for Thomas Tilling at that time was still an industry tycoon. But John Thornton had different idea. No sooner he saw the report than he called the board chairman of Thomas Tilling Corporation and said, ‘Maybe I can help you’. Since they had cooperated with each other before, the board chairman invited him to have a facetoface talk with him. So he came to Thomas Tilling Corporation and analyzed at length for him the situation they were in and emphasized that this hostile takeover was not a small matter. He told the chairman that the hostile takeover had wide chance of success if they did not pay great attention to it.
In the following three days, the security bank employed by Thomas Tilling still did not have any reaction to this issue, just like nothing happened during those days. As a result, Thomas Tilling ceased the contract with that bank and hired Goldman Sachs as the investment consultant.
This hostile takeover did not succeed at last. And due to the big influence of Thomas Tilling, Goldman Sachs also stood out conspicuously in business sphere in Britain. John Thornton summarized, I learned from this experience that British investment bank actually did not had many experiencespared with that of the United States. Furthermore, the financial system reform that had begun in Britain offered Goldman Sachs more opportunity and strengthened my confidence to bring American experience to Britain. On the other hand, it also changed our idea on the means of helping European enterprises to open up American market. On the basis of the original blueprint, we need to help them to improve their investment and ameliorate their management in the domestic market. Since then, he started his plan to train experts on hostile takeover prevention.
It is true that the market consciousness was not very strong in Britain in the early 1980s. The general feeling was that they are quite ‘gentleman’ because they just waited their customers to v