Steve returned to Canberra in 1976 and established Stephen FitzGerald & Co, to advise Australian companies on doing business in the nascent China market. I joined Steve’s company as a partner in 1983 and stayed with him for some of the most fun times I’ve had standing up. Ex bureaucrats advising Australian business leaders on how to do business in China... but we managed to sound as if we knew what we were talking about, enough to make us a very nice business.
I left SF & Co in 1990 when the Tiananmen massacre on June 4 1989 also massacred our business and I was coincidentally head hunted by the Australian Trade Commission to head up its office in Beijing.
So… memories. Fifty years on.
ADDED: what I don’t like about the above news is how it’s so condescending. Australia being “granted” the opportunity to sell to China. As if China doesn’t need all that stuff highlighted above. And as if China hadn’t flouted WTO rules (it had).
