AS Alibaba.com prepared for its Hong Kong initial public offering (IPO) in late 2007, details of the deal emerged in local media, much to the frustration of Michael Yao, the company’s top financial adviser.

    Yao, then at Rothschild, summoned bankers and others working on the deal to a meeting to remind them of the confidentiality agreements they had signed. “He read the riot act to everyone there,” said a person who was at that meeting, telling them: “If anyone does anything, I’ll make sure to find out.”

    “He’s very soft spoken and easy going, but would act like el capo [boss] sometimes, putting the bankers in order,” the person added.

    Seven years on, Yao is now guiding China’s e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. through a planned U.S. listing, expected to top Facebook Inc.’s US$16 billion IPO as the biggest technology listing.

    The big change for Yao is that he is now leading from inside, having left Rothschild to join Alibaba.

    Otherwise, there’s a sense of deja vu. Yao is again closely guarding the IPO process, keeping a tight control of an issue that could pay out an estimated US$225 million in a bumper fee day for underwriters working on the deal.

    At a March 25 meeting in Hong Kong, led by Yao, Alibaba kept most details secret until an hour before the scheduled event — to keep prying media at bay and avoid regulatory scrutiny from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Some of those invited were driven to the venue without being told where they were going. Others arrived at the exclusive Aberdeen Marina Club in the south of Hong Kong’s island to assemble in a room booked under a secret name, to avoid linking it to Alibaba, said people who were at the meeting.

    “When all that becomes so public ... the company is forced to take all sorts of measures to try and avoid accidentally tripping any regulatory or legal issues,” said a person familiar with the IPO process. “It’s not so much that the company is so secretive, it’s just really more about U.S. regulations and legal issues than anything else.”

    Yao, a Chinese-American and Wharton School graduate, was hired by Alibaba in late 2012 as senior vice president, heading the corporate finance division, and was tasked with planning what has become the most anticipated IPO since Facebook.

    A keen skier who spends downtime on the slopes at Whistler in Canada or Hokkaido in Japan, Yao has a close relationship with Joe Tsai, Alibaba’s former chief financial officer and a co-founder of the company with Jack Ma.

    Tsai is the IPO’s architect, Yao its deliverer — delicately navigating the process to avoid the missteps taken by Facebook, whose shares tumbled more than a third in their first month of trading, triggering legal suits and compensation payouts.

    “He’s a well-rounded guy who has a lot of experience with IPOs and equity capital markets from all sides — from the issuer side and from the bank side,” said Philippe Espinasse, a former UBS and Nomura investment banker in Hong Kong who worked with Yao on MTR Corp.’s US$1.4 billion IPO in 2000 and other deals.

    “Not only has he worked on the investment banking side, structuring and selling deals, but at Rothschild he was also involved on the other side of the table, working on the corporate side and dealing with the bankers.”

    Some of those who have worked with Yao say he is level-headed, and doesn’t hesitate to roll up his sleeves. While he is easy going and not ego-driven, he can be very firm, though not in a confrontational way, they said.

    Yao joined Goldman Sachs in New York in 1990, straight from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he graduated with an economics degree. He moved to Hong Kong with the Wall Street bank in 1993, handling large mainland and Hong Kong IPOs. From multi-billion-dollar deals, Yao switched focus to small-and medium-sized issuers for about three years, founding ARX Advisors Ltd. in 2003, before moving to DBS Group as head of equity capital markets for DBS Asia Capital. He joined Rothschild in 2006. (SD-Agencies)