The rest of the 100 (in alphabetical order): Maggie Yang, executive director, mergers and acquisitions department at Baidu
Maggie Yang comes from an accountancy background. She graduated from Hong Kong University with a degree in accountancy and finance before joining accountancy firm Ernst & Young in 2002.
Her early work in managing statutory and IPO audits of technology, energy and manufacturing sectors introduced her to the wider world of venturing. From there, Yang moved to a senior manager role at Ernst & Young, looking over financial deals into firms operating in manufacturing, media, cleantech and more.
Yang joined Baidu in 2010, and works closely on sourcing deals in search, mobile, and consumer-based startups. In her five years with the company, she has led and supervised more than 30 investments and acquisitions, with deal size ranging from $1m to $1.9bn. Last year, Hujiang, which claimed to be China’s largest e-learning platform, raised $100m from Baidu.
And Baidu has been rapidly moving into other sectors, such as financial services. In November 2015, Baidu and Citic combined to put $313m into Baixin Bank, which will provide direct banking services in their home country of China. Separately, Germany-based insurer Allianz and Baidu combined with Hillhouse Capital to form an insurance company that will target the digital sector.
Already backed by Bakrie Group, Baidu has also ‘significantly’ increased the fund size of Convergence Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm based in Indonesia, which was sized at $25m as of November 2014.
