Michael Pettis

Bloomberg's Fifty Most Influential 2016

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Wall Street veteran, merchant banker, equities trader, economist, finance professor, entrepreneur — iconoclast — Michael Pettis is a unique individual living and working in China, at the heart of the world’s most exciting and vibrant economy.

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Having learned firsthand how markets operate during his years running bond-trading and capital markets desks on Wall Street, Michael has taken his knowledge and insight and applied them to the Asian financial markets as an expert analyst, commentator, and participant. His work and research focuses on monetary policy, trade policy, and China’s banking and financial markets.

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Michael is the author of several books, including his newest book (coauthor Matthew Klein), Trade Wars Are Class Wars. Trade Wars Are Class Wars is the winner of the 2021 Lionel Gelber.

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His other recent books are The Volatility Machine: Emerging Economics and the Threat of Financial Collapse, a classic examination of the causes of financial crises in emerging-market countries and is critical reading for investors, bankers, businesspeople and anyone else interested in understanding the international economy, Avoiding the Fall: China's Economic Restructuring, one of the top ten books on economics in 2013 according to the Financial Times, and The Great Rebalancing: Trade, Conflict, and the Perilous Road Ahead for the World Economy, selected by The Enlightened Economist as one of the ten best books of 2013.

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Michael is a regular contributor to the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal. He has published extensively in several journals, including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Wilson Quarterly, Harvard Asia-Pacific Review, Columbia Journal of World Business, and Far Eastern Economic Review, as well as for several newspapers around the world. He also writes a monthly column on Chinese culture for the New York Observer. Finally, Michael writes an influential and widely-respected blog, China Financial Markets, published on the Carnegie Endowment website, which was cited by the Wall Street Journal as one of the top fifteen economic blogs in the world. In October 2016 he was selected as one of Bloomberg’s Fifty Most Influential: 2016.

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"The worse things have looked for the world financial system, the more the world has heard from a Beijing-based financial expert named Michael Pettis, whose blog, China Financial Markets, is one of a handful I check for clues about what is happening in the Chinese economy."

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— James Fallows in The Atlantic

“Few have done more to shape the bear case [on China] than Michael Pettis, a professor of finance at Peking University.”

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— Tom Orlik in The Wall Street Journal

"Anyone who cares about China is going to check in to see what Mike is thinking," says Hans Humes, president of New York hedge fund Greylock Capital Management, who worked with Pettis in the 1980s at Manufacturers Hanover Trust. "They would be crazy not to."

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— BusinessWeek

A music lover, Michael is very actively involved in developing and promoting the Beijing new-music scene.

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Credentials

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• Professor of Finance, Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management
• Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
• Former Professor, Tsinghua University’s School of Economics and Management
• Former Adjunct Professor, Columbia University Graduate School of Business and School of International and Public Affairs
• Former Managing Director-Principal, head of Latin American Capital Markets, head of Liability Management, Bear Stearns
• Former Director, head, Emerging Markets Fixed Income, Credit Suisse First Boston
• Former trader, Manufacturers Hanover
• Founder, D-22 and XP, indie rock clubs in Beijing, owner of Maybe Mars, China’s leading independent CD label, and founder of 20 Percent, private art gallery.
• Member, Institute of Latin American Studies Advisory Board , and Dean’s Advisory Board, School of Public and International Affairs, Columbia University
• MBA in Finance, Columbia University
• MIA (Master of International Affairs) in Development Economics, Columbia University

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