Reporter Alice Chin
YUE Magazine is a joint venture between The Observer Media Group (publisher of The New York Observer), and CHINA HAPPENINGS, a multimedia platform focusing on the lifestyle industries in contemporary China. AsianInNY interviewed the founder of China Happenings, Chiu-Ti Jansen.
Prior to founding CHINA HAPPENINGS™, Chiu-Ti Jansen was a New York-based corporate partner of Sidley Austin LLP, an international law firm with more than 1,700 lawyers in 11 offices worldwide, and former investment banker at Credit Suisse who specializes in mergers & acquisitions, securities offerings and structured finance. While being a lawyer, Chiu-Ti regularly assisted North American and European clients in connection with their strategies and investments in Greater China and Chinese clients in connection with their investments in North America.
Chiu-Ti grew up in Taiwan and graduated from the National Taiwan University with a major in foreign languages and literatures and a Top Ten Most Talented Students Award. A winner of multiple literary prizes and a regular contributor to the largest newspapers (e.g., the China Times, the United Daily) in Taiwan, Chiu-Ti always thrived in a multicultural and multilingual environment. At the Yale post-graduate program, she pursued studies from literature, literary theory, philosophy to art history. Chiu-Ti was invited to join the editorial board of the Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities and eventually elected to become the first foreign-born Co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal. With unquenchable thirst for knowledge, Chiu-Ti befriended the faculty and student body at the Yale Law School who inspired her desire to understand how law and its practices can impact the society.
After graduating as Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar from Columbia Law School’s Juris Doctorate program, Chiu-Ti started her career as a mergers & acquisitions lawyer at a prominent Wall Street law firm and later an investment banker at the then Credit Suisse First Boston. With more than 13 years of Wall Street experience in New York City, Chiu-Ti is currently splitting her time between New York and Beijing.
Chiu-Ti has advised sellers and buyers of business in numerous complex transactions and restructurings through stock sales, asset sales or coinsurance structures. She has also represented issuers, underwriters and majority shareholders in connection with many IPOs. Chiu-Ti also has extensive experience in private equity, having worked on the formation and capital-raising of many onshore and offshore insurance and reinsurance companies.
Chiu-Ti is licensed to practice law in the States of New York and California. She has written on securities law, internal control and disclosure issues for the Wall Street Lawyer and The Deal. Her article on the Chinese insurance market appeared in the International Financial Law Review and her writing on the new amendment of PRC Insurance Law appeared in the Insurance Finance & Investment. She was an invited speaker at the 2007 China Private Enterprise Fortune Forum in Beijing. A native speaker of Mandarin Chinese, she translated Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, a book about the Holocaust testimonies into the Chinese. Chiu-Ti previously served as a member of the Board of Directors of American Composers Orchestra and a member of the Asia Committee of the New York City Bar Association. Currently, she is a member of the Contemporary Art Advisory Committee of China Institute in America, the Board of the Couture Council of Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) and a life member of the Elizabethan Club (for Renaissance Studies) of Yale University.
CHINA HAPPENINGS is a multimedia platform founded by Chiu-Ti Jansen that focuses on the lifestyle and cultural industries in contemporary China. Starting March 2011, CHINA HAPPENINGS™ débuts a monthly column (and a prototype for a TV show) with the New York Observer (NYO) Magazine. From “the-sky-is-the-limit” art world, “branding New China” fashion, to the “rich-by-30-and-retire-by-45” young new wealthy, to “about-to-take-off” private jet markets, to unstoppable Chinese buyers in the worldwide wine auctions, to “haggle-until-you-drop” business dealings, CHINA HAPPENINGS™ will take you to feel the heartbeats of contemporary China. And now Chiu-Ti partners with The Observer Media Group to launch YUE Magazine.
