A Yank Joins a Hong Kong Board
from
January/February 2006
by Randy Myers
Westerners serving on the boards of Chinese companies are still rare. Among the few is Eileen Brody, 44, who in June joined the board of American Oriental Bioengineering Inc., a Hong Kong outfit that makes bioengineered food supplements and traditional Chinese medicinal products. Brody is president of Dawson Forté Cashmere Co., a South Natick, Massachusetts-based division of the British clothing manufacturer Dawson International PLC, which imports most of its merchandise from China and Hong Kong.
She recently made her second trip to China—not on her new board business but to visit Dawson suppliers in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Inner Mongolia. “I had been to China 13 years ago, and I was amazed at how much growth had taken place in that time frame, in terms of the infrastructure and the number of people driving versus riding bikes,” she says. “There was just a lot that had been built since I’d been there.”
Brody’s finance background—she was a senior manager in the audit practice of the accounting firm KPMG Peat Marwick, now KPMG International, from 1983 to 1990—made her especially valuable to the American Oriental Bioengineering board, and she now chairs its audit committee. She was introduced to the company in early June by a mutual acquaintance at the American Stock Exchange, where AOB trades, and spent a morning in New York City with the English-speaking acting CFO and chief operating officer, Li Yanchun, who later extended an invitation to join the board.
Brody took a few days to consider the offer, then became the seven-person board’s second American member. The first is Cosimo Patti, 55, who was elected in 2004. He is an arbitrator for the National Association of Securities Dealers and the New York Stock Exchange and chairman of New York City-based FSI Advisors Group, a financial-services firm.
At Brody’s first board meeting, held by conference call, the directors spent much of the time reviewing the company’s finances, including its second-quarter 10-Q filing. Brody quizzed management on such accounting policies as revenue-recognition procedures. Other topics included Sarbanes-Oxley and what the company needs to be doing to comply.
Brody says she expects to participate in a minimum of four board meetings annually and figures that at least once a year she’ll find it worthwhile to travel to China for the purpose. She says she also expects the board to meet in New York at some point.
Her compensation for this service? She gets an annual retainer of $30,000 and another $30,000 in stock, payable at the end of the year.
