Luke Staddon

A great romp through not so much underbelly of, more like the norm, of doing business Asia. A business book with a difference, meaning it’s pretty humorous as well. The author uses real life, if often bizarre anecdotes and extremely familiar incidents of the West attempting to do business in Asia ... without the benefit of gunboats. Our guide takes us down rivers, alleys and diminishing lines of credit to show that strategies need to be moulded to the market and not the market moulded to the strategy, and people moulded to their staff rather than the other way round (usually there’s more of them) what worked great for you in Oregon isn’t going to work so well in Singapore, let alone South Korea. Meet some colourful business characters whose advice you should cherish if you don’t want to burn cash or bridges. These characters that are slightly more colorful than their names. One being called Axel (which you should take a que to start looking for the authors Guns N’ Roses references). As I said, not your average business book. This is not a self help book, or as some call them, self enrichement (always felt that was an oxymoron, as soon as you have bought one you are down $15.99) this is not a business book, this is what would have happened If Michael Lewis had covered what the traders and salepeople of solomans did after work, rather than concentrating on the structure of junk bonds.