“We took our new company on an American roadshow to drum up business. We spent two months in a rental car, driving 10,000 miles across 33 states – just two guys, a PowerPoint presentation, a laptop plugged into the cigarette lighter and a business proposal I created drawing on my experience drafting prospectuses in private practice.”
Aaron Goach is a no theoretical lawyer. Whether promoting his own business – Magellan Solutions Outsourcing – in an arduous roadtrip across the US, or advising Merrill on ICBC’s landmark IPO in 2006, Goach is a front-line businessman.
“I believe that capitalism is the only system that can deliver the greatest good to the greatest number,” says Goach. “I majored in Economics in college so I came to the law from that angle; lawyers are essential to the infrastructure of the system.”
Groceries to GC
From a young age, Goach worked part-time at a grocery store alongside his father. This allowed him to see “the wheels of commerce spinning at first hand” at the micro-economic level. As a result, while college contemporaries aspired to become policy makers, Goach co-founded the Investors’ Society, the Business and Economics Club and the Entrepreneurs’ Society. “I remember taking the Business and Economics Club on a tour of Bethlehem Steel,” says Goach. “It supplied steel for virtually every US warship in World War II and for the Golden Gate Bridge and Empire State Building, and I found it fascinating seeing industry at work.”
But rather than enter business, Goach wanted a career that was academically rigorous as well as commercially focused. Law proved the perfect compromise. After completing Harvard law school, he went into private practice, first at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman in New York, and later at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in Hong Kong. This gave him the practical experience that university could not, but ultimately did not satisfy his commercial instincts.
In 2003, Goach took a sabbatical from straight law to start an outsourcing business in the Philippines. “I decided that I didn’t want to be a narrow practitioner,” he says, “so I started my own company and pretended to be President and General Counsel. It was humbling to come out of the bubble of private practice and realise that you know little outside your specialty.”
Offshore outsourcing was in its infancy but Goach and his business partner saw the opportunity. At first he worked part time, until a lull in the capital markets persuaded him to quit Freshfields and commit to the project. He soon found himself pitching the business to prospective investors across the US and negotiating his own business deals. “In that situation, Ivy League pedigrees and tailored suits don’t matter, you have to rely on your wits and sweat equity.”
Deal maker
But after a year at the company, Goach was once again searching for a challenge. As the markets picked up in 2004, he returned to Hong Kong as part of Merrill Lynch’s global origination counsel group. Here, he seems to have found his niche. With commercial expertise gleaned from his year in business, and demonstrable legal acumen, Goach proved a natural choice for the investment bank.
At Merrill he has worked on several memorable deals. But one stands out. “The ICBC IPO was a mammoth transaction from every angle, with a list of challenging legal, economic and political issues. Because of its size and complexity, we were working with professionals from a dozen different departments – tax, finance, treasury, ops, to name just a few. I’ve always enjoyed coming to work and learning from people with other functions.”
In an investment bank, a positive relationship with the bankers is key. While private practitioners are paid to argue their client’s corner, Goach believes that a less aggressive approach works better in-house. One of the first lessons to learn is when to stop fighting a position and give way. “As corporate counsel, we need to be a little more subtle, and having a business hat on your head helps,” says Goach.
At a time when banks are increasingly anxious to boost their bottom line, Goach’s commercial sense and pragmatism is a commodity itself. He remains optimistic about capitalism and the crucial role that lawyers play.
“Everyone’s looking forward to the markets repairing themselves,” he says, “and I think there’s a lot of reward for lawyers in these difficult times. There’s an extraordinary opportunity to add value by crafting smart solutions that save economically sensible deals.”