Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Hong Kong, The Asset, Asia's leading financial multi-media group, organizes the Triple A Country Awards, a recognition representing the industry's most prestigious awards for banking, finance, treasury, and the capital markets. The 2020 Triple A Country Awards, recognized professional financial institutions with outstanding performance in the past year, is produced by a panel of professional investors and analysts after three months of meticulous consideration of a series of qualitative and quantitative criteria, including performance, client feedback, and project innovation.

The recognition of the Best Private Equity Adviser was added to the Triple A Country Awards for the first time this year, and Taihecap has become the first primary market investment bank to win the award in the Asia-Pacific region. According to The Asset's website, in the 22 years since the debut of the Triple A Country Awards, the winners of best equity adviser awards have always been secondary market investment banks. While foreign players such as Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, and UBS swept the awards before 2012, a new trend emerged between 2012 and 2019, with Chinese secondary market investment banks, including CICC and CITIC Securities, winning the awards.

The recognition by an authoritative award in the Asia-Pacific region is not only for the outstanding transaction performance and services of Taihecap, but also for the importance of primary market investment banks as a new force that has emerged along with the new economy in the financial market. It also marks a renewed recognition by professional financial institutions of the importance of primary market investment banking in the financial markets.

According to the Editorial Commitee, Taihecap well deserves this award: "As a new entrant to The Asset Triple A Country Awards, Taihecap demonstrated its capability of delivering quality financial advisory services to Chinese emerging corporates, especially in the new economy sector. Clients of Taihe highly recognized and appreciated its research and service quality, which made Taihecap differentiated from other financial advisers in China.

The decision to add Best Private Equity Adviser in China is a reflection of The Asset's board of editors' recognition of the development of the market as well as the level of participation from financial institutions. While new awards categories were also introduced in the past, the board of editors makes new awards decisions only when they feel comfortable doing so."

Along with Taihecap, Chinese financial institutions such as Bank of China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, CITIC Securities and BOC International were also recognized this year, winning the Best Issuer for Sustainable Finance, Best Bank, Best M&A Adviser, and Best International Bond Adviser.

With ultimate focus on deal-making, research, and empowerment, Taihecap has helped its clients secure key rounds of financing, and emerging entrepreneurs win every major and challenging battle over almost a decade, making it the definer of primary market investment banking in China.

Taihecap is the first primary market investment bank to propose "research-driven" services. As early as 2012, Taihecap believed that the value of financial advisers should move from FA Era 1.0, which is playing matchmaker to eliminate information and network asymmetry, to a research-driven FA Era 2.0. Taihecap firmly believes that while good research can forecast the value of a company, a good adviser should be able to redefine the value of a company through in-depth and cumulative research. During the period covered by the award (October 1, 2019 to September 30, 2020), despite the obvious pressure on market valuation, most of Taihecap's deals have at least doubled in valuation.

In 2018, Taihecap became the first primary market investment bank to champion "fundamental empowerment". To serve the rapid growth of its clients, Taihecap made substantial human and capital investment, and launched the "Chongling Program" with Tsinghua University PBC School of Finance. As the first top-tier learning organization for entrepreneurs in the new economy initiated by a primary market investment bank, the "Chongling Program" invites the makers and participants of major policies of China's reform and opening-up to provide entrepreneurs with a macro perspective of the next ten years. The program also provides targeted courses and field consultations on organizational issues of fast-growing enterprises, providing new thinking for strategic and organizational development in the next five years. As a high-caliber community of entrepreneurs, the program has successfully held three sessions with 180 participants, and the average valuation of their companies stood at USD1 billion. Despite the turbulence in the capital markets in the past two years, the average valuation of Chongling Program I participants has increased 266% compared to the time of their enrollment, and the average valuation of Chongling Program II participants has increased 399% compared to the time of enrollment, as measured by current valuations.

Since its inception in 2012, Taihecap has served over 200 startups with cumulative financing of over $20 billion. Pinduoduo, a new generation e-commerce platform with a market capitalization of $180 billion, and Li Auto, a Chinese company that has raised the largest amount of capital on NASDAQ in the past two years, are all long-term clients of Taihecap, who has helped with multiple rounds of financing along the way. Also on the list are super unicorns such as Zuoyebang, Manbang and SheIn. In the past half month alone, Taihecap has announced the funding for several industrial leaders, such as the USD1.6 billion Series E+ for Zuoyebang, USD 210 million Series D for Meishubao, nearly RMB 2 billion Series E1 for Medbanks, and USD 100 million Series C+ for Weimai.

Song Liangjing, Managing Partner and CEO of Taihecap, said, "It is significant that such a prestigious award has been given to a primary market investment bank from China for the first time in 22 years. This is not only a recognition of Taihecap's market position and the value of private equity investment banking in China, but also a recognition of China's leadership in the global economy and capital markets. The year 2020 is one of the most turbulent and exciting years of our generation, we firmly believe that the third decade of the 21st century will be a new decade of structural innovation for China, and we are privileged to be part of this great journey. Being a definer in the true sense is the only viable path to becoming 'THE ONE', not 'ONE of', and the only path to becoming a world-class investment bank."