Doing your homework pays in Chinese distressed debt

After a couple years of working on distressed asset lawsuits with US firm O'Melveny & Myers, Ben Fanger went to graduate school at the University of Chicago. There he met his future business partner, Zhang Xiaolin, who had a decade's worth of China real-estate development experience under her belt. The timing was good: China had just joined the World Trade Organisation and was trying to rid itself of non-performing portfolios.The pair founded Shoreline Capital and began investing …