William Lawton

William Lawton is Chairman of Seagate Global Group, a private investment group focused on sustainable community development through investments and trade in China, Southeast Asia and elsewhere. He is an expert on global finance and investments and spoken on the topic at venues such as the Milken Conference. He worked closely with Mr. Chen Yuan to help establish China's central bank, People's Bank of China, as a modern central bank. Lawton believes that investing in things that help people and the environment can actually increase investment return, not lower it. He is a market based activist in such causes as reducing hunger and homelessness, and improving relations between Muslims and Christians.
Background
William Lawton was born in San Francisco in 1950. His father, also William Lawton, was a nuclear physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project and then as a member of the Berkeley nuclear physics team at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for over 30 years under Dr. Ernest Lawrence. His mother, Jean Lawton, was a stock market investor and real estate agent. Lawton was employed from an early age in his family's real estate development company, Lawton Craft Industries which was founded in 1952.
Education
Lawton studied development economics at UC Berkeley. His advisor was the Nobel Prize-winning economist Professor George Akerlof. Lawton received his BA in Economics from Berkeley in 1972. He received a certificate in French Studies at the Sorbonne in 1969.
Upon graduation from Berkeley Lawton embarked on a back pack trip around the world, and started to develop his own theories about economic development and investing centering on Japan. He moved to Japan and studied Japanese in Tokyo at Nichibei Kaiwa Gakuin.
He moved back to the US to continue studying development economics at Monterey Institute of International Studies focusing on Japan's economic growth experience. His Master's Thesis was on lessons to learn from Japan's postwar economic development. He received a MA in International Economics specializing in development economics and the Asian economy from the Monterey Institute in 1977.
Lawton received an MBA specializing in international finance and investments from the Columbia University Graduate School of Business in 1980.
Career
Lawton started his career in finance at Sumitomo Bank in 1976 where he completed the credit training program, and was promoted to International Banking Officer, responsible for corporate lending and trade finance in the Asia Pacific region.
In 1981, Lawton was hired by the insurance subsidiary of American Express Corporation, Fireman's Fund Insurance Company, as a bond analyst and portfolio manager. One year later, Sanford Weill was sent in to improve profitability of the unit, and as a cost-cutting measure fired the entire investment department, but Weill kept Lawton as the sole remaining investment professional despite his relative inexperience.
In 1983, Lawton was hired as VP and by First Interstate Bank to help set up a new fixed income derivative trading company, First Interstate Treasury Services, Ltd. Shortly after being hired, he conceived and executed the first swaption in 1983.
Lawton moved to Nikko Securities in New York in 1987, one of Japan's so called "big four" securities firms, as Senior Vice President where he established a global trading team (NY/London/Tokyo). In 1989 he was promoted to Co-Chief Investment Officer of Nikko's asset management company, Nikko Capital Management, part of a company with $16 billion in globally managed stocks and bonds under management. While at Nikko he developed the Lawton Bond Model.
In 1992, Lawton was hired by the TCW Group as Senior Vice President responsible for establishing TCW's global fixed income effort. While at TCW he was selected by Mr. Chen Yuan, the Deputy Governor of China's central bank, People's Bank of China, to help modernize China's central bank.
Lawton founded the Seagate Global Group in 1996 in Los Angeles to focus on investments, finance and trade in China, Southeast Asia and the US. The People's Bank of China was its first client. During 1997 Lawton worked behind the scenes on financial issues with Mr. Chen to insure a smooth hand-over of Hong Kong back to China in the midst of the 1997 Asian financial crisis. In 1998 Lawton was asked to produce a White Paper on developing China's financial system to support rapid economic growth by China Development Bank which he presented to senior China Development Officers in 1998.
Lawton through his company Seagate Global set up a joint venture to invest in China private equity with China Everbright Limited, in Hong Kong. Lawton was the founding Chief Executive Officer charged with helping to turn China Everbright into one of China's premier investment companies by China Everbright CEO Mr Guo You who is now President of China Everbright Bank. The JV was named SeaBright Asset Management, Ltd., and launched its first fund, the SeaBright China Special Opportunities Fund I in 2004, one of the first private equity funds in China for foreign investors.
Lawton was a Director of CITIC Capital from 2004-2013. CITIC Capital was partially purchased by China Investment Corporation, China's sovereign wealth fund.
Lawton was named Senior International Advisor to the City of Kunming in Yunnan Province in Southwest China in 2009 and Advisor and Adjunct Professor of Finance to Tsinghua University in 2010, Advisor to Zambales, Philippines in 2011 and Advisor to the President of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville in 2012.
Activism
Lawton is working on improving the efficiency of food production in China and Southeast Asia as the financial advisor to the Southeast Asia Commodity and Food Exchange and Xinfadi Market in Beijing. He has been an early proponent of the North Food Exchange in Bulacan, Philippines as a tangible way to help farmers increase income that is environmentally friendly, and is both an advisor and investor in the project. He has appeared on Philippine national television in support of the project with former Bulacan Governor Josie De La Cruz and worked with former Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on the project.
Lawton and Seagate are actively promoting "green" technologies by advising and investing in companies such as Goldwind Science and Technology (one of China's largest wind turbine producers) or Trina Solar as well as the governments of Malaysia and the Philippines about financing alternative energy projects.
Lawton established the Seagate Green Construction Company, Kunming, Ltd. to provide low cost housing in the Philippines and around the world in an effort to reduce homelessness in emerging countries. He is acting as the financial adviser to the POGE Zambales community development program in the Philippines.
Lawton is actively working to improve relations between Muslims and Christians by promoting investment in the southern province of Mindanao in the Philippines, as his capacity as advisor to the University of Malaysia the Malaysian Province of Sabah.
Personal
Lawton is married and has three children. He resides in the Los Angeles area.

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