Citic Pacific’s Sino Iron venture will live for ever – as a textbook study of inexperienced management meeting Murphy’s law. The project, in Australia’s Pilbara region, has already exceeded its budget five times over. It is finally shipping ore, admittedly, and is setting a new standard of openness for Chinese state-owned groups by talking about what went wrong. But when $10bn has been sunk into a very big hole, perseverance and openness are not so much virtues as necessities.
中信泰富(Citic Pacific)的中澳鐵礦項目(Sino Iron),將成為經驗不足的管理層遭遇“墨菲定律”(任何有可能發生的壞事,總會發生——譯者注)的一個經典案例。該項目位于澳大利亞皮爾巴拉(Pilbara)地區,目前其實際投資已經超出預算的5倍。誠然,該項目終于開始產礦了,而且管理層也開始檢討問題所在,在透明度上為中國國有企業罕見。但是,當100億美元被扔進無底洞的時候,堅持和透明就是次要問題了。