Asia private equity veteran Veronica John dies at 53

John, known to most people as Ronny, enjoyed a long career in some of Asia’s most challenging frontier markets, performing roles involving fund management, private equity investment, project management, and investment banking. She was latterly COO and a senior managing director at placement agent Diamond Dragon Advisors.

Raised on a dairy farm in upstate New York, John moved to Kazakhstan at the age of 29, shortly after completing an MBA. She spent three years in the country, carrying out privatization work for Carana Corporation and operating the Central Asia Enterprise Fund – a job she said involved teaching the art of capitalism to post-Soviet businesses.

Having joined the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in 2002, John was deployed to Afghanistan not long after the fall of the Taliban to set up a bank. She remained on the board of the Afghanistan International Bank until the end of last year. “I went, and it ended up being easy, and it was fun,” John told AVCJ in 2011.

She subsequently ran CDC Group’s Asia funds portfolio before returning to the region in 2008 as CEO of IDFC Capital in Singapore. When the company decided to exit the fund-of-funds business, John struck out on her own with Serasi Capital. The firm struggled in a difficult capital-raising environment. She went on to serve as a senior advisor at Vietnam-based Mekong Capital before joining Diamond Dragon.

“She was strategically thoughtful but also extremely disciplined and very honest. If you wanted the unvarnished truth, she would give it to you,” said Edward Greene, chairman and founder of Diamond Dragon. “She believed that Asian GPs and LPs needed to achieve Western standards and she worked toward that goal. GPs loved her because she was very direct with them.”

Greene credits John with facilitating the development of dozens of private equity firms in the region – backing one generation of GPs as an early investor for a development finance institution (DFI) and later working with another as an advisor. “Ronny ran through the finish line of life,” he added.

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