The China Hustle Movie Script

We just do things that are-- that are different.

And that's kind of the way we are as an investment banking firm.

For Byron Roth and Matt and Dan, it was time to party.

Between 2006 and 2011, Roth hosted over a dozen conferences and raised billions for Chinese companies.

Byron, get over here. I want a hug.

Whoo!

Narrator:

Roth wasn't the only bank cashing in on the China boom.

In New York, a small operator named Rodman & Renshaw ran investment conferences with a slightly different feel, centered on the political star power of its chairman, General Wesley Clark.

In the Balkans, he helped negotiate a peace between bitter enemies and led a multinational force that stopped a campaign of terror.

Wes Clark's life is simply an American story, but he will make an extraordinary American president.

First I want to ask you to just tell us who you are, and tell me a bit about your background.

Yeah, I'm retired general Wes Clark.

Graduated from West Point in 1966.

Went to Oxford, went to Vietnam, came home on a stretcher.

Signed as a NATO Supreme Allied Commander.

I ran for president in 2003, 2004.

Went into investment banking.

Rodman & Renshaw had a troubled past.

After years of management turmoil, they declared bankruptcy in the late '90s.

But with a luminary like General Clark as their public face, they'd reemerged as a respectable-looking bank, hosting parties and selling Chinese stock.

They would typically invite presidents, ex-presidents, Colin Powell, Diana Ross, Henry Kissinger.

For an hour or two, having Henry Kissinger or George Bush or Wesley Clark speak-- boy, oh, boy, like you're going into some inner sanctum of knowledge, when, you know, Kissinger's 90 years old, talking out his ass.

You can see what's happening there.

They're renting a name for an hour or two.

These people all work for fees.