WHEN THE shortlist of bidders for Huawei Technologies Co.'s $4 billion-plus mobile-devices unit came out this week, there was one name that didn't surprise anybody: Bain Capital Partners LLC.

This will be the third try for Jonathan Zhu, managing director for Bain Capital in Hong Kong, to pull off a deal with China's Huawei since he left Morgan Stanley in January 2006 to lead Bain's China investments. In the process, Mr. Zhu and Bain have built a close relationship with Huawei. But so far, those ties haven't led to a deal.

Mr. Zhu was a senior banker at Morgan Stanley as the firm built a strong relationship with Huawei earlier this decade. Morgan Stanley has competed fiercely with UBS AG for Huawei's business. Both stand to gain if Bain wins this transaction -- Morgan Stanley is advising Huawei on the sale, and UBS is advising Bain Capital.

When Mr. Zhu jumped to Bain, he hoped to carry that relationship with him. His first chance came when Huawei shopped its 49% stake in a joint venture called Huawei-3Com, or H3C, in late 2006. Bain appeared to be in the lead to win that stake until 3Com Corp., which owned the other 51% of the venture, decided to exercise its right to buy the unit.

In September, Bain launched a $2.2 billion offer to buy all of 3Com and brought Huawei into the deal as a minority partner. That move was seen as an attempt to bring in Huawei's industry expertise and prevent it from building up a competing business itself. After a long, messy U.S. government review of the transaction that centered on technology 3Com provided to the U.S. government, Bain and Huawei abandoned the transaction in March.

They will need to beat out the four other bidders shortlisted for Huawei's mobile-devices division. We will see whether the third time is a charm.

Source:wsj.com