I was at a New Year's Eve party on Central Park South in Manhattan when a Chinese friend of mine told me the the shocking news: Baidu CFO Shawn Wang had died from an accident in China during the Christmas holiday vacation.
I first met Shawn in early 2005, before Baidu went public on NASDAQ in a high-flying IPO.
He was a star among Chinese Internet entrepreneurs and had been with Robin Li's startup since 2004.
As word of the accident hit Wall Street, the company's stock price fell slightly, and closed the last business day of 2007 at - 2.2.
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