One of China’s top billionaire bankers has reportedly disappeared, and shares in his investment bank plunged when the news spread.
Sky News reported Friday:
The disappearance of Bao Fan, who founded the investment bank China Renaissance, comes after a crackdown on big technology companies over the past two years which Beijing said had been wrapped up.
Mr Bao is a key figure in China’s tech industry who has worked on major deals including e-commerce company JD.com’s £1.6bn initial public offering.
According to CNBC, Bao’s contacts hope he is helping government officials with an investigation regarding former executive “as opposed to becoming a target himself,” a reporter for the outlet said.
She continued, “President Xi Jinping reiterates the country’s support for a private enterprise as well as for an investment.”
However, “American CEOs who have been considering visiting China have been holding back,” citing travel restrictions, issues surrounding visas, and the political climate:
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly canceled a trip to China after a Chinese surveillance balloon was spotted in Montana.
Several outlets reported that Blinken planned to meet with “genocidal Chinese dictator Xi Jinping during the Beijing visit,” Breitbart News reported on February 3:
The secretary of state was set to travel to China as Beijing’s growing belligerence against its neighbors, its support of the Russian economy as that nation continues its nine-year-old colonization campaign against Ukraine, its intellectual property theft, and gross human rights abuses against its own people have greatly damaged the relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and the free world. Far-left President Joe Biden – whose political career has long contained suspect financial ties to China – has attempted to patch up relations with Beijing in recent months, meeting with Xi in November and insisting “there need not be a new Cold War.”
According to the Sky News article regarding Bao’s disappearance, Chinese authorities reportedly took former China Renaissance president Cong Lin away a few months ago.
“Anti-graft investigations in China targeting the financial sector have ensnared dozens of officials and finance executives at institutions such as Everbright Securities, China Construction Bank and major bank ICBC,” the report said.
On Thursday, China Renaissance told Hong Kong’s stock exchange its leaders had not been able to make contact with Bao, and the man had been gone for a couple of days.
Several other billionaires also vanished for different periods of time once they reportedly clashed with the ruling Communist Party.
Bao’s disappearance “unnerved” the market, Bloomberg Television reported Friday. Per Sky News, shares in China Renaissance dropped approximately 50 percent in Hong Kong after news of his disappearance was made public.
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