Top Chinese investment banker Bao Fan is latest CEO to go missing

Bao Fan, chairman and CEO of China Renaissance, speaking in Hong Kong in September 2018. PHOTO/COURTESY: CNN
One of China’s top investment
bankers has become unreachable, according to his company.
China
Renaissance, an investment bank and private equity firm based in Beijing, said
in a Thursday filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange that it “has
been unable to contact” Bao Fan, its chairman and CEO.
Shares
of the company plunged as much as 50% in Hong Kong on Friday following the
news. The stock closed down 28%.
“The
board is not aware of any information that indicates that Mr. Bao’s
unavailability is or might be related to the business and/or operations of the
group,” the firm said in the filing.
Bao
is known as a veteran dealmaker in China’s tech industry. He helped broker
the 2015 merger between two of the country’s leading food delivery services,
Meituan and Dianping.
Today, the combined company’s
“super app” platform is ubiquitous in China.
Bao
started his investment banking career in the late 1990s at Morgan Stanley and
Credit Suisse and later went on to serve as an adviser to the stock exchanges
in Shanghai and Shenzhen.
His
team has also invested in US-listed Chinese electric vehicle makers Nio and
Li Auto, and helped Chinese internet giants Baidu and JD.com complete
their secondary listings in Hong Kong.
Bao did not immediately
respond to messages from CNN on WeChat on Friday, while China Renaissance
hasn’t yet responded to a request for comment.
The financial services firm
recently dealt with another similar disruption, according to Caixin, a
respected Chinese financial news outlet. Chinese authorities detained Cong Lin,
the company’s president, in September, it reported, citing unidentified
sources.
China has a history of
detaining execs
Bao’s disappearance follows
those of other high-profile business leaders in China, where it is not
uncommon for executives to suddenly drop off the radar with little
explanation.
In 2020, real estate tycoon
Ren Zhiqiang disappeared for several months after he allegedly spoke
out against Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.
Ren was eventually jailed for
18 years on corruption charges.
In 2017, insurance giant
Anbang warned shareholders that its chairman, Wu Xiaohui, wouldn’t be able to
carry out his duties after he was reportedly detained by authorities
as part of a government investigation.
Anbang at the time cited
“personal reasons” for his absence. Wu was eventually jailed for 18 years,
Also
in 2017, Xiao Jianhua, a tycoon who controlled Tomorrow Holdings, was seized by
Chinese security agents from his room at the Four Seasons hotel in Hong Kong
and taken to mainland China. He was sentenced in August 2022 to 13
years in prison.
Another prominent case took
place in 2015, when Guo Guangchang, the billionaire dubbed “the Warren
Buffett of China,” was reported as missing by the conglomerate
he ran.
That group, Fosun, later
confirmed that Guo was assisting authorities in an investigation.
Senior
executives from dozens of Chinese companies also disappeared that
year. Some later returned to their positions, while others did not.
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