China's billionaire tech banker goes missing amid graft crackdown

The China Renaissance Holdings stated in a market update on Thursday that Bao Fan, CEO of the company, had not been reachable in recent days.

Top IT firms Didi and Meituan are among the clients of Mr. Bao, a well-known deal broker in China.

The move by his company has rekindled worries about a future crackdown in Beijing on leaders in technology and finance.

Shares of the company

Shares of the company that operates one of China's top investment banks, China Renaissance, plunged on Friday after the firm said it had lost touch with its founder Bao Fan, one of the country's most high-profile bankers and a top tech-sector dealmaker.

China Renaissance Holdings said in a filing to Hong Kong's stock exchange on Thursday that it had been unable to contact Bao, who has worked on major deals including e-commerce company JD.com's USD 2 billion initial public offering and the public listing of short video platform Kuaishou in Hong Kong.

How long Bao had been missing? 

The company said that it was "not aware of any information that indicates Mr. Bao's unavailability" was related to the business of the group.

During a two-year crackdown on major technological companies that Chinese government claimed to have finished, Bao vanished.

Friday in Hong Kong, shares of China Renaissance plummeted by as much as 50%. In the afternoon, they were down roughly 28%.

Emails for response on Friday went unanswered by China Renaissance.

Chinese news agency Caixin, which broke the story, said that Bao vanished months after Cong Lin, the previous president of the China Renaissance, was taken away by Chinese officials in September of last year.

Many officials and financial executives at organisations like Everbright Securities, China Construction Bank, and big bank ICBC have been caught up in anti-corruption investigations in China that target the financial industry.

Bao earlier worked at Credit Suisse and Morgan Stanley. He founded China Renaissance in 2005 and took it public in 2018, raising USD 346 million.

Others who went missing

Xiao Jianhua, a Chinese-Canadian businessman, was also detained in 2017. He was formerly one of the wealthiest persons in China and was imprisoned for corruption last year.

Following remarks critical of market authorities, Alibaba founder Jack Ma vanished from view for three months in late 2020. He was scheduled to publicly list Ant Financial, a company that handles digital payments, which would have undoubtedly made him the richest man in China.

With inputs from Agencies.