China Minsheng Banking Corp (中國民生銀行) president Mao Xiaofeng (毛曉峰), has resigned for personal reasons the bank said on Saturday, following domestic media reports that he had been taken away to assist the country’s anti-corruption investigators.
Mao, 42, was considered a rising star in the financial industry and last year was named president of the bank — one of China’s biggest financial institutions. He was the youngest leader of any major Chinese bank and was a long-time Chinese Communist Party (CCP) official who studied for a master’s degree at Harvard University.
Minsheng Banking chairman Hong Qi (洪崎) is to serve as acting president, the bank said in its statement. The statement gave no explanation for Mao’s resignation and no indication whether he had been questioned by investigators.
However, Caixin, a respected Chinese business magazine, said on Friday that Mao had been taken away to help with an investigation led by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, China’s anti-corruption agency.
Caixin and other Chinese publications reported that Mao’s case was linked to an investigation into Ling Jihua (令計劃), once a senior aide to former Chinese president Hu Jintao (胡錦濤). Ling was detained late last year on accusations of corruption and abuse of power.
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) bold anti-corruption campaign has already ensnared former domestic security czar Zhou Yongkang (周永康), who was once a member of the CCP’s Politburo Standing Committee. The party has also brought cases against former People’s Liberation Army General Xu Caihou (徐才厚).
If Mao is being questioned in an anti-corruption investigation, it would be the first time that the leader of a major financial institution has been tied to one of the cases.
China Minsheng Bank was founded in 1996 as one of the nation’s first privately controlled financial institutions. The Beijing-based bank thrived by lending to small-scale entrepreneurs and businesses and has become one of the world’s biggest banks, with more than US$500 billion in assets. Its major investors include Fosun Group (復星集團) and billionaire entrepreneurs Liu Yonghao (劉永好) and Shi Yuzhu (史玉柱).
In recent months, a little-known private insurer in China called Anbang Insurance Group (安邦保險集團) has been building up a major stake in Minsheng. In October, Anbang agreed to pay US$1.95 billion to acquire the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York from Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc.
Among the owners and directors of Anbang are Wu Xiaohui (吳小暉), a businessman who married the granddaughter of former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), and Chen Xiaolu (陳小魯), the son of Chen Yi (陳毅), a former politician and revolutionary commander who served with former Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東).
The earliest reports of Mao Xiaofeng’s troubles came on Friday, after Caixin said he had been removed by regulators as Minsheng Chinese Communist Party secretary — one of the top positions at the bank.
The People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of the party, later said that Minsheng employees were warned over the weekend to be ready to “respond to a possible emergency.”
Mao joined China Minsheng in 2002. According to his official biography he worked as China Communist Youth League general office of the central committee director from 1999 to 2002, a part of the CCP that is said to be closely aligned with Hu and Ling.
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