Chinese boutique bank reassures staff, clients over missing star dealmaker

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HONG KONG — The mysterious disappearance of a star Chinese dealmaker has left his boutique bank scrambling to reassure clients and staff, people with knowledge of the matter said on Monday, and has raised new concern about “key-man risk” for investors.

Shares of China Renaissance Holdings fell as much as 5% on Monday, following a record low in the previous session that was triggered by the investment bank saying it could not contact its founder, chairman and CEO Bao Fan.

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The stock ended the day up 0.1% in the Hong Kong market that rose 0.8%.

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Though the reasons for Bao’s disappearance are not clear, his case follows a series of incidents in which high-profile executives in China have gone missing with little explanation during a sweeping anti-corruption campaign spearheaded by President Xi Jinping.

Some of them reappeared as abruptly as they disappeared.

China Renaissance said on Thursday in a stock exchange filing that it had no information that Bao’s “unavailability” was related to its business, and that its operations were continuing normally.

China Renaissance co-founder Kevin Xie and its investment banking head, Wang Lixing, who are running the firm in Bao’s absence, have asked staff not to believe or spread rumors, according to two sources and copies of their messages to staff seen by Reuters.

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“At such a critical moment, everyone should trust the company. Don’t fret and stumble. It’s OK to encounter some difficulties in the short term,” Wang said in his message posted on the company’s Wechat group on Friday.

According to two sources and some media reports, authorities took Bao away this month to assist in an investigation into a former colleague, Cong Lin, the firm’s former president.

All the sources, who have knowledge of the matter, declined to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter.

A spokesperson for Beijing-based China Renaissance did not immediately respond to Reuters request for comment on Monday, nor did Xie or Wang.

Beijing’s public security bureau also did not respond to request for comment. Asked during a daily news conference on Friday whether the banker had been detained, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said he was not aware of the situation.

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The Hong Kong-listed stock, which climbed as much as 3.5% early on Monday, gave up all those gains and fell to as low as HK$6.82. It hit an all-time low of HK$5 initially on Friday but later recovered some ground to close at HK$7.18, down 28%.

‘KEY-MAN RISK’

Bao, also China Renaissance’s controlling shareholder, started the firm in 2005 as a two-person team, seeking to match capital-hungry startups with venture capitalist and private equity investors.

The firm later expanded into services including underwriting, sales and trading.

Known to be well connected in the corporate world, Bao was involved with tech mergers including the tie-up of ride-hailing firms Didi and Kuaidi, food delivery giants Meituan and Dianping, and travel platforms Ctrip and Qunar.

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“What happened to China Renaissance highlighted the key-man risk with some Chinese companies,” said Li Nan, professor of Finance at Shanghai Jiaotong University.

“A group of Chinese financial institutions rose quickly over the past few years on one to two controllers’ efforts, while it makes these companies particularly vulnerable to any negative headlines that show the controllers are in trouble.”

So-called key man risk generally refers to the threat posed to a company due to over reliance on key personnel for decision making.

While it is not uncommon in China for authorities to take away business executives for various reasons, Bao’s disappearance comes against the backdrop of more than two years of sweeping regulatory crackdown on technology companies.

“This should once again remind foreign investors of the relative level of regulatory and governance risk associated with Chinese equities,” said Propitious Research analyst Wium Malan, who publishes on Smartkarma platform.

(Reporting by Julie Zhu, Xie Yu, Scott Murdoch, Donny Kwok and Selena Li; Writing by Sumeet Chatterjee; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman, Robert Birsel)