Billionaire head of China’s Fosun group ‘disappears’

CITIC Securities Co Ltd, China’s biggest brokerage, said on December 6 it wasn’t able to contact two of its top executives following media reports that they had been asked by authorities to assist in an investigation.

The news follows reports earlier this week that two investment bankers from China’s biggest broker Citic Securities went missing over the weekend.

Chinese conglomerate Fosun said its chairman, billionaire Guo Guangchang, is helping Chinese authorities after he was reported initially missing yesterday.

“The news about Guo Guangchang is a Force 9 natural disaster for China’s private sector”, Rupert Hoogewerf, head of Shanghai-based research group Hurun Report, which tracks China’s wealthy, told International Business Times. “[Guo] is not being investigated himself”, the source added.

China is in the midst of a three-year-old anti-corruption crackdown led by president Xi Jinping that has caught dozens of executives at state-owned companies in oil and other industries.

Trading in the shares of Fosun International, the group’s main subsidiary, was halted “pending the release of an announcement containing inside information”, it said in a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange, where it is listed, as did another unit, Fosun Pharmaceutical.

The 48-year-old had been out of contact since Thursday, respected business magazine Caixin reported on its website.

Fosun Group said in a statement that “after making enquiries, the company understands that Mr Guo [Guangchang] is now assisting in certain investigations carried out by mainland judiciary authorities”.

Last Friday in Wuhan, a Chinese billionaire detained over a political corruption scandal, Mr Xu Ming, 44, was found dead in his prison cell. Fosun, which he co-founded in the 1990s, has businesses in real estate, steel, mining and retailing.

Chinese conglomerate Fosun International bought renowned French holiday company Club Med earlier in … Guo-known as “China’s Warren Buffett” with a fortune estimated at $7 billion-hasn’t responded to messages sent on an internal company-wide app, per the BBC.

There is speculation that this is part of the wider anti-corruption campaign that Beijing launched to clean up various pillars of China’s economy – which now includes the financial sector.

It is possible that Mr Guo has not been arrested, or at least not formally.

Being in charge of a Chinese brokerage or investment firm might be one of the most risky jobs out there at the moment. In the United States, it owns Meadowbrook Insurance Group Inc., 20 percent of insurer Ironshore Inc. and the 60-story office tower at 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza in New York City.

Shanghai’s main share index fell 0.6 percent to a five-week low on Friday.