Fosun’s missing chair reappears after 4-day disappearance

Fosun International chair Guo Guangchang is back in action, making an appearance at his conglomerate’s annual meeting in Shanghai after being detained by Chinese authorities last week.

Shares of Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group Co., one of several Guo-related companies halted on Friday, also plunged on Monday in a sign that investors remained jittery about the broader implications for the firms.

Fosun missing-in-china-say-reports-9281/”>said on Friday that Guo, one of China’s best-known entrepreneurs, was assisting authorities with an investigation, a day after local media said the group had lost contact with its billionaire founder.

Other reports said he was being questioned in connection with a probe into former Shanghai vice mayor and director of the Shanghai Free Trade Zone Ai Baojun, who was placed under investigation last month by the Communist Party’s internal anti-graft body for “severe disciplinary violations”.

Shares in the group were suspended in Hong Kong after the disappearance of Guo Guangchang, dubbed “China’s Warren Buffett”, Fosun said in a statement.

According to the Caijing business magazine, which initially reported his apparent arrest, he “returned home safely” following questioning. The company is developing drugs, consolidating businesses in China and targeting acquisitions overseas.

A string of top Chinese executives have mysteriously disappeared this year, as officials crack down on the financial sector, casting around for individuals to blame for the country’s summer stock market crash.

But the China Enterprises Index, which tracks Chinese companies listed in Hong Kong, gained 0.1 percent, to 9,315.91 points. His disappearance prompted Fosun, which has a market capitalisation of about $14 billion, to suspend trading in its shares on Friday.

In late November, the Hong Kong subsidiary of another major Chinese brokerage said its CEO, Yim Fung, had been missing since November 18, and appointed a replacement.

Chief executive Liang Xinjun said Guo was helping police in Shanghai and said that he was now assisting with an investigation and not the subject of it. He did not give further details about the nature of the probe. It has interests spanning media, insurance, real estate and retail. They will also make efforts to build up a global platform in a more organized way.

Mr Guo has a net worth of 7.8 billion dollars (£5.1 billion), according to the Hurun Report, which follows China’s wealthy.

Thomson Reuters data shows it owed US$15 billion at the end of June, more than its current market value of US$13.2 billion.