BEIJING: Bao Fan, the star dealmaker and founder of boutique investment bank China Renaissance Holdings 1911.HK, has been released more than two years after being detained by Chinese authorities, a person with knowledge of the matter said on Friday (Aug 8).
China Renaissance shook the country’s financial sector in 2023 when it announced it was unable to contact Bao, who founded the bank in 2005 with two other partners and still owns nearly 49 per cent of its issued shares.
Bao was among several high-profile executives in China, mostly from the finance industry, who went missing in recent years with little explanation during a sweeping anti-corruption campaign spearheaded by President Xi Jinping.
His disappearance unsettled professionals in the financial industry of the world’s second-largest economy, as Beijing pressed its campaign to rein in what it described as the lavish lifestyle of the financial elite.
BOOSTING BUSINESS CONFIDENCE
Bao’s release comes as Beijing seeks to bolster business confidence, particularly among the country’s tech entrepreneurs, whose companies have been hit by a years-long crackdown.
China is looking to restore confidence in the private sector, which has been struggling with weak domestic consumption and a prolonged debt crisis in the property sector, set against a backdrop of heightened trade tensions with the United States.
“This is certainly a positive signal, as Bao was the most high-profile financier detained in recent years,” said Christopher Beddor, deputy China research director at Gavekal Dragonomics.
“Still, it will not change the fact that the anti-corruption campaign continues to churn through the financial sector, and the common prosperity campaign has led to sweeping pay caps and even clawbacks,” Beddor said. “China’s financial sector remains a long way from its heyday only a few years ago.”
