Senior Nomura banker barred from exiting China, FT says
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The travel ban on Nomura's Charles Wang Zhonghe is linked to his time at Industrial & Commercial Bank of China.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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Singapore – A senior banker at Nomura Holdings has been barred from leaving China in a move connected to a long-running investigation of a top dealmaker in the country, the Financial Times reported.
Mr Charles Wang Zhonghe, chairman of investment banking for China at the Hong Kong arm of the Japanese bank, has not been detained and is only restricted from exiting China, the newspaper reported, citing people familiar with the matter it did not identify.
Nomura declined to comment and Mr Wang did not immediately reply to a request for comment, FT said. The Chinese Foreign Ministry also did not immediately respond to a request.
The travel restriction is linked to Mr Wang’s time at the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), where he worked before joining Nomura in 2018, according to the report.
His time at ICBC overlapped with that of former China Renaissance Holdings executive Cong Lin, who was summoned by regulators a year ago and has since been detained, FT said.
Mr Cong left ICBC to join China Renaissance – a local investment bank founded by Mr Bao Fan – in 2017 after playing an important role in a strategic partnership between the firms, FT reported.
Mr Bao has been detained since early 2023.
The investment climate in China has become increasingly fraught as the economy struggles and President Xi Jinping has cracked down on broad swathes of the private sector over the past few years.
The finance industry has been rocked by a clampdown on alleged corruption that started in late 2021 and has shown no sign of abating.
The dragnet has become the most extensive ever and dovetails with a broader government shake-up as Mr Xi embarked on a third term in office.
In August, China Renaissance said Mr Bao was still “cooperating” in an unspecified investigation, six months after the once high-flying banker’s sudden disappearance sent shockwaves through the country’s financial services sector.
In China, the abrupt absence of a senior executive has come to signal a state crackdown or investigation. In several cases, the person is said to be assisting with graft probes.
Publicly listed firms tend to report they have lost contact with the executive and need to make their own inquiries into what happened within the country’s opaque legal system. BLOOMBERG
