Chinese investment bank shares plunge as

BEIJING

ReuteRs

China renaissance Holdings Ltd (1911.HK) saw its shares plummet by as much as 50% on Friday after the investment bank said it is unable to contact its Chairman and Chief Executive Bao Fan, in the latest disappearance of a top business executive.

The disappearance of Bao, the company’s founder and controlling shareholder, drove China renaissance’s Hong Kong-listed stock to hit a record low of HK$5 in early trade, wiping off HK$2.8 billion ($357 million) in market value.

The stock regained some ground later in the day to be off by 28% in the Hong Kong market which was down 0.7%. Nearly 30 million shares of the boutique investment bank changed hands on Friday, the highest on record.

“The board is not aware of any information that indicates that Mr. Bao’s unavailability is or might be related to the business and/or operations of the Group which is continuing normally,” the mainland China-based bank said in a lateThursday filing.

A China renaissance spokesperson referred reuters’ request for comment on Friday to the investment bank’s public filing.

The well-known dealmaker’s disappearance is the latest in a series of cases of high-profile Chinese executives going missing with little explanation during a sweeping anticorruption campaign spearheaded

CEO goes missing

by President Xi Jinping.

In 2015 alone, at least five executives became unreachable without prior notice to their companies, including Fosun Group Chairman Guo Guangchang, who Fosun later said was assisting with investigations regarding a personal matter.

The disappearance comes after China’s border reopening and renewed focus on boosting the sagging economy has brightened the outlook for deals, as has an easing of a regulatory crackdown on technology firms.

Bao who previously worked at Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN.S) and Morgan Stanley (MS.N), has been hailed as one of China’s bestconnected bankers.

He was involved with major technology mergers including the tie-up of ride-hailing firms Didi and Kuaidi, food delivery giants Meituan (3690.HK) and Dianping and travel devices platforms Ctrip (9961.HK) and Qunar.

Deals aDviser: “If a listed company voluntarily discloses that a senior manager or a major shareholder cannot be contacted, it’s truly unusual, as the person might have been out of reach for some time,” said Dickie Wong, executive director of research at Kingston Securities.

Investors’ worst nightmare is that a company’s ability to continue operation is impaired, so a stock sell-off is not surprising given the uncertainty, Wong added.

At the helm of China renaissance, Bao has taken an increas- ingly active role in the group’s private equity business in recent years, according to two sources with direct knowledge of matter.

The sources declined to named due to sensitivity of the matter.

China renaissance is currently ranked ninth on China’s equity capital markets leagues table for 2023, according to refinitiv, after it advised on Jiangsu Sanfame Polyester Material (600370.SS) $363 million convertible bond last month.

The firm earned $20.6 million in Chinese-related investment banking fees in 2022, down from $43.13 million a year earlier, the data showed.

Bao started China renaissance in 2005 and listed it in Hong Kong in 2018 after raising $346 million.

The bank has acted as adviser for some of China’s biggest tech initial public offerings (IPOs) including those of JD.Com Inc and Kuaishou Technology (1024.HK) as well as Didi’s New York listing in 2021.

Didi ran afoul of the Chinese regulators when in 2021 it pressed ahead with the U.S. stock listing against the regulator’s will, sources previously told reuters.

China renaissance is also an active investor in the tech sector. In 2019, it raised more than 6.5 billion yuan ($945 million) in a yuan-denominated fund.

Bao’s disappearance comes days after property developer Seazen Group Ltd (1030.HK) said it was unable to contact or reach its vice-chairman.

A Bharatpur range police official, Gaurav Srivastava, in a statement, said that they have detained six people and are interrogating them.

“Those named are members of Bajrang Dal but whether they were involved in the crime or not is yet to be ascertained,” he said.

Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, while condemning the incident, said that the police have been instructed to take strict action in this matter.

Zelensky to address Munich conference with ukraine in focus

MUNICH, GERMANY Agencies

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky will Friday open the Munich Security Conference, as world leaders gather to renew their vow to back Kyiv against russian forces ahead of the first anniversary of Moscow’s invasion. US-China ties will also be in focus at the threeday gathering, with tensions sky-high after Washington shot down an alleged Chinese surveillance balloon over US territory. But the spotlight will be firmly on Ukraine, just days ahead of the February 24 anniversary of Moscow sending its forces into the country, unleashing war in Europe for the first time in decades. Zelensky will address the official opening event via video link later, with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and France’s President Emmanuel Macron also to speak.

Others attending the gathering include US Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, China’s top diplomat Wang Yi and NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg. russian delegates including Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who was a regular attendee at Munich in the past, have not been invited. representing Ukraine at the conference, Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said he planned talks with a series of top officials focused on weapons supplies.

“The priorities will be speeding up the supply of arms and ammunition already promised to Ukraine, and the adoption of political decisions in the future on the provision of combat aircraft for Ukraine,” he said in an Instagram post.

Ukraine’s Western backers, led by the United States, have given it a huge amount of weapons and pledged a barrage of others, including heavy battle tanks long sought by Kyiv to counter russia’s offensive.

Turkey’s deadly quake renews alarm for Istanbul

ISTANBUL Agencies

The 7.8-magnitude earthquake that killed tens of thousands across Turkey’s southeast has reignited fears of an even more catastrophic death toll if a long-feared one hits Istanbul. Seismologists warn that a massive earthquake is likely to strike Turkey’s biggest city — officially home to 16 million people but estimated to hold up to 20 million — by 2030.

The city lies on the northern edge of one of Turkey’s main fault lines and is densely packed. A 7.6-magnitude earthquake with an epicentre on the city’s eastern outskirts killed more than 17,000 people in 1999. The number of Istanbulites has roughly doubled since then.

Independent urban scholar Murat Guney said carnage can be avoided if people will be relocated people from shoddy buildings.

Guney said Istanbul had an ample supply of vacant properties just recently constructed and strong enough to withstand major jolts.

Procrastination could spell doom, he said.

“A major earthquake of up to 7.5 magnitude is expected in Istanbul. Such an earthquake may cause the death of hundreds of thousands of residents while estimates about the number of buildings that will totally collapse or be severely damaged range from 50,000 to 200,000,” Guney told AFP.

“Those high-risk buildings, which are mostly squatter style and not resistant to earthquakes needed immediate transformation before they collapse even following a minor earthquake.”

– Sliver of good news –

The February 6 earthquake claimed the lives of more than 38,000 people in southeastern Turkey and nearly 3,700 in neigh- bouring Syria.

Officials say more than 55,000 buildings were either levelled or damaged beyond repair. Its impact was felt across a part of Turkey with approximately the same population as Istanbul.

Guney said Istanbul had around 1,166,000 residential buildings. “Of these, 817,000 buildings (70 percent) were constructed before the 1999 earthquake, when there were no construction inspections regarding resistance to earthquakes,” he said.

But there was a sliver of good news: Guney said Istanbul had 150,000 earthquake-resistant properties built after 2008 that still stood empty.

“They either belong to the construction companies that are waiting for customers, or they are the second or third houses of the rich, who do not bother to rent those apartments,” Guney said.

“There is even no need for more con- struction in Istanbul,” he said. “The number of empty buildings is sufficient to move in those who live in the high-risk buildings.

The 1999 quake prompted the government to impose a special levy that became known as the “earthquake tax”.