Former China Merchants Bank CEO Investigated

The Chinese anti-corruption watchdog has reportedly put Tian Huiyu, the ex-president of China Merchants Bank, under investigation, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) wrote.

This comes after he had been removed abruptly from the state-backed lender’s head spot.

Huiyu had reportedly been “suspected of seriously violating discipline and laws,” according to China’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.

Tian had been China Merchants Bank’s president for eight years, and the board voted to remove him from his position.

Instead, Wang Liang, the chief financial officer, will be overseeing things instead.

In addition, the company released its first-quarter results, showing a 13% year-over-year increase in profits.

China Merchants Bank, whose parent is China Merchants Group, has been providing retail and corporate banking services domestically since its founding in 1987, with over 2,000 branches.

Tian’s leadership saw the bank increasing its consumer lending activities and sales of wealth-management products. The company’s assets were more than doubled and hit $1.46 trillion through the end of March.

These events come as Chinese President Xi Jinping has rolled out a round of inspections into a lot of the country’s largest state-owned financial institutions, which have been targeting various banks, investments and financial regulators, focusing on whether these entities are now too close to private firms.

In January, PYMNTS wrote that over 60 IPOs in China were on hold, including one from Deutsche Bank’s AG Chinese securities venture, because regulators were looking into law firms and underwriters behind them.

See more: China Investigation Triggers Delay in 60+ IPOs

The report said 12 planned IPOs in Shanghai’s STAR market, the country’s tech hub, and 48 others in the Shenzhen cluster of startups, ChiNext, had been on hold.

All the companies had hired one or more of three companies being investigated by securities regulators, Zhong De Securities Co., a joint venture between Deutsche Bank and Shanxi Securities.