HONG KONG-- Levin Zhu, son of former Chinese premier Zhu Rongji,
has resigned as chief executive of investment bank China
International Capital Corp. after nearly 17 years at the helm, as
its planned initial public offering has been delayed.
CICC said Tuesday that it had appointed Chief Operating Officer
Shoukang Lin, who joined CICC in 2000, as acting chief executive.
Mr. Zhu's plans weren't clear and he couldn't immediately be
reached for comment.
The investment bank had planned to raise around US$500 million
in a Hong Kong IPO before the end of this year, but the offering
has been delayed and it remains unclear when it might happen,
people familiar with the situation said.
A CICC spokeswoman said the bank would conduct a global search
for Mr. Zhu's successor.
CICC was formed by Morgan Stanley and China Construction Bank
Corp. as China's first Sino-foreign joint-venture investment bank
in 1995. Morgan Stanley sold its stake in December 2010 to a
consortium that included sovereign-wealth fund Government of
Singapore Investment Corp., Great Eastern Holdings Ltd., the
insurer controlled by Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp., and
private-equity firms KKR & Co. and TPG Capital.
Under Mr. Zhu's leadership, CICC had expanded beyond investment
banking and underwriting to equities trading and asset
management.
Last year it posted a net profit of 370.1 million yuan (US$60.4
million), up from 307.7 million yuan in 2012 but a decline from
909.2 million yuan in 2010.
With close ties to Chinese state-owned enterprises, CICC for
years ranked as China's top bank for IPOs until the mid-2000s,
competing successfully against Wall Street banks and other Chinese
underwriters for mega-listings in Hong Kong.
In recent years, though, it has lost IPO deals to competitors
such as Citic Securities and Haitong Securities Co. as the IPO
market shifted from state enterprises to high-growth private
companies such as Alibaba, which held a record US$25 billion IPO in
New York in August.
In fact, the last time CICC ranked as the top underwriter of
Hong Kong IPOs was in 2005, according to data provider Dealogic. It
ranked third last year and currently ranks seventh this year. Hong
Kong is Asia Pacific's top venue for IPOs.
China's 14-month closure of its domestic IPO market, which ended
early this year, hurt many local investment banks, including
CICC.
CICC's landmark deals all involved state-owned enterprises. They
included the US$22.1 billion Shanghai-Hong Kong dual listing in
2010 by Chinese lender Agricultural Bank of China Ltd., still the
world's second-largest IPO, which was split with six other banks; a
US$21.9 billion Shanghai-Hong Kong dual listing by Industrial &
Commercial Bank of China, the country's largest bank by assets, in
2006; and a US$5.6 billion Hong Kong-New York dual listing by
telecommunications services provider China Unicom Ltd. in 2000.
Central Huijin Investment Ltd., the domestic investment arm of
China's sovereign-wealth fund, is the largest shareholder in CICC
with a 43.35% stake. Singapore's GIC holds 16.35%, according to
CICC's annual report. TPG Capital owns 10.3% and KKR holds 10%.
CICC ranked 23rd by total assets among China's securities
companies in 2013.
Amy Li contributed to this article.
Write to Prudence Ho at prudence.ho@wsj.com
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