China Merchants Bank (CMB) has unexpectedly relieved Tian Huiyu of his role as President and CEO, after the worst sell-off of Merchants Bank shares in seven years on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, which erased about CNY71 billion in one day, amid talk of investigations into the affairs of the country’s largest retail bank. Tian, 56, was relieved of his job with immediate effect, and would be assigned to another post, the Shenzhen-based bank said, without specifying his new role. Before his appointment to China Merchants Bank, Tian served as head of the Beijing office for two years between March 2011 and June 2013 at China Construction Bank (CCB) the country’s second-largest lender by assets. Tian, appointed to the bank’s top post in September 2013, will be replaced by Chief Financial Officer Wang Liang as interim CEO, the bank said. Wang, an economist, has a degree in monetary banking from the Renmin University of China. Wang joined the bank in 1995, working his way up the ranks in various roles until his promotion to First Executive Vice President and CFO in August 2021.
A Senior Executive of the bank was helping China’s authorities with an unspecified investigation, the financial news portal Hexun.com reported, without divulging the nature of the probe. Merchants Bank is China’s third-largest lender by capitalization. “There’s market speculation that the executive is under probe,” said Wang Zheng, Chief Investment Officer at Jingxi Investment Management in Shanghai. China Merchants Bank has a market capitalization of 1.1 trillion, the third-most valuable lender after Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) and China Construction Bank (CCB). Its 17.5% return on equity is the best in the industry, versus a 11.6% peer average, according to Bloomberg data, the South China Morning Post reports.
