Ping An as seen by the media: tip-offs, denials and rows
Weeks of anonymous phone calls, confrontations and threats took place in the media as the story of HSBC's Ping An stake sale unfolded
Today, I will try to offer a personal look at the coverage from behind the scenes.
As a journalist who has covered the mainland's financial industry for more than a decade and written a book about foreign banks in China, I was not surprised when HSBC announced its intention to sell its entire 15.6 per cent stake in Ping An, which the bank had held for a decade.
What surprised me was the buyer, Charoen Pokphand (CP), a Thai firm that is a major exporter of poultry to China.
A greater surprise came when, a few days after HSBC's announcement of the deal in early December, a colleague and I began to get anonymous phone calls about who was the real buyer of the Ping An stake.
We asked one of the people who made the first few anonymous calls to come out from the shadows for an interview, but he declined.
The report was soon confirmed by other media outlets at home and abroad. Xiao, whose whereabouts has remained a secret for the past few years following a government investigation into a listed company in which his fund invested, denied the reports through his lawyers.
But the media didn't really trust Xiao's denial given his reputation in the mainland's capital markets.
What made the situation more suspicious was when two men appeared at the Beijing office of a major media organisation and demanded that the chief editor give them a preview of a story about Xiao.
The men almost forced the editor to turn on his computer and print the story out for them to review. When the editor tried to call the police, the two men, who are believed to have been sent by Xiao, left.
Stories about the Ping An stake sale shared on social media such as Sina Weibo began to be removed or hidden from public view. One reason may have been the publication by of a report, just a month before HSBC's announcement of the Ping An deal, about the involvement of outgoing premier Wen Jiabao's relatives in Ping An's history.
The and other media reported that China Development Bank had backed off from its plan to provide loan support to CP, the only buyer on record.
Right after the broke the news, I received an anonymous call. This time it was a warning: "Don't write [any more], and be careful." The tone didn't sound very friendly.
