Mr. Shangkong | 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.