Statement purportedly by Chinese oligarch’s Tomorrow Group hits back at regulators for breaking up Xiao Jianhua’s conglomerate

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In an unsigned statement released via Tomorrow Group’s WeChat account over the weekend, the conglomerate pointed to several procedural questions that implied that financial regulators were so set on taking over the group’s assets that they ignored the debt-restructuring efforts already under way

Hours after appearing on WeChat, the statement was removed for “breach of rules,” according to an automated notice on the social network app, and could not be found on Tomorrow Group’s website

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The Tomorrow Group’s building in Beijing on February 1, 2017. Photo: Agence France-Presse PHOTO

Enoch Yiu

Published: 6:05pm, 18 Jul 2020Updated: 9:18pm, 18 Jul 2020

Tomorrow Group, the sprawling conglomerate with businesses from financial services to real estate in the middle of one of China’s biggest corporate break-ups, appears to be hitting back at a government move to seize its subsidiaries.

In a four-point, unsigned statement released via Tomorrow Group’s WeChat account on Saturday, the conglomerate founded by the Chinese oligarch Xiao Jianhua pointed to several procedural questions that implied that financial regulators were so set on taking over the group’s assets that they ignored the debt-restructuring efforts already under way.

Hours after appearing on WeChat, the statement was removed for “breach of rules,” according to an automated notice on the social network app, and could not be found on Tomorrow Group’s website, which showed its last update as July 2016. The authenticity of the statement could not be immediately verified. Phone calls and emails to Tomorrow Group’s office in Beijing went unanswered.

Still, coming in the wake of the takeovers by China’s financial regulators of several insurers, financial trusts and brokers linked to Xiao and the Tomorrow Group, the statement raised questions about the way by which the Chinese authorities are going about in taking down one of the country’s most powerful oligarchs. The crackdown began three years ago, when China’s central bank and financial regulators put the country’s freewheeling capital market under scrutiny to prevent debt-fuelled buyouts from hurting the financial system.

A likeness of Xiao Jianhua. Illustration: Henry Wong

On the eve of the Lunar New Year in 2017, Xiao was persuaded to leave his luxury hideout at the Four Seasons residence in Hong Kong to return to mainland China for investigations by financial regulators.