What’s new: Bank of China Wednesday appointed Executive Vice President Sun Yu to be executive director, vice chairman and chief executive of its Hong Kong unit after the position was vacant for months.
Sun, 47, joined Bank of China in 1998 after he graduated from Nankai University with a master’s degree in economics. He headed the bank’s London branch and was chief overseas business officer before being promoted to executive vice president in 2019.
As part of the bank’s personnel changes, Sun resigned as president of Bank of China’s Beijing branch. Wang Zhiheng, also a Nankai University graduate, who is currently the bank’s general manager of human resources, will succeed Sun as president of the Beijing branch, Caixin learned from exclusive sources.
The background: The executive reshuffle came after Bank of China was fined by the banking regulator earlier this month for compliance issues and other failings related to a speculative crude oil investment product known as “Yuan You Bao” that caused heavy losses to investors.
In April, about 60,000 Chinese investors who bought the bank’s Yuan You Bao product incurred $1.4 billion in losses when global oil prices turned negative for the first time in history. Industry experts questioned whether there were significant design flaws in the product that put people with low risk tolerance into high-risk investments.
The bank was fined 50.5 million yuan ($7.7 million) for failure to pressure-test the investment product, failure to manage risks, and failure to adequately disclose information to investors.
Contact reporter Denise Jia (huijuanjia@caixin.com) and editor Bob Simison (bobsimison@caixin.com).
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