Introduction
Li Guohua, a native of De'an, Jiangxi, has a very "pure" professional resume: he spent almost his entire life in the postal system until he crossed over to China Unicom in 2018. In fact, going to China Unicom is not "out of the circle", after all, before 1998, postal and telecommunications were one company.
As an old postal worker, Li Guohua has experienced the whole process of China's postal reform and development, and his professional resume is almost a history of postal development.
The Year of the Tiger has just been two weeks old, and the "first tiger" of the Year of the Tiger has been caged.
On February 18, 2022 (yes, it's another weekend), at 8 p.m. sharp, CCDI released an announcement on its official website, announcing that Li Guohua, former deputy secretary of the party group and general manager of China United Network Communications Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "China Unicom"), was investigated, becoming the first "tiger" to "fall from the horse" in the Year of the Tiger.
At this time, Li Guohua is about to complete two years before his retirement. This ending, for those who know Li Guohua, does not seem to be surprising, but the "boots" of four years ago finally landed.
In July 2018, Li Guohua bid farewell to the China Post system after 37 years of work, and crossed the border from General Manager and Secretary of the Party Group of China Post Group Corporation (hereinafter referred to as "China Post"), Chairman and Secretary of the Party Committee of Postal Savings Bank of China Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "PSBC") to General Manager of China Unicom.
The month when Li Guohua "crossed the border" coincided with the inspection team's feedback on inspection opinions to China Post. At that time, his change of position was interpreted by the industry as a customary act of "moving away" investigations. So much so that when he retired from China Unicom two years later, many people were said to be surprised that he actually landed safely.
Now it seems that Li Guohua's "fall" is only a matter of time.
Ten years ago, Tao Liming, Li Guohua's former colleague and the first president of the Postal Savings Bank, "fell off the horse", and ten years later, Li Guohua followed in his footsteps. These are the two highest-ranking "fallen horses" since the establishment of the Postal Savings Bank. It is relatively rare for the first and second leaders in a large financial institution to have accidents.
A month and a half ago (January 8, 2022), Wang Bin, the shareholder of Postal Savings Bank Chinese head of Life Insurance Group, also "fell off". Wang Bin and Li Guohua worked in Jiangxi at the same time many years ago, one as the president of the Jiangxi branch of the Agricultural Development Bank of China and the other as the director of the Jiangxi Provincial Post Bureau. Years later, the two fell back and forth in the capital, and they really had a fate.
They, from different paths, come from a common destiny.
The promotion path of Jiangxi old watches
Li Guohua has just completed two years of retirement. Two years ago, on March 19, 2021, he also visited the China Arts and Crafts Master Museum as the "former general manager of China Unicom".
In March 2022, he will have an unusual birthday and his life will switch to another mode.
Li Guohua, a native of De'an, Jiangxi, has a very "pure" professional resume: he spent almost his entire life in the postal system until he crossed over to China Unicom in 2018. In fact, going to China Unicom is not "out of the circle", after all, before 1998, postal and telecommunications were one company.
As an old postal worker, Li Guohua has experienced the whole process of China's postal reform and development, and his professional resume is almost a history of postal development.
Public information shows that Li Guohua also took a path to the countryside and school in his early years. At the age of 17, he cut the team in De'an County, and a year later, he joined the college entrance examination army by riding the east wind of the recovery of the college entrance examination, and was admitted to the Jiangxi Provincial Post and Telecommunications School to study carrier engineering. After graduating in 1981, he entered the De'an County Post and Telecommunications Administration as a flight attendant.
The year Li Guohua entered the workplace, the post and telecommunications department began to prepare for the postal savings business.
A year later, Li Guohua was transferred to the Jiujiang City Post and Telecommunications Bureau as an officer in the Political Department, and later went to study at the provincial regimental school. In 1986, Li Guohua, who returned from study, was transferred to the office of Jiujiang Post and Telecommunications Bureau.
In this year, the central bank signed the "Agreement on the Opening of Postal Savings" with the former Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications, and the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications established the Postal Savings and Exchange Bureau (the predecessor of the Postal Savings Bank, hereinafter referred to as the "Post Office"), which was responsible for the national postal savings and exchange business, and began to have financial functions. Deposit operations were handled by the Central Bank on behalf of the postal service, a pattern that lasted until 1990.
Four years later (January 1990), the post office began to switch from an agency for "deposit payment" to a self-run model of "deposit transfer", and began to operate a savings business independently. At that time, because the interest rate of postal savings was higher than the market average, with this policy dividend, postal savings began a period of rapid development for ten years.
Li Guohua also entered his own period of rapid development, leaping at a rate of one rise in two years. In 1992, he became the deputy director of the Jiujiang Post and Telecommunications Bureau, and two years later he was transferred to the director of the Fuzhou Post and Telecommunications Bureau.
In the winter of 1996, Li Guohua entered Nanchang, the provincial capital, and became the deputy director of the Jiangxi Provincial Post and Telecommunications Administration.
In September 1998, the reform of the post and telecommunications management system was implemented, the postal service and telecommunications were separated, and the post and telecommunications bureau was correspondingly split into their own independent post offices and telecommunications companies. In the following year, the reform plan of the postal savings exchange system was approved, and the "Postal Savings and Exchange Bureau of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications" was renamed the "Postal Savings and Exchange Bureau of the State Post Bureau".
Li Guohua, who majored in communications, did not choose to go to a telecommunications company, but stayed at the Jiangxi Post Office and began to preside over the work at the end of the year.
Seven months later (July 1999), 39-year-old Li Guohua took the position of head of the Jiangxi Post Office, becoming the youngest provincial bureau chief in the entire system.
The year before Li Guohua arrived in the provincial capital (1995), Wang Bin, former director of the office of the Agricultural Development Bank of China from Beijing, went south to become vice president of the Jiangxi branch, and later rose to president, where he spent almost five years.
At this time, they may know each other, or maybe they just pass by in some workplaces. At that time, they probably would not have imagined that many years later, the financial institutions they each controlled would be connected by equity ties.
On December 8, 2015, PSBC was approved to bring in ten strategic investors, one of which was Chinese Shou, and subscribed for 3.342 billion shares. However, this matter had nothing to do with Wang Bin, who was still busy "rebuilding Taiping" at China's Taiping Insurance Group.
They may not have imagined that many years later, they would "fall off the horse" one after another in the same year. In the near future, the two will eventually "check in" together in Qincheng.
Become the chief helmsman of Jinding Building
In July 2005, 45-year-old Li Guohua walked further from the provincial capital to the capital, became the deputy director of the General Administration and a member of the party group, and completed the experience of the "county-city-province-head office" full-level chain.
In the month that Li Guohua became deputy director of the General Administration, the "Postal System Reform Plan" was released, and China Post will be divided into three:
1. Reorganize the State Post Bureau as the national postal regulatory body;
2. Set up China Post Group Company to operate various postal services;
3. Prepare for the establishment of postal savings bank to realize the standardized operation of financial business.
The following year 2006 was a pivotal year in the history of China Post:
- In February, China Post, Beijing Post and China Philatelic Corporation jointly invested 507 million yuan in Xi'an Huahong Securities Brokerage Co., Ltd. (the predecessor of China Post Securities).
- In March, China Corporate Life (now known as Xiaokang Life) opened, and Li Guohua and Tao Liming became non-executive directors of China Corporate Life.
- In the same month, PSAs were approved for a pilot microloan business, ending the "deposit-only, not lending" model.
- In June, PSBC obtained the "birth permit" and passed the opening acceptance six months later.
- In August, China Post Group Corporation was approved to be established and formally established in January of the following year, ending the long-term pattern of inseparating government from enterprise.
- In December, the new headquarters building Jinding Building on Financial Street was completed, and in the same month, it participated in the Bohai Industrial Fund...
In addition to a series of happy events, there was also a trace of discord: in August of this year, in Foshan, Guangdong, a 1.325 billion yuan illegal deposit case was carried out by a customer service manager behind a bloody case, that is, the "Foshan 809 Postal Savings Case", which shocked the world for a while. This exposed the shortcomings of China Post's long-term model of not separating government from enterprise and government from bank, and weak risk control management of grassroots postal savings outlets.
This is not an isolated case. At that time, according to the statistics of the regulatory authorities, in the first half of 2005 alone, there were as many as 25 major cases of more than one million yuan in the national postal savings system, and most of them occurred in the cash deposit business.
Six years later, Tao Liming, president of the Postal Savings Bank, and two subordinates also became the "protagonists" of the major case, further exposing that there are still many loopholes in the corporate governance and risk control of the Postal Savings Bank. That's another story for later.
On September 14, 2011, 51-year-old Li Guohua replaced Liu Andong, who had retired at the age of old, and became the general manager and deputy secretary of the party group of China Post, completing the last leap of the rank and realizing the ultimate dream of a professional born at the grassroots level.
Sitting in the Jinding Building, an office facing north and south overlooking Financial Street, Li Guohua began a seven-year career as the number one in China Post. At the same time, he was also the head of the Postal Savings Bank.
This old postal man has since been close to finance.
Witness PSBC's highlights
After completing the separation of government and enterprises, China Post also began to embark on the road of both production and finance. By 2006, it had three financial licenses, namely Postal Savings Bank, China Legal Entity Life Insurance and Xi'an Huahong Securities Brokerage Company, and the financial structure had begun to show its outline, collecting the three most valuable financial licenses of silver, securities and insurance.
In September 2009, China Post set up China Post Life Insurance again, turning China Post Life into an abandoned child. In the same year, Xi'an Huahong Securities Brokerage Company was renamed China Post Securities.
However, as the only postal company in China, although China Post has exclusive postal channels, its main profit force is still the Postal Savings Bank. Taking Li Guohua as an example in 2011, relevant data show that the consolidated net profit of China Post Group in that year was 20.936 billion yuan, while the net profit of Postal Savings Bank was as high as 23.12 billion yuan, China Post Securities and China Post Life Insurance lost 67 million yuan and 59 million yuan respectively, and the total loss of 31 postal branches was about 5.18 billion yuan.
This also means that the importance of PSBC to China Post is known in the industry as the "feeder" of the China Post system.
On March 20, 2007, PSBC held an opening ceremony. Liu Andong, then general manager of China Post, became the first chairman, and Tao Liming became the first president.
The smooth establishment of the Postal Savings Bank is inseparable from the strong support of one person. That is Cai Esheng, the former vice chairman of the CBRC who fell in 2021 and was arrested 9 days ago. (→ "financial veteran" Cai Esheng, the land of black gold)
At that time, there were also rumors in the market that he might become the chairman of the Postal Savings Bank.
Three months after its opening, PSBC issued its first microloan, which became a magic weapon for PSBC to open up the rural sinking market through its unique "self-operated + agent" channel model, and opened its way as a "three rural areas" microloan provider. After the opening of China Post Life in 2009, it launched the microinsurance business, and also cooperated with the postal savings system with the help of the "self-operated + agent" channel model.
However, at that time, the management context between the Postal Savings Bank and China Post had not yet been clarified, and it was still facing the road of joint-stock transformation that it had to go through as a modern commercial bank. This step will be led by Li Guohua.
The restructuring and listing of the Postal Savings Bank have become two major events completed during Li Guohua's tenure.
On January 21, 2012, the second year after Li Guohua became the chief helmsman of China Post, the Postal Savings Bank, which had been established for five years, was approved to be transformed into a joint-stock bank, and the shareholding ratio of China Post became 68.92%. Li Guohua became the first chairman of the restructured Postal Savings Bank.
In the year that the Postal Savings Bank completed its restructuring, President Tao Liming's fate had another direction: "falling from the horse."
In March 2012, the case of Hunan Department official Chen Mingxian uncovered a major project of the Hunan Expressway, which led to Tao Liming and his brother. Three months later, China Post and the Postal Savings Bank confirmed the rumors in the market that Tao Liming and two of his subordinates had been taken away with a circular in the market.
At the end of that year, Tao Liming was arrested. In August 2014, when the first trial of Tao's case began, prosecutors accused Tao and the other three of them of embezzling more than 340 million yuan of public funds for foreign investment and seeking personal interests. Accordingly, Tao Liming was sentenced to life imprisonment in the first instance, but he immediately appealed.
Before the second trial began, Tao Liming died of illness on June 1, 2016, drawing a sighing end to the 62-year-old's life in the detention center.
Tao Liming
After Tao Liming "fell from the horse", Lu Jiajin, then vice president who participated in the establishment of the Postal Savings Bank, was promoted to the president of the Postal Savings Bank in January 2013, and worked with Li Guohua.
Like countless similar cases, Tao Liming's case is also a "cat and mouse" money game involving officials, brokers and financial executives. In particular, due to historical reasons, the postal savings system has only deposited for a long time, and unlike other banks that have bothered to pull deposits, the biggest distress of postal savings banks is to find an asset outlet for huge amounts of money. Rent-seeking through financial brokers has become a huge temptation for executives or grassroots talkers.
Tao Liming's case shocked the industry at that time. Some insiders believe that it can be seen that the corporate governance structure of the postal savings bank, which was born out of China's postal system, is still very imperfect, and there is still a long way to go from appearance to god.
After Tao Liming "fell from the horse", Li Guohua also attracted public attention. At that time, a "cousin" Yang Dacai, who had 83 famous watches, was exposed on the Internet, which caused a heated discussion. Later, some netizens also revealed that Li Guohua can also be called a "cousin", and some good deeds have counted the famous watches he has worn in public, as many as seven, which speculates that he also has corruption.
As we all know, the salary package of China's postal system is not high, and although the salary level of PSBC is higher than that of China Post, it is far from that of other commercial banks.
Therefore, Li Guohua, who was born at the grassroots level and has been in Beijing for less than ten years, wears various famous watches all day long, and it has become particularly dazzling in the eyes of netizens. At that time, there were also many complaints from grassroots postal employees on the Internet, believing that under the leadership of Li Guohua, China Post only looked at turnover, not profits, extensive management, and grassroots life was not easy.
The post was quickly deleted and did not have a substantial impact on Li.
However, as the number one, Li Guohua is not alone in the face of some interests.
In June 2019, the bribery case of Liu Xiaohua, secretary of former MOF vice minister Zhang Shaochun, opened a trial, revealing the hidden corners in the process of share reform of Postal Savings Bank and the transfer of shares in China Corporate Life.
In 2013, China Post planned to abandon China Life Insurance and intend to transfer its shares, so it organized three equity transfer bids. According to media reports, at that time, state-owned groups such as Huadian Group and China Re Group and some large private enterprises all contacted China Post to express their intentions.
In the end, a little-known private enterprise Hongshang Group became a "dark horse" and acquired the equity of China Post's Chinese legal person Life Insurance that China Post wanted to sell. According to the trial legal documents of Liu Xiaohua's case, behind this equity transaction was an exchange of benefits. Liu Xiaohua helped Yu Yong, the actual controller of Hongshang Group, to connect with his boss Zhang Shaochun, and then Zhang Shaochun found Li Guohua to operate.
At that time, one of Li Guohua's identities was a director of China Legal Corporation.
In this case, Li Guohua appeared as a witness and provided testimony to prove that Zhang Shaochun arranged for Liu Xiaohua to greet him and requested that when determining the transferee of the equity of the Chinese legal person Life Insurance Company, he would take care of the Hongshang Group, which Yong actually controlled.
Therefore, in December 2013, China Post reported Hongshang Group and its consortium as the intended transferee of the equity of China Legal Person Life to Zhang Shaochun for signature. In the end, Hongshang Group took over China Life Insurance with the "cost" of a shopping card of 100,000 yuan and 300,000 yuan in cash for Liu Xiaohua.
However, Hongshang Group probably did not expect that the equity of Chinese legal person life that it painstakingly won became a bottomless pit that required continuous investment and almost only the value of the license, and the subsequent equity transfer also experienced several twists and turns, until 2021, the small insurance company finally came back to life.
Hongshang Group, which became a high-ranking official, had ambitions at that time that were not limited to an insurance license. According to the trial documents, on the occasion of the 2015 Postal Savings Bank's H-share IPO, Yu Yong expressed to Zhang Shaochun the idea of subscribing to a portion of the shares, asking him to "communicate with the leaders of the Postal Savings Bank." This matter was arranged for Liu Xiaohua again.
However, at that time, the list of war investors of the Postal Savings Bank had been determined, and if Hongshang Group wanted to invest, it could only participate indirectly in the subscription through foreign banks. Considering that this method is more troublesome, Yu Yong did not participate in it again.
In the trial documents, Li Guohua only appeared as a witness, and did not show whether he personally benefited from it.
In December 2015, PSBC was approved to introduce 10 war investors, and in addition to six international financial institutions, only four Chinese companies: Chinese Life, China Telecom, Tencent, and Ant Group. Among them, DBS Bank also established a joint venture with Postal Savings Bank in January of the same year to establish China Post Consumer Finance Company.
The introduction of war investment is a significant stroke in the development history of PSBC. At that time, the original plan was to introduce a 15% stake, which was later expanded to 16.92%. The trading price of 3.89 yuan per share was also far higher than the Chinese bank stocks in the Hong Kong market at that time, and even exceeded the trading price-to-book ratio of large listed commercial banks comparable to A-shares at that time.
You know, at that time, bank stocks were generally in a downturn when the price-to-book ratio fell below 1 times (that is, "broken"). It is not so easy for a new bank born out of the postal system to gain the recognition of a group of capital veterans.
The 10 war investments not only brought a huge capital of 45.1 billion yuan, but also brought about a huge change in the equity structure of the postal savings bank. PSBC's transformation from a single shareholding to a diversified shareholding structure by China Post is regarded by the market as an important breakthrough in its corporate governance.
On September 28, 2016, PSBC was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Standing in the hall of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and ringing the listing bell has become the highlight of Li Guohua's career.
The Postal Savings Bank, which completed its listing, soon ushered in another heavy blow: due to its involvement in the Qiaoxing bond incident, the Postal Savings Bank also received a regulatory fine in December 2017 together with the protagonist Guangfa Bank.
The incident also happened in 2014, when the postal savings bank became eventful. According to the announcement of PSBC in January 2018, in October 2014, it invested a total of 2.2 billion yuan in four tranches in a single-fund trust plan with a subsidiary of Qiaoxing Group as the financier and Shanghai International Trust as the trustee.
As a bank born out of the postal system, in the early days of its establishment, most of the executives and employees of PSBC came from the postal system, and few financial institutions, especially those from banks. Both Li Guohua himself and the second president, Lu Jiajin, are from the postal system, and although Tao Liming has worked in BOC International Finance, he has no management experience in financial institutions.
At that time, Tao Liming once frankly said that from the professional quality of personnel, if other banks were the third and fourth field armies, then the Postal Savings Bank could not even be regarded as a "armed engineering team behind enemy lines".
In a relatively closed system, when the internal management system has not been straightened out, the financial talent is scarce, and the internal control mechanism is not perfect, it can easily become a hotbed for corruption.
Some insiders pointed out that as the first managers of the Postal Savings Bank, the successive fall of Tao Liming and Li Guohua may not be surprising. Especially at a time of strict supervision, continuous anti-corruption, and "20 years of retrospective investigation", Li Guohua's fall is just to pay for the past.
On July 19, 2018, Li Guohua tearfully bid farewell to China Post and became the general manager of China Unicom, breaking the practice of selecting senior executives of telecom companies from within the industry for more than a decade.
Although Li Guohua's transfer to China Unicom is at the same level in terms of rank, changing from chairman to general manager is a kind of "dark drop". To this end, some employees of the postal system also discuss the implications behind this adjustment on online platforms.
Some industry insiders also revealed that Li Guohua's transfer is actually a routine practice to divert the investigation.
I don't know if it's a coincidence or not, Li Guohua left office just after the inspection ended. Six days after his transfer, the inspection team gave feedback to China Post.
On the day Li Guohua left, Liu Aili, general manager and deputy secretary of the party group of China Telecom, became the new generation head of China Post.
In March 2020, Li Guohua retired after reaching the retirement line at the age of 60. At that time, some people familiar with Li Guohua were somewhat surprised that he could retire safely.
As for the specific information of Li Guohua's involvement in the case, it needs to be officially disclosed.
Now, after Li Guohua "fell from the horse", China Post also held an urgent meeting the next morning to report Li Guohua's situation, requiring cadres and employees at all levels to strictly manage themselves, their families and children, establish a good family style, and always be self-respectful, self-examination, self-vigilance, self-encouragement, prudence and prudence.
China Unicom also held a meeting and said that it is necessary to resolutely eliminate the bad influence of Li Guohua, and cadres at all levels should consciously purify their social circles, life circles, and friend circles, pay attention to the family style of tutors, and uphold public power, use power according to law, and use power honestly.
PSBC innovates and changes
Today, Li Guohua has bid farewell to China Post for more than four years, and many changes have taken place in both China Post and Postal Savings Bank. In April 2019, Zhang Jinliang from China Everbright Bank became the new chairman of PSBC.
In February 2020, Guo Xinshuang, deputy general manager of China Post, replaced Lu Jiajin (now chairman of Industrial Bank) who was transferred to Bank of Communications as the new president of PSBC, but only one year later, he was transferred to Chinese Life Group as chairman of the supervisory board.
In May 2021, Liu Jianjun from China Merchants Bank and Zhang Jinliang formed "Zhang Liu Match".
Zhang and Liu are both post-65s, both have rich experience in the management of financial institutions, have experience in many key positions, have a sense of pioneering and innovation, and are young among bank executives.
After Zhang and Liu arrived, PSBC has been catching up and is shortening the distance with its counterparts, more like the paradigm of a modern commercial bank.
On December 10, 2019, PSBC returned to A-listing, becoming the largest A-share IPO in nearly a decade. So far, the three-step reform goal of "stock reform-leading war-listing in two places" has been completed.
On August 27, 2021, the China Reserve Bank of China issued the "14th Five-Year Plan", proposing to build PSBC into a leading digital ecological bank serving rural revitalization and new-type urbanization, and to this end, it is necessary to promote the transformation of the "five modernizations" of characteristics, integration, lightness, digitalization and intensification.
Li Lu, who is known as the "Chinese version of Buffett" and the heir of Munger's mantle, has repeatedly reinvested in the Postal Savings Bank since 2020, which has attracted market attention.
Recently, the latest position filed by Li Lu's Himalaya Capital to the US SEC shows that it bought Postal Savings Bank H shares in 2021. Bought 1.006 billion shares in December 2020 and added another 268 million shares in January 2021, and has held the position so far. Based on the recent stock price of Postal Savings Bank Hong Kong stocks, Li Lu made more than 2 billion yuan in one year.
When Li Lu re-owned the Postal Savings Bank, it was at a time when the Postal Savings Bank began to renew its appearance after the change of coach. Veteran investors who invade Wall Street may have foreseen new changes in the future of PSBC. This vision is vicious enough!