Hengfeng Bank, the head of the big fight

Produced by | Finance and Banking Society

Article | Jia Ru

Edit | He Bi

In 1987, undoubtedly an innovative year in the history of mainland banks, in October, Yantai Housing Savings Bank, the first housing savings bank in mainland China, was officially established.

The Housing Savings Bank can be said to have been born in response to the housing reform, because the mainland has long practiced a low-rent, supply-based welfare housing system, and with the deepening of the reform of the economic system, the drawbacks of the welfare housing system have become increasingly apparent. On the one hand, the State finances are overwhelmed, and on the other hand, the housing needs of individuals are not being met.

In the mid-80s, the State Council issued a series of housing reform plans one after another, and with the deepening of housing reform, it objectively required the establishment of supporting financial institutions for housing reform services to promote the process of housing commercialization.

According to the original design, the establishment of the Housing Savings Bank has the dual pilot nature of promoting housing reform and financial system reform. However, there are only two regional housing banks in the mainland, Bengbu and Yantai, which are not yet able to form a scale effect.

Although it has achieved good results in absorbing housing funds to actively engage in real estate development and support housing consumption, it has played a very limited role. At the same time, due to the lack of national housing financial institutions, it is impossible to diversify and broaden financing channels, which also affects the further development of housing banks to a certain extent.

In 2003, standing on the threshold of housing reform, the housing savings bank also had to change, in order to better adapt to the development of the times, Yantai Housing Savings Bank officially withdrew from the historical stage, renamed Hengfeng Bank, becoming China's 11th joint-stock commercial bank, and the only national bank headquartered in prefecture-level cities at this time.

At that time, Hengfeng Bank was undoubtedly a leading player in the banking industry, and its strength was enough to compete with giants such as CITIC, China Merchants, Huaxia, and Pudong Development.

1

The legend of Jiang Xiyun

As the former vice president of Yantai Housing and Savings Bank, Jiang Xiyun also naturally became the first chairman of Hengfeng Bank.

As the first captain of the territory, Jiang Xiyun reigned for a total of 10 years, during which Hengfeng Bank never hired a president, and this place naturally became Jiang Xiyun's hall.

In ten years, Hengfeng Bank has grown from 17.5 billion total assets at the beginning of the restructuring to 700 billion yuan, reaching 772.2 billion yuan, an increase of 44 times in 10 years.

In 2013, with the retirement of Jiang Xiyun, his brilliant achievements during his tenure also came to naught, and on a Friday in the early winter of that year, Jiang Xiyun, who was on a business trip in Henan, was recalled to Yantai overnight by the Organization Department of the Municipal Party Committee.

The next day, the Yantai Municipal Party Committee held a standing committee meeting and announced that he would be removed from the post of party secretary of Hengfeng Bank and replaced by Cai Guohua, then vice mayor of Yantai City. After that, several people went to the leadership meeting of Hengfeng Bank to announce that Jiang Xiyun would hand over the work of the party committee immediately after the meeting, and the work of the board of directors would be handed over in accordance with the procedures.

In October 2014, with the outbreak of Hengfeng Bank's "4 billion just exchange" incident, Jiang Xiyun was immediately investigated.

With the disclosure of the case five years later, we also learned that Jiang Xiyun had a total of four crimes during his tenure:

First, embezzlement is equivalent to 754 million yuan;

second, accepting bribes equivalent to 60.37 million yuan;

third, illegal guarantees, resulting in a loss of 3.956 billion yuan;

Fourth, the deliberate destruction of accounting books, involving 658 million yuan.

In the end, Jiang Xiyun was also sentenced to death, with a two-year reprieve, and life imprisonment without commutation or parole.

According to relevant media investigations, the whistleblower of the "4 billion just cash" incident is Jiang Xiyun's successor Cai Guohua.

Jiang Xiyun, the first chairman of Hengfeng Bank's brawl, also ushered in his own reprieve of death.

2

Cai Guohua, president of the 10 billion bank

In the spring of 1965, Cai Guohua was born in Yangxin, Shandong, and knew that his family was poor when he was a child. In order to get out of this fate, he has studied very hard since he was a child, and his grades are excellent.

Originally, relying on his excellent grades, he could easily be admitted to a high school, but the tuition fees in the notice payment slip were simply overwhelming for Cai Guohua's family at that time, and in the end he could only choose to go to a technical school.

After entering the technical school, Cai Guohua was not decadent due to changes in the environment. However, during my studies, I gradually liked to study medicine. After graduation, with his excellent performance in school and excellent grades, he entered the town hospital in Yangxin Town.

In 2004, it was a turning point in his life, with his outstanding personal ability, he was officially appointed as the deputy secretary of the Zhanhua County Party Committee and the county magistrate after several years of work. In just three years, he was promoted from the head of a county to the deputy mayor of Yantai City.

After taking over Hengfeng Bank in 2013, Cai Guohua changed his previous habit of not hiring a president, and chose Luan Yongtai, the former chief general, to be promoted from vice president to president of Hengfeng Bank.

At that time, Cai Guohua's three sentences were widely known: "loyal to Hengfeng, loyal to me, whether there is my mobile phone number".

After Cai Guohua took office, he formulated the "Hengfeng Bank Core Employee Remuneration Management Measures", but anyone who knows a little about the law should know that these rules should be discussed and decided by the general meeting of shareholders.

As Cai Guohua's ambitions swelled step by step, he began to pay 313 million yuan in compensation to himself, directors Luan Yongtai, Bi Jifan and Chairman of the Board of Supervisors Song Hengji through multiple accounts of Shanghai Yanyi Investment Management Co., Ltd.

It's not so much about giving out salaries, it's about everyone sharing the spoils together and using money to gag other people's mouths.

It is said that during Cai Guohua's tenure, the average daily reimbursement cost was as high as about 400,000 yuan.

However, with the appearance of a whistleblower letter, the secret of the executives' private division of public funds was also exposed, and the angry Cai Guohua naturally would not let go of the anonymous whistleblower, looking at the entire team, Jiang Xiyun's old subordinate Luan Yongtai became a thorn in his side.

At that time, Cai Guohua calmed down the pressure of public opinion and signed a contract of 10 million yuan with a newspaper to delete the draft of the report.

At the same time, Luan Yongtai, who was a thorn in the flesh in the eye, even received a life-threatening warning text message for reporting the incident: "You are unkind, don't blame Lao Tzu for being unjust." Kill you. ”

Soon after, Hengfeng Bank issued the "Transmission of the Spirit of the Head Office Meeting" internally, calling on 10,000 employees of the bank to sign a unified signature to expose and report Luan Yongtai for violating the law.

"The illegal behavior of the gang headed by Luan Yongtai has seriously affected the development process of our bank and hindered the growth of our bank's assets of nearly 300 billion yuan. The whole bank should unify its thinking, and let its 11,000 employees work together to take the initiative to expose and report the criminal and illegal acts of the former president Luan Yongtai. The new leadership team headed by Chairman Cai Guohua focused on seeking benefits for all employees of the bank, but due to the illegal acts of Luan Yongtai's gang, it was forced to suspend and had to implement a salary reduction plan of 50%, which seriously affected the income of our employees, which was blamed on Luan Yongtai's gang. ”

On one side is the "Luan Yongtai Gang", on the other side is the "Cai Guohua Leadership Team", and the position of Hengfeng's senior officials is already Sima Zhao's heart, and everyone knows it.

In August 2015, Luan Yongtai was forced to retire, and Jiang Xiyun's faction of veterans lost all the battles for Hengfeng Bank.

Subsequently, at the recommendation of Hong Qi, chairman of Minsheng Bank, Hengfeng Bank hired Lin Zhihong, the former president of the Hong Kong branch of Minsheng Bank, to replace Luan Yongtai as the president of Hengfeng Bank.

At that time, Cai Guohua did not expect that Lin Zhihong would become his next stumbling block.

With the inauguration of Lin Zhihong, a large number of senior executives of Minsheng Bank were also brought to Hengfeng Bank to cooperate with Lin Zhihong's work.

finally sent Luan Yongtai away, and halfway through the killing, he wanted to pick peaches, Cai Guohua was naturally unwilling, so he began to sharpen his knife Huohuo, which was bound to drive Lin Zhihong away.

On December 9, 2016, Hengfeng Bank announced that it would dismiss Lin Zhihong as president, and Lin Zhihong's secretary Gao Jing told the media that Lin Zhihong was completely unaware of his dismissal and had not received any notice.

On the day of his dismissal, Lin Zhihong was blocked in his office for 12 hours and could not leave, and Gao Jing herself was taken to the police station for investigation on suspicion of theft.

It is really a bit dramatic that the president of a national head office was locked up in his president's office for more than 10 hours, and was even removed from office without knowing it.

What's even more dramatic is that on the day that Lin Zhihong was supervised, another article appeared on the Internet about the failure of Dong's hunt for Hang Seng Bank, a "barbarian" of the people's livelihood department, claiming that Dong Wenbiao intended to use the export of executives to Hengfeng Bank to control the bank.

With the dismissal of Lin Zhihong, those subordinates of the Minsheng Department were also scattered and lost in this big chaos.

3

The edifice will fall

Cai Guohua, who won again in the big brawl, still lives a luxurious life, no matter where he goes, he will ask his secretary to bring the tools for cooking sea cucumbers and eat them every day. Several times he rented a Falcon 7X business jet with public funds, and even closed his stores abroad to sweep goods.

Even because of the loan, he directly asked Lu Jianzhong, chairman of the board of directors of Tang West Market, for a villa on the Peak of Victoria Peak in Hong Kong, worth 474 million yuan. It is important to know that Tang West Market is the second largest shareholder of Bank of Xi'an, another city commercial bank.

On the other side, Luan Yongtai did not sink after he was forced to retire, but chose to report all the reporting materials to the Commission for Discipline Inspection in real name, which was also seen as a way to burn jade.

At the same time that Cai Guohua was engaged in a luxurious life, the Commission for Discipline Inspection was also stepping up to collect evidence of his crimes, but he was unaware of it, and he still did not enjoy life without Jiuchi Meat Forest.

On November 6, 2017, on this day, Cai Guohua was still sitting in his palatial office drinking fine tea, when a group of people in suits and leather shoes suddenly walked into his door, until he was taken away, Cai Guohua did not figure out where he leaked from.

At first, Cai Guohua still had a fluke mentality, thinking that there was a possibility of overturning the case, so he submitted an application for second-instance trial. Who would have thought that Luan Yongtai would come forward and put forward more incriminating evidence to directly bring Cai Guohua down.

On August 27, 2021, the Shandong High People's Court ruled that Cai Guohua should be sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve and life imprisonment.

Four years after his fall, Cai Guohua, who was involved in the 10.3 billion yuan case, finally followed in the footsteps of his predecessor Jiang Xiyun's death.

The veteran faction was defeated, the people's livelihood department was out, and the Yantai gang was defeated......

After the death of two chairmen, and the death threats of the two presidents or the custody of the office, the 15-year battle for Hengfeng Bank has finally come to an end.

The two chairmen were imprisoned, the building was about to collapse, and in order to save Hengfeng Bank, the only way to do so was to introduce strategic investors.

In the subsequent strategic investment of 100 billion yuan, Central Huijin invested 60 billion yuan in shares, Shandong Finance invested 36 billion yuan, and 8 old shareholders including United Overseas Bank and Nanshan Group invested a total of 4 billion yuan.

After the end of the capital increase, the registered capital of Hengfeng Bank is also as high as 111.209 billion, second only to the four major banks, higher than the Postal Savings Bank, and afraid of the fifth.

At the same time, Hengfeng Bank also ended the situation of Yantai, Shanghai and Beijing, and officially settled the head office in Jinan.