Update | China detains CEFC’s founder Ye Jianming, wiping out US$153 million in value off stocks

From obscurity, Ye Jianming built a business empire with 263 billion yuan in sales before he turned 40, and began shopping for energy assets around the world, mostly funded by China’s state banks

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CEFC's founder Ye Jianming. Photo: SCMP/Handout

Published: 2:30pm, 1 Mar 2018Updated: 11:42pm, 1 Mar 2018

Ye Jianming, the Fujian entrepreneur who took fewer than five years to rise from obscurity to become head of China’s fourth-largest oil conglomerate, has been detained for questioning, according to four sources familiar with the matter.

Ye, ranked two spots ahead of French president Emmanuel Macron in Fortune magazine’s ‘40 Under 40’ list of the world’s most influential young people in 2016, was detained just before the start of the Lunar New Year celebrations on February 16, a source told the South China Morning Post, declining to provide his name for disclosing a matter under investigation.

Caixin magazine earlier reported that Ye had been taken away for questioning, but the Chinese-language version of the story appeared to have been removed from its website, although the English version remains.

Entrance of the China Energy Fund Committee office at the Convention Plaza Office Tower in Wan Chai on 21 November 2017. Photo: SCMP/Sam Tsang

Shares of three companies linked to Ye’s flagship company CEFC China Energy plunged on stock exchanges in Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Singapore, wiping out as much as 4 billion yuan (US$630 million) in combined market value within an hour of trading. The stocks rose later in the day to pare back losses.

A CEFC spokesman in Shanghai responded by text that the company “has nothing to announce for the time being,” declining to elaborate.