Fang Fenglei

Fang is the son of a former peasant farmer who rose to a senior administrative post in the People's Liberation Army.^[3] During the Cultural Revolution, he was sent to the Inner Mongolian countryside. He then joined the army before entering Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou.^[3]

After graduation, he was assigned a job in Henan Province's Economy and Trade Bureau, where he became close friends with Wang Qishan. Fang convinced Wang to establish China International Capital Corporation, a joint venture with Morgan Stanley, in 1995.^[4] He then held the chief executive position at the Hong Kong investment banking branch of the Bank of China and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China.^[5] In 2005, he brokered a deal that would allow the entry of Goldman Sachs into China by establishing a securities joint venture with Fang as chairman.^[6][7] In 2007, he set up Hopu Investment Management with Dominic Ho, former head of KPMG China, and former Goldman Sachs banker Richard Ong, and with help from Singapore's sovereign fund Temasek Holdings.^[3][8][9]

For his role in transactions such as China National Offshore Oil Corporation's acquisition of Unocal Corporation,^[10] and the initial public listings of China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, China Netcom, PetroChina and Sinopec, he has been called China's most well-known and politically connected investment banker.^{[by whom?][11][12][13][8]}

Fang's daughter, Anna Fang-Hamm, is a venture capitalist and the CEO of ZhenFund.^[14] She is ranked 21st on Forbes' Midas List.^[15] Fang is also the son-in-law of Chinese economist and former Chinese Academy of Social Sciences deputy director Liu Guoguang (刘国光).^[16]