Business | Down the slippery slope

A Chinese oil baron is reportedly detained by the authorities

The reasons for Ye Jianming’s reported detention are as mysterious as CEFC itself

Mar 8th 2018|HONG KONG

STAFF had routinely been directed to pore over their chairman’s speeches and learn from them. One which Ye Jianming, the 40-year-old founder of CEFC, delivered last autumn—“Only One Step From Midsummer to Harsh Winter”—was a historical tale meant to motivate the troops. In it he compared his firm’s swift rise to that of Hu Xueyan, a 19th-century merchant banker. Hu amassed a fortune trading in salt, tea, arms and silk through close ties to China’s imperial elites, then fell from grace and went bankrupt.

This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Down the slippery slope”