The short list of buyers around the globe who can shell out ten figures to buy mutual fund shops and other asset managers may have just shrunk by one.

Wang D Citic Securities Chairman, Executive Director

Yifan Xie of the Wall Street Journal reports that Citic Securites now faces an investigation by the China Securities Regulatory Commission, on suspicion of violating securities rules. The move is a step up from several months of regulatory investigations into Citic Securities employees over suspected "insider trading connected to the government's rescue of the stock market." The paper says that general manager Cheng Boming and other Citic Securities employees have been detained by the Chinese police since August.

This summer, Citic Securities' parent, CITIC Group Corporation (the self-proclaimed "biggest conglomerate in China"), was reportedly the leader bidder to take Russell Investments off the hands of the LSE for $1.8 billion. Yet that deal collapsed this fall, allowing a private equity titan to swoop in and win the auction for two-thirds what Citic was reportedly willing to pony up.

Perhaps the Citic folks still want to get into the U.S. asset management business, and they even have an strategic alliance to help the New York-based investment bank (also an institutional asset manager, wealth manager, and private equity shop) reach into China. Yet with Boming detained, chairman Wang Dongming saying he won't stand for board reelection, and the authorities now digging into the company itself and not just its employees, its a safe bet that an American mutual fund acquisition won't be at the top of Citic's agenda for at least a little while. 

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


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