HONG KONG (Reuters) -Wells Fargo has suspended all travel to China after a banker was blocked from leaving the country, a source said, bringing the U.S. bank’s operations in the world’s second-largest economy into focus.
The employee, Chenyue Mao, who was born in Shanghai and based in Atlanta, currently serves as a managing director at the U.S. commercial bank, specialising in international factoring business.
Below are the publicly available details about Wells Fargo’s business interest in China and Asia Pacific:
CHINA BANKING UNITS
* Wells Fargo’s China presence is much smaller than its Wall Street peers. The bank first set up a representative office in Beijing in 1997, which was de-registered in 2018, business registration records show.
* In 2005, the bank established a branch in Shanghai and, in 2015, another one in Beijing. The two branches employed 51 and 12 staff, respectively, as of 2024, the records show.
* These two branches draw deposits from Chinese customers, and provide loans, trade bonds and securities other than stocks, and conduct foreign exchange businesses, according to the units’ business registration.
* Unlike other large U.S. banks, Wells Fargo has not moved to establish a locally incorporated foreign-funded bank – a status that allowed foreign lenders to offer a wider range of banking businesses.
FACTORING BUSINESS
* Mao, a trade financing executive at Wells Fargo, has been with the bank for 12 years, according to her LinkedIn profile. She was elected chairwoman at FCI two weeks ago, a global organisation for factoring and financing for domestic and international trade.
* Mao spearheads Wells Fargo’s international factoring business, a financing method where companies sell their receivables to third parties, such as banks, in exchange for immediate cash, and advises multinational clients on cross-border working-capital strategies, according to an FCI release.
* She has spent more than 21 years in factoring, including over a decade guiding Wells Fargo’s global franchise. Mao has grown annual import-factoring flows to 2.6 billion euros ($3.02 billion), the release reads.
* Apart from banking, Wells Fargo’s commercial distribution finance arm established a factoring company in Beijing’s neighbouring city Tianjin in 2012, according to business records. The unit has a branch office in Shanghai that houses 34 staff.
* Factoring businesses, a niche sector that thrives on the rising demand from small- and medium-sized enterprises for financing, are supervised by China’s banking regulator, according to a report from official industry body Commercial Factoring Expertise Committee in China.
WELLS FARGO IN ASIA PACIFIC
* The bank has two main Asia Pacific hubs in Hong Kong and Singapore, according to its website. Other regional offices including Seoul, Taipei, and Tokyo, in addition to in-country relationship management teams outside of these cities.
* Its Hong Kong branch, which supports the bank’s customers in Asia, recorded HK$42 million ($5.35 million) in profit after tax in 2024, down 22% from the previous year, financial disclosures in April showed.
($1 = 0.8602 euros)
($1 = 7.8488 Hong Kong dollars)
(Reporting by Hong Kong Newsroom; Editing by Sumeet Chatterjee and Rachna Uppal)
