Big Money Gets On China's Lifeboats

After a $1 trillion river of capital flowed out of China during 2015, the government has been working furiously to avert a flood.

There was a clampdown on offshore purchases of insurance policies, and restrictions on currency trading by branches of overseas banks and withdrawals using UnionPay cards. Beijing is even thrashing out plans for a Tobin tax on foreign-exchange trading, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

While the nation has been pulling up the drawbridge for retail money flowing out, things look rather different at the top end of town.

ChemChina made a $43 billion bid for the Swiss agritech company Syngenta last year, without waiting for its $8.4 billion offer for tiremaker Pirelli to complete, and then threw in the $1 billion purchase of Germany's KraussMaffei in January. That month, Haier paid $5.4 billion for General Electric's appliances unit, more than $2 billion above what Electrolux was prepared to pay before its bid was blocked by the U.S. Justice Department.

Now the hitherto low-profile Anbang Insurance Group is turning itself into a global hotels brand. Fresh from buying New York's Waldorf-Astoria from Blackstone Group last year, it agreed to pay the same seller $6.5 billion for the Strategic Hotels luxury chain, according to people familiar with the matter, and muscled in on Marriott's attempt to take over the Starwood group with a $12.8 billion counter-offer.