How Deal-Hungry Anbang Went From Waldorf to Woe: QuickTake

When New York’s Waldorf Astoria hotel was sold for $1.95 billion in 2014, it shot the Chinese buyer --- Anbang Insurance Group Co. -- and its chairman Wu Xiaohui to international prominence. That was the first deal in a $13.4 billion acquisition spree that lifted Anbang’s profile while raising questions about its ownership and financing. Those questions only deepened after Wu was detained last year by Chinese authorities investigating the firm’s acquisitions funding, market manipulation by insurers and unspecified “economic crimes.” Now, Wu is being prosecuted and China’s insurance regulator is taking over the company.

It’s a closely held insurance and investment firm headquartered in Beijing, and a relatively young one at that. Anbang started out in 2004 as an auto, property and casualty insurer and only got into life insurance in 2010. Now, it also operates in banking, asset management and financial leasing, with what it says are assets of about $300 billion and 30,000-plus employees. In its short existence, the company expanded to become at one stage the No. 2 insurer in China in terms of life insurance premiums, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. Anbang had been mulling an initial public offering in Hong Kong before it ran into trouble.