Huawei’s Arrested CFO Rose Through Ranks Despite Father's Rebuke
- Wanzhou Meng is among company’s most important executives
- Succession questions continue despite her rising prominence
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Wanzhou Meng isn’t just any C-suite executive. As the daughter of Huawei Technologies Co. founder Ren Zhengfei and a possible heir to his company, her arrest in Canada raises the stakes in an already complicated standoff between the U.S. and China.
The chief financial officer in her mid-40s was born to Ren, an army engineer, and Meng Jun, the daughter of a senior Sichuan government official. In 1987, her father started Huawei, and over the next three decades it would expand to become China’s biggest maker of smartphones and telecommunications equipment. Meng and Ren had two children: Wanzhou and her younger brother Ren Ping.