聲明：本平臺部分文章系編輯轉載（有刪節），文章內容並不代表本公眾平臺贊同其觀點和對其真實性負責。
FEW LIFE stories are as soap-operatic as Lai XM's. The fallen state financier dallied with more than 100 mistresses, according to Chinese media. He was subsequently caught with three tonnes of cash in one of his dozens of homes. The sheer scale of his thievery-1.8bn yuan ($279m) in kickbacks, the largest bribery case since the founding of the CHN in 1949—justified the death penalty, a judge opined. In a tragic denouement, Mr Lai was executed on January 29th.
The moneyman's most serious of-fense—and the one that ultimately cost him everything—may have been some-thing else. Under Mr lai's control, H* Asset Management, a state-run financial group, became the lender of last resort to China's riskiest corporate borrowers. When state banks said "no" to loans, H* said "no problem". Its lending helped private conglomerates get around capital controls and scoop up assets overseas. This enabled some of them to enlarge their bal-ance-sheets—occasionally to breaking point. These strains put the broader finan-cial system at risk. And that perturbed him, who prizes stability—including the financial sort—above all else.
The latest example came within hours of Mr Lai's execution. HNA Group, a sprawl-ing conglomerate with interests in air-lines, finance, logistics, property, tourism and much else besides, said that its credi-tors had applied to a local court to initiate bankruptcy and restructuring proceedings. H* was among the groups seeking to claw back lost loans from the bank-rupt concern.
HNA became known for amassing more than $80bn in debts and large stakes in Hil-ton, a large American hotel operator, and Deutsche Bank. But in recent years it often found itself short of cash. In 2019 it was in effect taken over by a state-backed management team, installed to stop the rot infect-ing the rest of the financial system. To make matters worse, disclosures made public on January 30th by HNA'S listed un-its, such as Hainan Airlines Holding, revealed that an internal investigation had found that some existing shareholders and associates had misused around $10bn of company money.
HNA'S demise, like Mr Lai's, marks the end of an era for China Inc's overseas ambitions. The conglomerate's rise to prominence began in 2015, when it paid $7.6bn for Avalon, an Irish aircraft leasing business. Such transactions fuelled a boom in outbound Chinese mergers and acquisitions. In 2016 Chinese firms splurged $218bn on foreign deals, more than twice as much as the year before, according to Dea-logic, a data-provider.
Some purchases looked strategically sound—for instance ChemChina's $43bn acquisition of Syngenta, a Swiss chemicals firm. Less disciplined buyers picked up trophy assets, such as the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York (bought by Anbang, which started out in insurance) and Club Med (purchased by Fosun, another unwieldy holding company).
The globetrotting bonanza was short-lived (see chart). By 2018 Chinese authorities had grown wary of the domestic financial repercussions of reckless overseas ad-ventures. At the same time, officials in America and Europe began to fret about the national-security implications of some Chinese investments.
In April 2018 Mr Lai was detained by the Chinese authorities. Three months later "INA'S co-chairman, Wang Jian, fell to his death in the French countryside. The incident was deemed an accident by local police. After that his group began to sell assets. Earlier that year the chairman of CEFC Energy, a conglomerate with interests in oil and finance and another of H*'s clients, was also detained, after attempting to buy a $9bn stake in Rosneft, Russia's state-controlled oil giant. Chinese regulators were forced to take over Anbang. After more than two years they are still trying to offload its blingy assets, many of which have lost their sheen.
Not all of the era's acquisitions were duds. Volvo, an iconic Swedish marque, seems to have thrived under Geely, a Chinese carmaking giant which bought it in 2010. In 2016 Midea, a white-goods manufacturer, bought Kuka, a German robot-maker, for $513n and absorbed its valuable know-how. ChemChina appears to be a de-cent custodian of Syngenta. On February 2nd Alibaba reported 37% year-on-year growth in revenues for its international retail business; this, China's e-commerce titan said, was mainly thanks to the strong performance of Lazada, a Singapore-based online-shopping platform it snapped up five years ago, and of Trendyol, a Turkish retail group in which it purchased a large stake in 2018.
These quiet success stories are, however, overshadowed by spectacular failures like that of HNA. They may be the last winners for a while, at least in the West. In 2020 Chinese firms spent just $32bn on foreign acquisitions, the lowest figure since 2007. ■