Anbang push to help Chinese entrepreneurs start up overseas

By Yuan Yang in Boao

Anbang Insurance, the company that has helped Chinese purchases of foreign companies to surge to record levels, has a "Million Euros Plan" to send Chinese abroad to start up even more.

"We have 300m migrants from rural areas, half a billion people left on farms," the company's chairman Wu Xiaohui said on Sunday as he detailed his plan to offer seed funding to entrepreneurs. "What about if we moved some of them to Canada rather than Beijing?"

"So long as you're Chinese and meet three conditions - no drugs, no gambling, no bad record - in principle we've got funds to lend," he added in comments to delegates of China's Davos-style Boao Forum for Asia in Hainan.

The Anbang leader is a media-shy billionaire who married into the Chinese political elite - his wife is the granddaughter of Deng Xiaoping, the architect of modern China. But he has been courting American's too, holding talks with Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner soon after the presidential election.

Mr Wu's fundraising prowess led Anbang to make a $14bn all-cash offer for Starwood Hotels last year. Yet the investors backing his company remain as opaque as the man himself. Mr Wu has never given a media interview, according to Anbang.

At Boao he seemed unfazed by the Chinese government's recent crackdown on outbound investment and insurance companies, and announced that partnerships with foreign companies would be the new trend in the country's overseas business ventures.

"When we go abroad we're no longer using our own money," said Mr Wu, describing his partnerships with foreign investors.

"We have a few asset management companies and many pension funds - similar to the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board - they have trade union money and they entrust international companies like us to manage their assets," Mr Wu added.

Although the company has not yet officially launched the "Million Euros Plan", state media reported that Mr had already funded 10 such entrepreneurs.

At the China Development Forum in Beijing last weekend, he singled out Europe as having "very cheap assets" and being a good target for Chinese investors.

For the Million Euros Plan Mr Wu held up the example of a Chinese immigrant from Sichuan in his early twenties who had bought a restaurant in Washington as the kind of entrepreneur he would like to back.

"The world's Chinatowns are in such a bad state," he said. "Can't we take the opportunity to improve them?"

Anbang said more details of the Million Euros Plan would come once partnerships with the international banks taking part in the scheme were finalised.