Guoshou Anbao's CEO change sparks a precious-metals take: the halo is gone
Image source: Visual China
Blue Whale News, June 29 (Reporter Qi Hezhong) - The CEO at insurer-affiliated fund company Guoshou Anbao has changed.
On June 23, the company announced that CEO E Hua had stepped down due to work arrangements, and Liu Zhongjiang was appointed CEO. Liu previously served as general manager of the direct investment division and the fixed-income investment division at its controlling shareholder, China Life.
E Hua, who has now left the CEO role, served as the company's CEO from January 2023 for three years and five months. Before becoming CEO of Guoshou Anbao, he was the general manager of China Life's equity investment department.
On the company's homepage, the slogan reads: "Stay true to our original mission for 12 years, repay every trust." However, the company's actual operating performance over the past three years and more has been far from ideal. As of the end of Q1 this year, its non-money-market fund assets totaled RMB 181.8 billion, ranking 30th in the industry. But the fund mix is dominated by bond funds, with equity funds making up only a small share. Stock funds were about RMB 10 billion and mixed funds about RMB 5.6 billion.
As the former head of China Life's equity department, E Hua saw the overall scale of Guoshou Anbao's equity funds not rise, but fall, during his three years and five months as CEO. Mixed funds fell by as much as 50%.
During E Hua's tenure, Guoshou Anbao's equity funds underperformed both in performance and scale, and the company repeatedly exposed major internal-control flaws.
In August 2025, a Tianjin CSRC administrative penalty document showed that fund manager Li Dan was punished for insider trading.
Earlier, in December 2023, a Beijing CSRC administrative penalty document showed that Hu Wenbiao, then general manager of the company's segregated account investment department, was fined for illegal stock trading and manipulating the securities market.
Despite these problems, E Hua's return to the controlling shareholder and further promotion into the leadership team was not affected. It is said that in Guoshou Anbao's day-to-day work, endless meetings and paperwork are a serious issue. In the company's assessment system, the requirement to make money for holders was not given the position it should have had, which deviates significantly from the CSRC's requirements for high-quality development.
Over the past three years and more, the controlling shareholder has sent many people to the company, occupying important positions, while the hard and tiring work has still mostly been recruited from the market. This has greatly reduced the company's market-oriented nature and severely weakened its investment research and sales capabilities.
Before 2023, Guoshou Anbao was not like this. Back then, the company was still fairly market-oriented. Its first CEO, Zuo Jiqing, was relatively willing to stick to principles and safeguard corporate governance.
From scale and performance to the reality of management changes
Guoshou Anbao was founded in October 2013 by Zuo Jiqing, then general manager of the fixed-income department at China Life Asset Company, together with Shen Mengyu, then deputy general manager of the risk management and compliance department who was acting in charge, and others.
After its founding, it took the company 10 years to grow from nothing into a medium-sized fund company. By the end of 2022, its non-money-market fund size had reached RMB 128.5 billion, ranking 31st in the industry. Stock funds were about RMB 7.6 billion and mixed funds about RMB 12.8 billion.
At that time, the company had a strong demand for professionalism, and its management team mainly came from market-based hiring, giving it strong competitiveness.
However, after the company expanded its assets, some people at the controlling shareholder began eyeing important company posts and wanted them filled by nomination. Zuo Jiqing was unwilling to cooperate with such unreasonable demands and was under great pressure for a period of time.
In January 2023, company CEO Zuo Jiqing, chief inspector Shen Mengyu and fixed-income investment director Dong Ruiqian all left for "personal reasons." After Changning State-owned Assets took over Chunhou Fund, in January 2026 Zuo Jiqing and Shen Mengyu became CEO and deputy CEO of Chunhou Fund respectively.
The halo shattered: from "Zhuangzi dreaming of a butterfly" to real-world reflection
Over the past three years and more, the halo around Guoshou Anbao has shattered everywhere. E Hua and others fulfilled their butterfly dream, while pioneers such as Zuo Jiqing and Shen Mengyu went through a phoenix-like rebirth.
In the story of Zhuangzi dreaming of a butterfly, Zhuangzi dreams he has turned into a butterfly, and it feels wonderful. When he wakes up, he finds he is clearly Zhuangzi again. Zhuangzi became a great sage because, after waking, he could clearly know he was Zhuangzi, while the wings he flew with in the dream came borrowed from the butterfly.
In real life, however, some people cannot tell fantasy from reality. Some state-owned enterprise managers work in firms for many years yet still cannot transform into qualified business operators. They stay in a butterfly dream for too long, wishing to remain drunk and never wake up.
We sincerely hope Guoshou Anbao will carefully study and understand the essence of "development is the hard truth," focus on running the company, and let operating results speak. It should not sink into the mire of formalism, talking a lot and doing little. The company should quickly return to a market-oriented and international path, abandon formalism, and avoid going backward by fooling superiors and deceiving subordinates, thereby wasting precious development opportunities. The management team must truly put its mind to work so that the state capital invested by the controlling shareholder is preserved and increased in value and holders can obtain solid returns.
