China International Capital Corporation (CICC), one of the mainland’s largest investment banks, has appointed Liang Hong as chief economist.
Liang started her new role officially on Friday and will also remain in her current position as head of research, according to the bank’s announcement.
CICC’s former chief economist Peng Wensheng resigned “because of some personal reasons,” according to a spokeswoman of CICC.
One source close to Peng told FinanceAsia he has joined rival bank Citic Securities, which is also China’s largest securities house by assets. Peng is most likely to head Citic Securities’ research business, according to the source.
However, Chinese website Sina reported that Peng will fill a teaching position at a university. Peng could not be reached for comment, while Citic Securities declined to comment on the issue.
Peng’s resignation is another important move in China's economic research community following Jun Ma’s shift from Deutsche Bank to People’s Bank of China. Ma had worked for the German bank’s research bureau for 13 years with the latest role as chief economist for Greater China and head of China and Hong Kong strategy.
Peng has worked at CICC since 2010 when his predecessor Ha Jiming left to take up a post as managing director in the investment banking department at Goldman Sachs. Prior to CICC, Peng worked for Barclays as chief economist and head of China economic research.
Meanwhile, Liang joined CICC in 2008 from Goldman where she served as chief China economist and co-head of Asian Pacific economic research since 2003. Before Goldman, she worked at the International Monetary Fund as an economist from 1998 to 2003. She obtained her PhD in economics from Georgetown University.
CICC, China’s first joint venture investment bank, founded in 1995, was the largest investment bank in the country until 2011, in terms of volume of deals underwritten. As of May, it ranked 11th during the past year, according to Dealogic data.
