Chinese billionaire Guo reappears at Fosun meeting

Chinese billionaire Guo Guangchang, the celebrated boss of investment colossus Fosun, made a short appearance at a company meeting in Shanghai after being reported missing last Thursday.

Guo, who is known as the 'Warren Buffett of China', was reported by Fosun to have been assisting "certain investigations", with the company's president confirming to reporters that this was "mostly about his personal affairs", rather than focused on the company.

According to Chinese finance publisher Caixin, Guo gave a 10-minute speech and received a standing ovation but did not touch on his disappearance, having reportedly been whisked away by police at a Shanghai airport after a flight from Hong Kong.

Guo did not remain at the event until its conclusion, according to sources cited by the Wall Street Journal, and his whereabouts were again reported to be unknown afterwards.

Investors were concerned about the impact on Fosun, whose increasing activity in the west in 2015 included the takeover of Club Med, a major investment in Thomas Cook and other sizeable investments in the US, with the shares losing more than 13% on Monday.

His temporary vanishing was widely linked to several other disappearances of China's high profile brokers in recent months as the country's securities regulator investigates "malicious" short-selling, market manipulation, insider trading and other supposed causes of the summer’s stock market extreme volatility.

On 6 December, China’s largest broker and a recent investor in Manchester City FC, Citic Securities, revealed it was “not able to get in touch” with two top brokers, citing local media reports that the two “were suspected of being requested to assist in an investigation”.