Watchdog probes ex-ChemChina chair

China's anti-graft watchdog said it was investigating Ren Jianxin, the former chairman of state-owned giant China National Chemical Corp or ChemChina for violations of discipline and law, along with another former company official.

Dubbed an industrialist turned dealmaker, Ren, 66, served as ChemChina's chairman and party secretary from December 2014 to 2018, and was the official behind ChemChina's US$43 billion (HK$336 billion) bid to buy Syngenta in 2017.

The investigations come after Swiss seeds and pesticides group Syngenta withdrew in March its bid for a long-delayed US$9 billion IPO in Shanghai, which would have been China's largest, and one of the world's biggest, flotations this year.

The graft watchdog added that Yang Xingqiang, a former general manager of ChemChina, was also being investigated.