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【Introduction】Interview with Qian Wenhui, Secretary of the Party Committee and Chairman of Zheshang Securities: Breaking new ground and forging ahead to become a first-class firm—answering the questions of the era with the “Zheshang Model”

China Fund News Reporter Sun Yue

【Editor’s Note】The Central Financial Work Conference set its sights on the grand blueprint of “Financial Powerhouse,” with the new “Guidelines No. 9” outlining the roadmap to cultivate “top-tier investment banks and investment institutions,” injecting strong momentum into high-quality capital market development. Standing at a critical juncture at the start of the 14th Five-Year Plan, how to leverage regional advantages, develop solid “five big articles” in finance, and empower the real economy’s “capillaries” and “seeds of innovation” through specialized services has become a key question for securities firms.

Zhejiang, the fertile land nurturing the “Four Thousand Spirit,” gathers leading manufacturing champions, specialized and innovative “Little Giants,” and tech innovation benchmarks like Hangzhou’s “Six Little Dragons,” with vibrant private sector vitality and continuous innovation momentum. As a state-owned listed securities firm in Zhejiang, Zheshang Securities has embedded the “Zheshang gene” into its bloodline since its founding, with the strategic mission of “deeply cultivating Zhejiang, serving Zhejiang entrepreneurs, and expanding nationwide,” forging ahead in serving local economy, empowering technological innovation, and contributing to common prosperity.

This exclusive interview with Qian Wenhui, Secretary of the Party Committee and Chairman of Zheshang Securities, aims to explore how this vibrant local securities firm activates regional advantages through flexible mechanisms, enhances service efficiency via digital transformation, and builds differentiated competitiveness in supporting private enterprises, fostering innovation, and practicing inclusive finance—contributing “Zheshang wisdom” and “securities strength” to the construction of a strong financial nation in the new era.

By 2026, the first year of the 14th Five-Year Plan, China’s capital market will face unprecedented reshaping. For Zheshang Securities, which recently completed the strategic acquisition of Guodu Securities, this year is not only a key milestone for integration but also a crucial year for advancing toward a medium-large securities firm.

Looking back over more than twenty years of development, Zheshang Securities started as a regional firm. Relying on reform-driven courage, cultural core, innovative thinking, and institutional mechanisms, it has carved out a unique “merger breakthrough” path—from acquiring Tianshi Futures and Guokai Securities’ nine branches to completing the historic acquisition of Guodu Securities, with the company’s scale increasing over 80 times, successfully establishing a “dual-core” national map driven by the Yangtze River Delta and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei regions.

Looking ahead to the “14th Five-Year Plan,” Qian Wenhui provided a clear blueprint: “Zheshang Securities will continue to base itself in Zhejiang, radiate across the country, with the strategic goal of creating another medium-sized securities firm, striving to rank among the top 15 in core indicators, and building a nationwide comprehensive securities firm matching Zhejiang’s economic status.”

Zheshang Securities Secretary of the Party Committee and Chairman Qian Wenhui

The Core of a First-Class Investment Bank Is the “Buy-Side” Transformation

Becoming a first-class investment bank is a vital task assigned to the securities industry in the new era. How to understand the core connotation of a first-class investment bank? Qian Wenhui has a profound understanding: a first-class investment bank is not merely about scale expansion but a comprehensive system integrating national strategic missions, business model restructuring, and specific quantitative indicators.

“Traditional investment banks relying on license dividends and channel services can no longer meet the development needs of the new capital market,” he states plainly. The core of a first-class investment bank lies in the “buy-side” transformation—shifting from a simple transaction channel to an asset manager and industry partner capable of creating long-term value for clients.

In Qian Wenhui’s view, the key to this “buy-side” transformation is first breaking down internal business barriers and deepening the “investment banking + investment + research” synergy model. This means securities firms should not limit themselves to earning commissions but should foster long-term growth for enterprises through investment incubation and research empowerment, accompanying companies through their entire lifecycle from startup to maturity, aligning interests with clients; second, upgrading service models from single financing to comprehensive financial solutions covering equity, debt, M&A, and market value management.

As a state-owned financial enterprise, he emphasizes that “serving the country through finance” is the primary standard for building a first-class investment bank. The development of securities firms must deeply integrate into national development strategies, embedding service to the real economy and national strategies throughout business operations. In practice, Zheshang Securities focuses on the “Five Big Articles”: financial technology, green finance, inclusive finance, pension finance, and digital finance; aligning precisely with major national strategies. It also concentrates on cultivating new productive forces, especially in specialized and innovative enterprises and cutting-edge tech fields, not only helping companies go public but also promoting industrial upgrading and M&A through capital operations.

Regarding the definition of “first-class,” Qian Wenhui states that Zheshang Securities has clear industry benchmarks and quantitative indicators: “A first-class investment bank must be among the industry leaders. Our goal is to be one of the ‘10+3’ top securities firms, achieving comprehensive entry into the top 15 in total assets, net assets, revenue, and net profit by the end of the ‘14th Five-Year Plan,’ with capital strength matching Zhejiang’s economic standing.”

Based on the “14th Five-Year” strategic vision, Zheshang Securities has a concrete image of first-class investment bank development: building full asset allocation capabilities across stocks, bonds, futures, foreign exchange, commodities, and securitized assets; establishing a full-cycle service system that can generate steady returns through market ups and downs and meet different enterprise stages; expanding nationwide, breaking regional limitations, and creating a nationwide service network. Meanwhile, driven by digital intelligence, it deepens AI and big data applications in risk control, research, and operations to solidify a stable foundation.

Mergers and acquisitions are not just “buying” but also “integrating”

The “Matthew Effect” in the securities industry continues to intensify, and M&A restructuring has become a key word for optimizing industry structure. In 2025, Zheshang Securities completed a significant move—becoming the controlling shareholder of Guodu Securities.

This nearly two-year, 5.185 billion yuan market-based acquisition is regarded as the first autonomous market-driven M&A case initiated after the Central Financial Work Conference. For Qian Wenhui, M&A is not just “buying” but also “merging.” The core success lies in avoiding reckless speed and instead implementing a “capital intervention—governance output—business integration” three-step strategy to ensure smooth transition, fusion, and overall enhancement.

He explains that at the capital level, Zheshang Securities adopted a combination of “agreement transfer + public bidding + secondary market” to acquire and optimize costs step by step, reducing the risk of large upfront capital outlay and leaving room for mutual adaptation. Mechanically, after equity transfer, Zheshang Securities did not immediately adjust operations but first integrated governance—by exporting core management teams and injecting mature market-oriented governance, risk control, and assessment systems into Guodu Securities. On risk control, it strictly complies with regulatory requirements, maintaining Guodu Securities’ independent operation during initial integration, with a clear one-year timetable for full consolidation, avoiding “consolidation without chaos,” effectively preventing compliance risks and business volatility.

Regarding the “sample” value of this case for the industry, Qian Wenhui summarizes four dimensions:

1. Breaking regional barriers—“North-South Collaboration”: Zheshang Securities deep in the Yangtze River Delta, Guodu Securities rooted in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, achieving a “dual-core” drive of the Yangtze River Delta and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, serving local tech startups and state-owned enterprise reforms, exploring a path for nationwide expansion through M&A.

2. Resource complementarity—“full business chain” empowerment: leveraging Zheshang Securities’ strengths in wealth management, futures, derivatives, etc., to address Guodu Securities’ gaps in mutual funds and comprehensive financial services, promoting transformation from single brokerage to integrated financial services through “investment banking + investment + research.”

3. Integration of state-owned enterprise governance and market mechanisms: as a state-backed securities firm, Zheshang Securities introduced a “dual-entry, cross-positioning” party-building model, while retaining Guodu Securities’ market-oriented operation, exploring a hybrid ownership governance model of “Party-building + market operation.”

4. Patience in cross-cycle capital integration: from initiation in 2023 to substantial control in 2025, enduring market fluctuations, Zheshang Securities regards M&A as a long-term value investment, maintaining strategic resolve to navigate environmental uncertainties.

“The essence of the ‘Zheshang Model’ is: using strategic planning as a blueprint, governance output as the core, north-south collaboration as the breakthrough, and mechanism integration as the safeguard,” says Qian Wenhui. This model demonstrates that, amid rising industry concentration, through market-oriented, gradual, and deep integration, medium-sized securities firms can break through ceilings and advance toward “top-tier large investment banks.”

Leading with Practical Action and Flexible Breakthroughs

As a local securities firm rooted in Zhejiang, Zheshang Securities inherits and promotes the new era’s Zheshang spirit—perseverance, pioneering innovation, responsibility for industry development, openness and cooperation, integrity and lawfulness, and pursuit of excellence—integral to its DNA and consistent practice.

Qian Wenhui states that the Zheshang spirit has created a unique gene for the company: pragmatic innovation to seize market opportunities and achieve breakthroughs; pioneering leadership to navigate industry changes and explore new development paths; demonstrating responsibility and action in regional deep cultivation, buy-side transformation, and counter-cyclical M&A.

Zhejiang hosts the largest cluster of private enterprises and specialized, innovative “Little Giants.” In his view, these companies, diverse in scale and demand, yet efficient and flexible in decision-making, are precisely the core tracks where local securities firms can leverage regional advantages, deepen niche fields, and build differentiated competitiveness—also the key points for financial services to support the real economy.

He emphasizes that Zheshang Securities makes full use of its flexible mechanisms and short decision chains, breaking the rigid approval layers of traditional financial institutions, and establishing a “three-in-one” comprehensive service model of “investment banking + investment + research.” The core of this model is “accompaniment services”—intervening from the startup phase, responding swiftly to diverse needs at different stages.

“Supporting early-stage and growth-stage tech startups requires more than just current financial statements; understanding their technological value and growth potential is crucial,” he explains. Zheshang Securities breaks departmental barriers through the “three-in-one” mechanism, using research insights to understand industry directions, investment banking to provide capital operation plans, and investment to inject patient capital—forming a closed-loop service covering startup, growth, listing, and M&A stages.

Supported by this model, a series of flagship cases have been successfully implemented: Zheshang Securities helped Jinhua New Materials go public, marking Zhejiang’s first provincial state-owned enterprise listing on the Beijing Stock Exchange; supported Taotao Auto and Nabaichuan to list on the ChiNext, achieving historic breakthroughs for local companies’ A-share IPOs… From leading enterprises to county-level tech startups, from single IPOs to equity-debt linkage and M&A, Zheshang Securities has become a “financial partner” for Zhejiang’s private sector transformation and upgrading through flexible response and comprehensive empowerment.

Focusing on the integrated national strategy of the Yangtze River Delta, Zheshang Securities positions itself as a “main force in finance” and a “nationwide first-class investment bank with Zheshang characteristics.” According to him, for the developed tech industry in the Yangtze River Delta, such as Hangzhou’s “Six Little Dragons,” Zheshang Securities has established tools like Zhejiang’s specialized and innovative fund platforms, creating an “early investment, small investment, tech investment” ecosystem. Through initiatives like the “Double Hundred Action” and “Entering Ten Cities,” it penetrates industrial parks, fostering a virtuous cycle of “technology—industry—finance,” supporting industrial upgrading in the Yangtze River Delta.

Qian Wenhui states that Zheshang Securities will uphold its original mission in finance, driven by “deepening Zhejiang” and “expanding nationwide,” continuously strengthening the “three-in-one” model, building a specialized and innovative service ecosystem, and using more flexible mechanisms, comprehensive solutions, and long-term companionship to demonstrate greater responsibility in serving the real economy and new productive forces.

“Hard mechanisms + soft culture” strengthen the foundational support

Any grand strategy requires solid underlying support. Qian Wenhui notes that to advance toward a “first-class investment bank,” Zheshang Securities plans to reinforce its foundation from four dimensions: cultural soul, mechanism reform, talent cultivation, and digital empowerment.

He explains that in cultural cultivation, Zheshang Securities will deeply integrate the “Three Same Culture”—“co-creation, sharing, growth”—with core values. “Cultural guidelines are not slogans but soft power and behavioral norms essential for strategic implementation,” he states.

In talent development, he emphasizes the need to build a competitive talent advantage, implementing a “14th Five-Year” talent development plan aligned with industry leaders, high starting points for talent team building, ensuring sufficient key talent, proactive reserve of key fields, and fostering a large number of leading talents. It also involves reforming market-oriented compensation, creating a competitive talent training, evaluation, incentive, and mobility system. Strengthening cadre teams through positive incentives, emphasizing practical results, streamlining “up and down” channels, and promoting exemplary figures who are responsible, capable, and diligent—guiding staff to benchmark excellence and take initiative—aims to build a loyal, honest, responsible, and highly professional cadre team.

In mechanism reform, he states Zheshang Securities will focus on deepening “reform” as a driving force, aligning with the “14th Five-Year” plan, focusing on team structure, tactics, architecture, and governance, and implementing a new round of reforms to establish high-quality development indicators. It will strengthen cross-line resource integration, build a full-service, full-asset, full-cycle integrated service system, and enhance platform-based operations driven by customer needs. It will benchmark industry best practices, systematically advance related committee systems, fully implement industry salary reforms, optimize internal assessment and incentive mechanisms, and improve resource allocation to motivate all lines to innovate and create profits, ensuring reforms deliver tangible results.

“Our core logic for strengthening corporate culture and talent strategy is: ‘Three Same Culture’ to unify hearts, ‘market-oriented mechanisms’ to stimulate vitality, and ‘full-cycle training’ to enhance capabilities,” says Qian Wenhui. Through “hard mechanisms + soft culture,” Zheshang Securities aims to cultivate a loyal, honest, responsible, professional, and digitally capable high-quality talent team, providing a solid talent foundation for the company’s goal of ranking among the top 15 in the industry.

Additionally, in technological empowerment, he believes that Zheshang Securities’ strategy is not merely about adding technology but about making technology the core engine—through “base upgrades + scenario applications + mechanism restructuring”—to shift from passive defense to proactive intelligent control.

He states that Zheshang Securities is building a digital innovation engine, advancing fintech development, and establishing six unified platforms as the core. Embedding digital tools into business processes, it aims to manage customer value throughout the lifecycle; focusing on retail and institutional clients, developing next-generation platforms like the “Hui Jin Gu” App and comprehensive financial services; strengthening the “Cloud An Wei Hui Digital Research” technical base, expanding international layouts like Cross-border Wealth Management; accelerating compliance and risk control digital transformation, iterating audit, risk, and compliance systems, and promoting AI applications in research and advisory scenarios.

AI large models are reshaping risk control and compliance. He states Zheshang Securities is promoting AI large models in risk prediction, project review, and public opinion monitoring, deepening AI and big data applications in anomaly detection and anti-money laundering, achieving millisecond-level risk capture. It also uses digital means to deepen penetrating audits, improve the research and risk control platform, and ensure traceability and auditability of business behaviors.

He believes that the ultimate goal of technological empowerment is mechanism reform. Zheshang Securities is committed to building a “low-volatility, multi-strategy” risk control system, enabling dynamic management across all business lines and cycles.

Steady Progress Toward the New “14th Five-Year” Journey

Standing at the new starting point of the “14th Five-Year Plan,” Qian Wenhui envisions a clear future blueprint: the core goal is “one match, one vision, one doubling, one leap”—to build a nationwide comprehensive securities firm matching Zhejiang’s economic status, with the vision of becoming a first-class investment bank, through endogenous growth and external M&A to “create another medium-sized securities firm,” and to rank among the top 15 in key indicators.

He states that to achieve this, Zheshang Securities must adhere to two implementation paths over the next three to five years: first, to excel in the “Five Big Articles” of finance—serving national strategies through full business, full asset, and full-cycle deployment to build a unique competitive advantage.

Second, to serve the new productive forces—key to unlocking growth potential—by innovating in new finance, new ecology, and new markets. This includes deep integration of “AI + finance” to develop a tech-driven securities firm; building a high-efficiency ecosystem through the “investment banking + investment + research” synergy; and continuously optimizing nationwide layout and international expansion.

Looking ahead, Qian Wenhui hopes Zheshang Securities will leave three distinctive marks in the capital market, the real economy, and the industry landscape:

First, in the capital market, to establish a “nationwide comprehensive securities firm” aligned with Zhejiang’s economic status. “We shouldn’t just be a local firm; we must have the capacity to serve clients nationwide,” he states. He envisions Zheshang Securities leveraging the “Yangtze River Delta + Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei” dual-core national map to become an influential Zhejiang force in the capital market.

Second, in the real economy, to leave a “full lifecycle accompaniment” mark—integrating industry and finance. “We are not just capital providers but partners in industry development,” he emphasizes. Zheshang Securities will implement the “Double Hundred Three Thousand Four” project to channel financial resources into hard tech and specialized, innovative enterprises; and adopt a “blood transfusion + self-sustaining” model—such as insurance + futures supporting agriculture—to address development imbalances, demonstrating that financial services can have both commercial value and social warmth.

Third, in the industry landscape, to establish a “first-class investment bank” with differentiated competitive advantages. “We are committed not to be mediocre followers but leaders in niche fields,” he states. Unlike all-round top firms, Zheshang Securities will build a unique business ecosystem through “investment banking + investment + research,” and develop a differentiated edge with “AI + finance” to create a tech-driven, innovative securities firm.

“We will be steadfast practitioners of Zhejiang’s needs, China’s direction, and industry transformation,” Qian Wenhui concludes. “With practical action, we aim to write a glorious chapter in the history of Zheshang Securities.”

Proofreading: Joey

Production: Xiao Mo

Review: Mu Yu