Shanghai Guotai Haitong Securities Asset Management Co., Ltd. has been penalized with over 50 million yuan in combined fines and confiscations by the Shanghai branch of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange. The regulator recently disclosed three administrative penalty notices, with the asset manager found to have breached qualified domestic institutional investor (QDII) rules for overseas securities investment and failed to file indirect declarations for balance of payments statistics as required.

The penalty notice reveals that Guotai Haitong Asset Management violated Article 6 of the QDII regulations and Articles 7 and 10 of the balance of payments reporting measures. Consequently, it received a warning, had its illegal gains confiscated, and was fined, bringing the total penalties to 52.5474 million yuan.

According to the 2026 interim report of Guotai Haitong Securities Co., Ltd. (601211.SH, 02611.HK), between 2019 and 2022, the asset management arm was ordered to rectify issues and issued warnings for individual product violations. The penalties comprised a fine of 25.874 million yuan and confiscation of illegal income totaling 26.6734 million yuan. The latest penalty amount perfectly matches the sum of these two figures disclosed in the interim report.

The Shanghai branch noted in its penalty remarks that these violations were discovered during an on-site inspection of the former Guotai Junan Securities. Notably, the misconduct occurred prior to the merger between Guotai Junan and Haitong Securities. On April 30, 2026, Guotai Haitong Asset Management signed an absorption and merger agreement with Haitong Asset Management, with all assets, liabilities, businesses, and personnel of the latter transferred to the former.

In a separate penalty notice published on the same day, an individual named Zhang was issued a warning and fined 70,000 yuan for bearing direct responsibility for the company's non-compliant forex business operations during their tenure at the asset management firm. Interestingly, the 2026 interim report of Guotai Haitong also referenced this forex penalty, confirming that regulators had warned and fined the directly responsible individual 70,000 yuan. Meanwhile, Guotai Haitong itself was warned and fined 150,000 yuan for failing to file direct balance of payments declarations and violating foreign exchange account management rules.

On the evening of August 18, Guotai Haitong released its 2026 semi-annual results. In the first half of the year, the company posted operating revenue of 47.163 billion yuan, a year-on-year surge of 97.56%, and net profit attributable to shareholders of 20.260 billion yuan, up 28.74%. In the second quarter alone, revenue reached 30.931 billion yuan and attributable net profit hit 13.871 billion yuan, both setting new single-quarter records for the securities industry.

The interim report shows that Guotai Haitong Asset Management, wholly owned by Guotai Haitong with a registered capital of 2 billion yuan, generated first-half operating revenue of 1.625 billion yuan and net profit of 333 million yuan, up 71.41% and 31.1% year-on-year, respectively. As of the end of June, its total assets stood at 12.649 billion yuan, with net assets of 10.034 billion yuan.

In terms of QDII operations, data from the State Administration of Foreign Exchange as of the end of June 2026 indicates that Guotai Haitong Asset Management has been approved for a QDII investment quota of 2.33 billion US dollars. In its interim report, Guotai Haitong stated that it and the asset management subsidiary have fully rectified the forex penalty issues, and that the penalty has no impact on their ongoing business operations.

According to Dazhi VIP, as of the close on August 24, Guotai Haitong's A-shares were trading at 17.64 yuan per share, up 1.50%, while its H-shares closed at 15.180 Hong Kong dollars, up 1.00%.