Guo Guangchang, China’s self-styled “Warren Buffett”, yesterday called the country’s Rmb440bn ($65.9bn) peer-to-peer lending market “basically a scam”, becoming the latest figure to attack an industry that has been plagued by scandal.
The comment from Mr Guo, chairman of Fosun Group, China’s biggest privately owned conglomerate, has added to the fierce debate over China’s P2P lending market and comes days after the government imposed new rules on the size of such operations.
The industry, which has grown rapidly over the past four years, is based on a business model in which individual lenders are matched with borrowers via online platforms. The loans often pay out high yields.