Fall from grace: China’s acquisitive conglomerates under a cloud axed from Fortune 500 list

China’s four once-acquisitive conglomerates – Anbang Insurance Group, CEFC China Energy, HNA Group and Wanda Group – have been excluded from this year’s Fortune 500 list, taking another blow on top of piling debt and intense government scrutiny.

Fortune magazine, which compiles the list of the 500 largest companies in the world by revenue released on Thursday, said it axed the firms as “some of them have been under legal or regulatory investigations because of illicit operations and are having operational difficulties” even though their revenues were high enough to help them make the list.

Among the quartet, Anbang was included in the list for the first time last year at number 139, while CEFC climbed from 349 in 2014 to 222 last year. HNA rose from 464 in 2015 to 170 last year, and Wanda edged up from 385 in 2016 to 380 last year.

The conglomerates touted their inclusion among the ranks of the world’s greatest companies, as the Fortune 500 list is highly regarded in China.

“HNA Group and Wanda Group are similar in that their excessive leveraged expansion and irrational offshore investments have led to financing difficulties,” Fortune said in an article on its Chinese-language website.