HONG KONG — Many of China’s most powerful families have their “bagman” — the dealmaker who helps arrange their business affairs and who rises in turn to great wealth on their coattails.

Mr Xiao Jianhua has long had strong connections with the families of Communist party leaders, but he was much more than a bagman by the time he was spirited back to mainland China by Beijing’s agents on the eve of the Chinese lunar New Year.

Living for the past few years in self-imposed exile at the luxurious Four Seasons hotel and apartment complex in Hong Kong, Mr Xiao had become one of China’s richest men, a multi-billionaire in dollar terms with investments focused on banks and insurance.

According to the Hurun Report, the young man who began his business career selling personal computers near his old university was worth US$6 billion (S$8.5 billion) by 2016.

Mr Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman of the Hurun Report, said Mr Xiao had used his knowledge of capital markets and leverage to build a big empire. But, he said, it is extremely difficult to work out his wealth because he has “a myriad highly complex structures”.

“He’s considered to be extremely intelligent and extremely low-profile,” said Mr Hoogewerf. “Within investor circles, he’s pretty respected because he comes from Peking University so he’s not some hillbilly who’s gone into the business of capital markets.”

From his Four Seasons vantage point overlooking the busy harbour of Hong Kong, Mr Xiao held court attended by a bevy of female bodyguards, managed his business affairs and represented the government of Antigua and Barbuda.

Mr Xiao has a youthful look, with a round face and an enigmatic smile. The 45-year-old nonetheless had a knack for getting in on large, lucrative deals. He has been involved in business for decades, after showing early loyalty to the ruling Communist party with his stance as a student representative at Peking University. He opposed demonstrations in 1989 that culminated in a state crackdown and the killings around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.

His businesses prospered. The December 2006 issue of Caijing, a respected Chinese financial magazine, was the only one that was ever pulped by censors. The reason was the cover story on the privatisation of Luneng, the state power company in Shandong, by a politician’s son named Zeng Wei, through a complex series of corporate shells.

Mr Zeng was the son of Zeng Qinghong, a top official during the presidencies of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, who remained in power until 2007; Mr Xiao was owner of several of the shells.

Mr Xiao came from an educated family in a poor village in Shandong and won entry to prestigious Peking University in the mid-1980s, when China was rapidly recovering from three decades of radical communism.

While most bagmen rise and fall with a single powerful politician, Mr Xiao has worked on behalf of a number of powerful families, according to news reports.

He came to particular prominence during HSBC’s 2013 sale of a tranche of Ping An Insurance to CP Group, the Thai-Chinese conglomerate. Caixin magazine named him as the mysterious backer for CP Group’s purchase, a report that he denied but one that nearly torpedoed the US$9.4 billion deal.

That same year, Mr Xiao helped the sister and brother-in-law of President Xi Jinping offload shares in a company for the same sum they had paid for it a few years earlier, after Bloomberg published an investigation into the wealth of the Xi family and other Chinese leaders’ relatives.

In a statement responding to a 2014 profile in The New York Times, Ms Lu Yan, the spokeswoman for Mr Xiao’s Tomorrow Group, called her boss “a loyal student to Mr Warren Buffett’s theories” and denied he had made his money in any other way than by following the example of the Omaha-based value investor.

She wrote that after growing disenchanted with the student protesters, Mr Xiao “switched to the library” and upon graduation from Peking University’s prestigious law school, founded his business selling imported computers.

“The principle of compliance with laws and regulations and reasonableness is always on the top priority of the investment guidelines followed by Mr Xiao. Mr Xiao’s not being involved in any of the current corruption cases of several senior officials in China has indirectly proved the foregoing,” said the statement, in response to The New York Times’ reporting on Mr Xiao’s handling of the business affairs of important Chinese families.

“Now, under the guidance of Mr Xiao, the principle of compliance with law and staying-away from politics has become part of Tomorrow Group’s corporate culture.” FINANCIAL TIMES