China’s $138 billion 'shadow bank' spirals at terrible time for Xi Jinping

Founded in 1995 as a lumber business, Zhongzhi Enterprise Group Co. grew to become a financial conglomerate with more than 1 trillion yuan ($138 billion) under management. Now it risks becoming the latest Chinese financial giant to fail. Zhongzhi is one of the last free-wheeling private wealth managers that Beijing has been trying to rein in to minimize risks for the hundreds of thousands of retail clients who bought these high-yield products assuming they were safe.