(Bloomberg) - JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp. were subpoenaed by US lawmakers over their role in the initial public offering of Chinese battery maker Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd.
The House of Representatives’ Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party sent demands for documents to the banks’ chief executive officers, the panel wrote Wednesday on X. The Wall Street Journal reported the request earlier in the day.
“We’ve had constructive engagement with the committee and will continue to engage,” a representative for Bank of America said in an emailed statement.
A representative for JPMorgan declined to comment comment. But in a Bloomberg TV interview in May, CEO Jamie Dimon noted the US hadn’t placed sanctions on the Chinese battery maker and that banks do thorough due diligence before handling such deals. “If we thought it was wrong, we wouldn’t do it,” he said at the time.
The committee had called on both banks in April to withdraw from working on CATL’s market listing in Hong Kong. The lenders stuck with the deal, and CATL went on to raise $5.2 billion the next month.
By underwriting CATL’s listing, the banks were exposing themselves and their American investors to “significant regulatory, financial and reputational risks,” the committee’s chairman, Michigan Republican John Moolenaar, said in the April letters addressed to Dimon and Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan.
Those letters highlighted CATL’s inclusion on a Pentagon watch list in January, citing alleged links to the Chinese military. Robin Zeng, the billionaire founder and chairman of CATL, has pushed back on accusations it poses a threat to national security, saying the company has never sold any of its products to the military.
By Katherine Doherty
With assistance from Peter Eichenbaum
