Lei Jie, who is the chairman of China-based Founder Securities and its joint venture with Credit Suisse, cannot be contacted by Founder as the government questions executives at the company’s parent organisation.

Lei Jie, the chairman of China-based Founder Securities and its joint venture with Credit Suisse, cannot be contacted by Founder as the government questions executives at the company’s parent organisation, according to media reports.  

The chairman sought a week’s sick leave on 12 January and the firm has not been able to contact him since 19 January, reports said.

Credit Suisse declined to comment to this publication. Founder Securities' English-language website made no reference to the matter as far as this publication was able to establish.

"The company is unable to reach Lei Jie and that is expected to cause a certain degree of impact to the company's internal operations," Founder is reported by Reuters as saying. President He Qicong will act as chairman until Lei resumes his duties or the board decides whether to pick a replacement, the brokerage was quoted as saying in a Chinese-language filing on the Shanghai stock exchange.

Lei could not be reached on his mobile phone, according to the report.

Founder Securities, China’s sixth-largest listed brokerage, and its parent firm, Peking University Founder Group, are involved in disputes with billionaire Miles Kwok’s Beijing Zenith Holdings, the brokerage’s second-largest shareholder.

Founder has denied Zenith claims ranging from insider trading to misappropriating state assets, reports said.

In December last year, Zenith obtained a court order freezing some Founder Securities bank accounts. This month, Founder Group executives were questioned by authorities and its chairman stepped down.

Credit Suisse, according to Bloomberg, owns a third of Credit Suisse Founder Securities, the entity created in 2008 and which competes with similar partnerships between Chinese firms and global banks including UBS, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan.