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Heard of China’s fake handbags and Rolexes? Now there’s a fake Goldman Sachs operating in Shenzhen
PUBLISHED : Thursday, 27 August, 2015, 12:15pm
UPDATED : Friday, 28 August, 2015, 1:25am
Bloomberg
A Goldman Sachs Group logo hangs on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York. Photo: Bloomberg
China has been accused of pirating movies, handbags, Rolexes - even cars. Add Goldman Sachs to the list.
Goldman Sachs (Shenzhen) Financial Leasing Company has been operating in the city just across the border from Hong Kong using a nearly identical English and Chinese name as the New York-based financial institution, Goldman Sachs Group. It claims on its website to be one of the city's largest financial leasing firms.
A receptionist answering the phone at the Shenzhen company who declined to give her name said it's not affiliated with the US bank and wouldn't offer how it got its name, emphasising it includes Shenzhen. It's the first time she's been asked the question, she said.
Goldman Sachs (Shenzhen) Financial Leasing Company has been operating in the city just across the border from Hong Kong. Photo: Xinhua
A filing with the Shenzhen government indicates the company has been operating since May 2013. The company uses the same Chinese characters, gao sheng, as the real Goldman Sachs, and its English font is evocative of the US bank's.
Connie Ling, a Hong Kong-based spokeswoman for Goldman Sachs, confirmed there are no ties between the US investment bank and the Shenzhen company and said Goldman is looking into the matter.
It's not the only bank facing brazen name-borrowing. In a more extreme example, a 39-year-old man in eastern China's Shandong province was arrested earlier in August after setting up a fake branch of China Construction Bank, including card readers, teller counters and signs, according to the Xinhua news agency.
Shenzhen's Goldman Sachs came to light through a letter sent by a US casino workers union to Chinese officials.
The fake company's office is located in a relatively new gleaming high-rise office park along a tree-lined street on the western fringe of Shenzhen, a former fishing village turned global manufacturing powerhouse.
The casino workers union said the Shenzhen company is controlled by a Hong Kong-based gold trader unaffiliated with the investment bank.
The Shenzhen Goldman Sachs's website was inaccessible as of Wednesday, though it could be viewed in screen grabs captured by the union.
"There have been quite a few cases where Chinese individuals or organisations have registered in China the trademark of an existing and established overseas brand," Paul Haswell, a Hong Kong-based partner at law firm Pinsent Masons, said in an e-mail.
If history is any guide, Goldman doesn't have much chance of changing its Shenzhen doppelganger. Basketball legend Michael Jordan lost a case against a Chinese sportswear company that used the Chinese version of his name.
Apple paid US$60 million to settle a trademark dispute with a Chinese company that had applied to block the sale of iPad computer tablets in 2012.
"It's notoriously difficult for an overseas claimant to persuade the Chinese courts that there has been trademark infringement," said Haswell. "There's still a practice of whoever registers first wins."
