Three of Wall Street’s biggest names helped a Chinese battery manufacturer raise billions from global investors, months after the Pentagon slapped the company with a “Chinese military company” label. Congress would like to know why.
A new report from the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party alleges that JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America served as book-runners for CATL’s Hong Kong secondary listing, which raised approximately $5.2 billion in May 2025. Morgan Stanley reportedly participated in a subsequent offering. All of this happened after the US Department of Defense designated CATL under its Section 1260H list of Chinese military-linked firms on January 7, 2025.
Congress warned them. They did it anyway.
On April 17, 2025, House Select Committee Chairman John Moolenaar urged JPMorgan and Bank of America to withdraw from the IPO. The letter explicitly flagged national security risks tied to CATL’s operations, including the company’s supply-chain connections with the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, an entity sanctioned under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.
The banks proceeded anyway. CATL’s Hong Kong listing went ahead in May, becoming one of the largest secondary offerings of the year.
