In May, CNinsure, a Chinese insurance broker listed on Nasdaq, announced it had received an offer to take it private from a consortium led by buy-out group TPG, which included a Chinese private equity house and Hu Yinan, the chairman of CNinsure and, at the time, chief executive.

Several months and about $10m in due diligence later, on September 15, Mr Hu said the deal was off because, he said, of disagreements over price. Investor relations staff repeated that line in response to questions from the Financial Times. But TPG “uncovered things in the course of that due diligence that led the firm to call off the deal”, a person familiar with the transaction and with TPG said.

Had the sale gone through it would have been one of the largest private equity deals done in China in recent years by an international group. TPG and its partners offered a premium of more than 44 per cent to the company’s closing share price the day before the offer was made to buy American depositary shares (representing 20 ordinary shares) at $19 and the ordinary shares at $0.95.