A senior banker at Nomura Holdings (8604.T) overseeing the firm’s investment banking operations in China has been ordered not to leave the mainland, two sources with knowledge of the matter said. One of the sources said that Charles Wang Zhonghe, chair of Nomura’s China investment banking unit, is not being detained but has been banned from traveling abroad and attending work events in the mainland. The source and the second did not want to be named because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

The move comes as concerns grow among Western businesses about darkening prospects in the world’s second-largest economy at a time of slowing growth, coupled with new laws that make for stricter operating conditions. Nomura’s China investment banking arm is a crucial source of revenue for the Japanese brokerage, accounting for about 35% of its overall revenues in 2021.

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In recent years, Nomura has made a big push into Asia’s growing pool of high-net-worth individuals. The region accounts for about 37% of the global population of people with investable assets of $1 million or more, according to a survey published by Capgemini in 2023. The firm hopes its strengths in Japan and Asia will help it attract business from global wealth managers, the chief executive of Nomura’s private bank, Raju Varma, told Reuters earlier this year.

Wang’s travel restriction is linked to his time at the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd (ICBC), where he worked from 2011 to 2016, according to the Financial Times. The newspaper reported that he overlapped with Cong Lin, another former executive at ICBC’s securities unit who was summoned by regulators a year ago and has been missing ever since.

In China, an abrupt absence of a senior business figure often signals a state crackdown or investigation. Several publicly listed companies say they have lost contact with executives who have disappeared while Beijing investigates and must make their inquiries within the country’s opaque legal system. Those probes have also shaken confidence in the Chinese banking sector, with many foreign banks cutting back on lending to small and mid-sized firms. This has pushed those firms to seek loans from less-regulated shadow banking and offshore lenders. The restraining order against a Nomura official could further rattle foreign investors. Rights group Safeguard Defenders says the number of cases involving exit bans has risen rapidly this year.