Warburg Pincus invests in Huarong

Warburg Pincus LLC will invest close to $700 million in China Huarong Asset Management Co, people with knowledge of the matter said, in the biggest investment in the nation's financial industry by a foreign buyout firm.

Warburg Pincus bought the largest portion of a 21 percent stake that China's biggest bad-loan manager sold to a group of investors for 14.5 billion yuan ($2.4 billion), said one of the people, who asked not to be identified as the matter is private.

Rising loan delinquencies in China are adding to opportunities for the country's asset management companies, set up in 1999 to buy bad debt from State lenders. Warburg Pincus, whose president is former US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, finished raising $11.2 billion last year for its most recent private-equity fund.