THE release of the latest Hurun finance report in Shenzhen attracted thousands of audience members to attend the launch ceremony Sunday, which caused chaos and conflicts at a hotel.

    The Hurun New Finance Report, a list of top 50 new finance companies in China, was released at the St. Regis Hotel in Luohu District on Sunday. Many big names attended the launch ceremony, including Rupert Hoogewerf himself, the chairman of the board of the Hurun Report.

    On Sunday morning, access to the conference room on the hotel’s fifth floor was blocked a few minutes after the scheduled registration time, as the number of attendees far surpassed the upper limit of 500 people.

    However, even more attendees rushed to the hotel without registering beforehand. Many came from other cities to witness the release of the report and listen to reports given by the guest financial experts.

    A staffer from one of the organizers said that only guest speakers, VIP audience members and journalists with permits were allowed into the site.

    One of the managers of the hotel said that two audience members even got into a physical conflict with the security guards who were controlling the area.

    Many people still could not make their way into the conference venue until 10 a.m. when the report was about to start. In order to satisfy some of the registered audience members’ needs, the hotel arranged for around 100 people to go to a cafeteria to watch a live broadcast of the event.

    The organizer said that the registration platform closed three days ago and a few thousand people managed to register for the event. Some people still wanted to try their luck by coming to the site even if they had not registered online.

    Although the hotel put an extra 120 seats inside the conference venue, it was still far from enough to satisfy the needs of thousands of people.

    A finance insider disclosed that the real reason behind the crowded scene was because a lot of people from the field of Internet finance were eager to learn from the financial experts. They believed that the experts who delivered speeches were their saviors and inspirations for their businesses.

    Hoogewerf said Shenzhen was a young and dynamic city, so it was the best city to release the report on the innovative sector of finance. Forty-four of the top 50 new finance companies on the list are in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hangzhou. Shenzhen has nine companies on the list. (Zhang Qian)