Accompanying through the cycle! Shanghai Bank becomes a key supporter for Wobi Medical

Ask AI · How can Bank of Shanghai’s “bank-investment synergy” model break the financing bottlenecks faced by technology companies?

Produced by｜China Visit Net

Reviewed by｜Li Xiaoyan

At a time when technological innovation has become a nation’s core competitiveness and new quality productive forces are being accelerated, technology finance has already become the key lever for financial services to support the real economy. The Central Financial Work Conference placed technology finance at the top of the “Five Major Articles,” pointing the way for financial institutions to serve science and technology innovation enterprises. Bank of Shanghai aligns closely with national strategic deployments, and focuses on the development vision of “the preferred bank for transformation and incubation, and a companion bank for early-stage growth.” By stepping outside traditional financial service frameworks and using an innovative model to address the development challenges of technology companies, the bank has recently also partnered with Yunfeng Fund to successfully help a local high-tech medical technology enterprise complete cross-border strategic integration through a new collaborative model of “acquisition loans + investment funds,” forging a new path for financial empowerment for technology companies’ cross-border development and global expansion.

The growth path of technology companies has always been characterized by high investment, high risk, and long cycles. Especially at key milestones such as cross-border acquisitions and overseas expansion, companies often face multiple difficulties, including hard-to-come-by financing, complex deal structures, and challenges in risk control. Traditional financial services are overly dependent on collateral and guarantees, making them difficult to adapt to the needs of technology companies that are asset-light and R&D-intensive. As a result, many high-quality science-and-technology innovative enterprises can still get stuck at developmental bottlenecks during industry fluctuations and capital “winters,” even if they hold core technologies. Bank of Shanghai has deeply understood the growth patterns of science and technology enterprises, breaking through the constraints of conventional credit thinking, and has built a distinctive technology finance service system. With long-termism and specialized services, the bank accompanies technology companies through development cycles, tackling financial challenges throughout the entire process—from early incubation to scaled expansion.

Wobi Medical, founded in 2015, is an innovative medical company in China focused on stroke treatment technologies. It has deeply cultivated the field of neurointervention, and with core technologies, it completed overseas market layout in Europe and the United States early on, making it a typical representative of Chinese medical technology companies going global. As early as the early development stage of Wobi Medical, Bank of Shanghai precisely recognized the value of its technology and its growth potential, providing initial credit support and witnessing the key growth phases as the company progressed from startup to overseas expansion. Since 2023, the global medical device industry has undergone valuation adjustments, the financing environment in capital markets has continued to tighten, and problems such as a complex internal debt structure have further compounded the difficulties. Wobi Medical’s development has hit headwinds, and multiple financial institutions have scaled back their credit limits, leaving the company facing dual pressure on both its capital chain and its development strategy.

In the face of industry fluctuations and market uncertainty, Bank of Shanghai did not choose to retreat to avoid risk in the short term. Instead, it adhered to a long-term philosophy and became a steadfast “patient capital” partner to help companies get through the tough times. Leveraging its deep research into the neurointervention sector, as well as its long-term monitoring and assessments of Wobi Medical’s core technologies, competitiveness in overseas markets, and team operational capabilities, the bank decisively increased credit support against the tide, becoming the company’s largest credit provider during the industry’s downturn. In addition to providing basic funding security, Bank of Shanghai also empowers the company’s development through “financial intelligence.” It has assembled a professional team to help the company sort out and optimize its debt structure, proactively liaised with various investment institutions, shareholders, and management teams, and built an efficient communication bridge. This provides full-scope support for the company to adjust its development strategy and build momentum for recovery, demonstrating in practice the long-term commitment and responsibility of financial institutions to science-and-technology innovative companies.

As capital markets gradually recover, the Hong Kong-listed biopharmaceutical sector has gained an opportunity for a rebound. Bank of Shanghai has keenly captured the turning point for Wobi Medical’s development. Together with a leading venture capital institution, Yunfeng Fund, it innovated and launched a collaborative service plan of “acquisition loans + an investment fund,” successfully driving the cross-border strategic integration between Yingmai Medical and Wobi Medical. At the same time, it helped Wobi Medical complete debt restructuring and optimize its capital structure, removing the core obstacles for the company to pursue an overseas listing. This model differs from traditional funds that acquire full equity. It fully leverages the bank’s advantage of low-cost credit leverage and the venture capital institutions’ advantage in industry resources. It not only effectively eases the company’s funding pressure and resolves the debt crisis, but also, through a structured deal design, preserves sufficient operating funds for the company, ensuring steady progress of its global strategy. In this way, financial capital and industrial capital are efficiently integrated.

The smooth landing of this cross-border acquisition and integration has received high recognition from the company. Wobi Medical’s CEO Zhao Ruilin said that this bank-investment synergy’s comprehensive financial services not only strengthened the company’s financial foundation and solved debt issues that had long constrained development, but also provided a solid guarantee for the company to expand production capacity and deepen its global market layout. Looking ahead, the company will further expand the production scale of the Shanghai factory and bring China’s leading stroke-treatment technologies to a broader global market, so that China’s medical technology achievements can benefit more overseas patients.

The successful implementation of this cross-border acquisition business is not only a successful case of Bank of Shanghai serving a single science-and-technology innovative enterprise. It also marks a major upgrade of its technology finance service model—from traditional, single credit deployment to an “financial partner” style of full-ecosystem comprehensive empowerment. Bank of Shanghai has always adhered to the concept of whole-cycle companionship. This acquisition service is not the end point of collaboration, but the starting point for deeper services. Going forward, the bank will leverage its FT account system’s unique advantages in cross-border fund settlement, foreign exchange conversion costs, and related areas, to help Wobi Medical optimize global working capital management and improve the efficiency of cross-border capital operations. At the same time, it will continue to deepen the integration of lending and investment-linked services, track the company’s subsequent key milestones in financing and overseas IPOs throughout the process, and provide one-stop financial support covering the entire life cycle of the company’s development.

Building on this successful practice, Bank of Shanghai will further replicate and promote the bank-investment synergy service model. Centering on the full life-cycle financial needs of venture capital funds—both investees and investees to be— it will build a full-chain financial service ecosystem of “raise, invest, manage, exit+.” By integrating the advantages of banking financial services with the industry resources and capital advantages of venture capital institutions, it will provide integrated comprehensive services to technology companies, such as financing, financial intelligence, resource matching, and strategic planning. This will break down service barriers between banks and venture capital institutions, forming a win-win pattern among the bank, venture capital, and science-and-technology innovative enterprises.

At present, the “technology-industry-finance” virtuous cycle is the core driving force for promoting high-quality economic development. Bank of Shanghai, using innovative financial services as a link, precisely connects with the development needs of technology companies and addresses the challenges of cross-border development. This is both a specific practice of implementing national requirements to improve the overseas financial services system and help companies go global, and a responsibility担当 for cultivating new quality productive forces and promoting upgrading of the technology industry. In the future, Bank of Shanghai will continue to uphold long-termism and professionalism, and will further deepen innovation in technology finance. It will focus more deeply on serving “early-stage, small, and hard” science-and-technology innovative enterprises, providing more flexible, more efficient, and more comprehensive financial services. By doing so, it will accompany more Chinese technology companies to achieve leapfrog development from 0 to 100, help high-quality science-and-technology innovative forces sail overseas, and inject a steady stream of financial momentum into the building of a strong country in science and technology.