BEIJING/HONG KONG, April 12 (Reuters) - A top executive

at China International Capital Corp ( CNICF ) is set to join

Chinese sovereign wealth fund CIC after exiting the investment

bank to avoid a potential conflict of interest given his brother

now heads China's securities regulator, six sources said.

Wu Bo, who was most recently the president and chief

financial officer of state-owned CICC, is the younger

brother of Wu Qing, who took the helm of the China Securities

Regulatory Commission (CSRC) in February, said the six sources

with knowledge of the matter.

The CSRC supervises China's securities sector including the

$10.5 trillion stock market and a variety of capital markets

activities. It is also the primary watchdog of all brokerages in

China, including CICC and foreign banks' securities ventures.

CICC said in a filing on Wednesday that Wu Bo, who joined

the bank in 2004, had stepped down as president effective

immediately after less than half a year in the role. He would

also no longer serve as CFO or a member of the management

committee due to "work changes", the bank added, without

providing further details.

The CSRC, CICC, CIC, Wu Bo and Wu Qing did not respond to

Reuters' requests for comment. The sources spoke on condition of

anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.

China has long vowed to tighten discipline on leaders

and officials, and the latest move comes against the backdrop of

President Xi Jinping making sweeping changes at the country's

top regulatory bodies in recent years to improve supervision.

The country's civil servants law, which covers the CSRC,

says public servants who are immediate family members including

siblings are not allowed to work in posts with direct superior

and subordinate relationships.

The preparation for Wu Bo's departure from China's oldest

investment bank started soon after his brother, nicknamed the

"broker butcher", was in a unexpected move appointed as the CSRC

head amid a market rout, said three of the sources.

Wu Bo, 46, is poised to join CICC's parent and top

shareholder China Investment Corp (CIC) and take charge of some

of the sovereign wealth fund's overseas investments, which are

not overseen by CSRC, they added.

CIC, owned by the State Council with total assets reaching

$1.24 trillion as of end-2022, invests overseas through two

subsidiaries, CIC International Co and direct investment vehicle

CIC Capital Corp. It also has a domestic investment unit, China

Central Huijin.

Headquartered in Beijing, the sovereign wealth fund was

founded by the central government in 2007 to help the world's

second-largest economy earn a higher return on its foreign

exchange reserves.

Wu Bo's departure from CICC comes as companies scramble to

scuttle plans for initial public offerings in China this year

after the CSRC tightened rules on share listings in a bearish

market, darkening prospects for investment banks.

In September last year, Wu Bo became the bank's CFO and two

months later, president and its de facto No. 2 executive.

His brother, Wu Qing, was a senior leader in China's

financial hub Shanghai before taking over as the CSRC chairman

in February when China's stock markets were near their weakest

levels in five years.