An employee at a Chinese finance company calling itself Goldman Sachs said on Thursday that any similarity to the U.S.-based investment giant was unintentional.
Goldman Sachs (Shenzhen) Financial Leasing Co, operating in the southern boomtown next to Hong Kong, has an almost identical name to New York-based financial institution Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
"We don't have any connection with the U.S. Goldman Sachs," a woman who answered the company's listed phone number told AFP.
"We just picked the name out, and it's not intentionally the same," she noted, before hanging up.
The company uses the same Chinese characters as Goldman Sachs does officially in the country.
Shenzhen's Goldman Sachs was exposed by a letter sent by a U.S. casino workers union to -Chinese anti-corruption officials asking them to investigate the firm, according to Bloomberg News.
The Chinese firm's English font is evocative of the U.S. bank's, Bloomberg reported, labeling the company a "pirate" version of Goldman Sachs.
The news came after a 39-year-old man in eastern China was arrested earlier this month for setting up a fake branch of China Construction Bank, including card readers, teller counters and signs, according to media reports.
Duped "customers" were able to make deposits into what they thought were their accounts but were refused withdrawals, reports said.
Several foreign firms are already embroiled in intellectual property court cases in China.
Basketball star Michael Jordan in July lost a case against a Chinese sportswear company that allegedly used the Chinese version of his name.
In 2012, Apple Inc paid $60 million to settle a trademark dispute involving rights to the "iPad" name with a Chinese electronics company.
A Hong Kong-based spokeswoman for the U.S.-based Goldman Sachs denied any ties with the Shenzhen company to Bloomberg and said it was "looking into the matter."
