Wang insists regulators would block any Baoneng attempt to oust the Vanke board
Embattled chairman attempts to calm investors at its AGM in Shenzhen
Wang Shi, the founder and chairman of China Vanke, has attempted to reassure investors in the embattled firm that market regulators would step in if the company’s largest shareholder Baoneng Group did anything to hurt the company’s operations, or its share price.
“The majority shareholder cannot do whatever it wants, for example suddenly proposing to remove all the directors and advisors — we still have regulators, ” Wang told the firm’s annual general meeting in Shenzhen on Monday, another day which saw yet more twists and turns in the saga.
Financial conglomerate Baoneng, which built up a 24.26 per cent stake in Vanke last year, is now seeking to oust Wang and the rest of the board and has called for an extraordinary general meeting, Vanke said in a statement late Sunday.
Baoneng says Wang should be fired as a director because he had spent most of his time between 2011 and 2014 studying in the United States and Britain, and had not carried out any duties for the company despite collecting a combined 50 million yuan (HK$58.6 million) in salary.
The 11 other directors had to be sacked as well since they allowed Wang to collect the huge sum of money while he was studying, it said.
As a result of Baoneng’s decision, Vanke president Yu Liang also told shareholders the company’s business was already being adversely affected.