New | Jinan smoke bombs, pepper spray are flash points in Shanshui feud
Shanshui’s board directors were repelled by pepper spray, water cannons and smoke bombs when they tried to repossess facilities at their Shandong unit, according to a statement.
Four major shareholdings are battling it out for control of the Hong Kong-traded company, hampering efforts to restructure over 10 billion yuan (US$1.45 billion) of debt, and stymying the company’s recovery from a construction slowdown.
Mi Jingtian, a former general manager at Shanshui’s unit in the Shandong provincial capital of Jinan, resorted to using pepper spray, smoke bombs and pressurised water cannons to repel the parent company’s executives when they tried to repossess the facilities, according to the cement maker’s statement to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Monday.
On Saturday, Shanhui’s chairman Stephen Liu Yiu-keung and some independent non-executive directors went to the company’s Jinan premises, occupied by Mi and his associates. Liu and his fellow directors were held against their will, and suffered bodily harm by a group of unidentified crowd commanded and organised by Mi for over two hours, before being released through the help of local police, they said in their statement.
“I was at the scene ... my shirt was pulled and I was beaten by some gangsters,” Liu said in a phone interview with the South China Morning Post. “Some of our independent director were pushed to the ground.”
Mi disputed Shanshui’s statement, according to Bloomberg, citing a telephone interview with the former executive. It was Shanshui’s chairman Liu who organised more than 600 people to occupy Shandong Shanshui’s headquarters, Mi was cited in saying.