A year ago, Lai Zhengjian was among the minority shareholders of Ping An Insurance (Group) who opposed the company's plan to raise 160 billion yuan (HK$181.41 billion) by issuing shares and convertible bonds.
'The scale of fund-raising is too big to swallow,' Mr Lai told reporters after a closely watched shareholders' meeting in March last year. 'They cannot take money from shareholders without even explaining where the money will go.'
Mr Lai, like many other mainland shareholders who invested in Ping An when it went public two years earlier, counted on the stock to generate hefty returns, only to experience a roller-coaster ride as the company embarked on an ambitious expansion programme.
The financing plan, which at the time was one of the world's largest stock offerings ever, received support from Ping An's majority shareholders, including HSBC Holdings.
Subsequent widespread concern about a glut of shares in the mainland equity market forced Ping An to shelve the plan, but it did not escape accusations that it had, in part, triggered the market's free fall.
One year on, the insurer is not only still suffering the overhang of the aborted share offer but is now entangled in another controversy, from the other side of the table. It has become a shareholder opposing the break-up of Fortis, the Belgian-Dutch financial group that was partly nationalised before French rival BNP Paribas agreed to buy the remainder.