What price rehabilitation for fugitive mainland auto tycoon Yang Rong? A hundred billion yuan, perhaps?
The former chairman of Brilliance China Automotive, who fled to the United States in 2002, yesterday announced yet another ambitious gambit to get back into the game: a 30 billion yuan (HK$34.4 billion) joint venture with a state-owned firm to build environmentally friendly cars and engines in Hefei , Anhui province. It is the third major carmaking deal Yang's Hybrid Kinetic Group has announced in the past 11 months.
Yang's other tentative plans include a US$7.86 billion bet on a US car plant in Alabama and another 20 billion yuan on a carmaking business in Shenyang , capital of Liaoning - the province that issued a warrant for his arrest in 2002 for suspected economic crimes. Together, the three preliminary deals for far-flung car ventures call for investment in excess of 100 billion yuan.
At last tally, Hybrid Kinetic had HK$114.71 million in cash on hand at the end of December.
Yang, who in 2001 was ranked by Forbes as China's third-richest man with a net worth of US$840 million, has been living in exile in the US for the past eight years. He was previously an early pioneer in the mainland car market, now the world's largest, who founded Brilliance with government backing, and listed it on the New York Stock Exchange in 2002.
With Yang at the helm, Brilliance developed the best-selling Zhonghua sedan - the first homegrown passenger car to build significant market share on the mainland - and initiated negotiations for what would become a successful joint venture with BMW.
In June 2002, Yang was forced to flee the mainland after a dispute with officials in Liaoning, which he alleged had illegally confiscated his large stake in Shenyang-based Brilliance and transferred it to a company controlled by the provincial government.