Hong Kong bourse publicly censures Jia Yueting, former CEOs of smartphone maker Coolpad Group

Name: The rise of Chinese smartphones
Uploaded: 2021-08-24T12:00:25.000Z
Duration: 6 min 56 s
Description: The rise of Chinese smartphones

Former Coolpad chairman Jia Yueting and ex-CEO Jiang Chao ‘failed to act honestly and in good faith’ in connection with US$200 million in transactions, bourse says

SFC pursuing separate High Court action against Coolpad, former directors

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Chad Bray

Published: 8:00pm, 24 Aug 2021Updated: 8:00pm, 24 Aug 2021

Hong Kong’s stock exchange publicly censured failed Chinese tycoon Jia Yueting, as well as two former CEOs and several ex-directors of loss-making Chinese smartphone maker Coolpad Group, on Tuesday in connection with more than 1.3 billion yuan (US$200 million) in related-party transactions that the company failed to disclose in a timely manner.

In a disciplinary filing on Tuesday, the exchange said Coolpad provided loans or financial help on three occasions between July 2016 and March 2017 to companies either controlled by Jia, its former chairman, or beneficially owned by an acquaintance of Jia’s and former executive director Liu Hong’s. Coolpad did not announce the transactions until May 2017, the exchange said.

“The exchange found that Mr Jia and [former chief financial officer Jiang Chao] failed to act honestly and in good faith in the interests of the company as a whole, or for proper purpose,” the bourse’s regulatory arm said. “The other directors above failed either to discharge their directors’ duties in respect of the transactions, or to ensure the company had implemented adequate internal controls.”

Jiang was financial chief and an executive director at the time and replaced Liu Jiangfeng, who was also publicly censured on Tuesday, as CEO in 2017. Jiang was terminated by the company in 2019 just days after giving media interviews outlining his turnaround strategy at the CES trade show.

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The rise of Chinese smartphones

Jia was once one of China’s most high-profile entrepreneurs, founding electric vehicle start-up Faraday Future and online streaming company LeEco. The one-time billionaire resigned as Coolpad’s chairman in 2017 and later filed for bankruptcy protection in the United States in 2019.