Analysis | Ex-Hanergy boss Li Hejun banned from acting as director or being involved in the management of any corporation, for up to 15 years
Sorry state of affairs a far cry from heady days of 2015 when the firm’s market valuation at one point exceeded that of all its mainland competitors combined
Li Hejun, briefly ranked by the Hurun rich list as China’s richest person in 2015 thanks to the sky-rocketing valuations of his Hong Kong-listed vehicle Hanergy Thin Film Power (HTF), has been brought back to earth with a thump.
The 48-year-old native of Heyuan, Guangdong province, shot to fame in 2002 when his privately-owned Hanergy Holdings Group – which owns 74.8 per cent of the listed unit – won the right to build the 2,400-megawatt 20 billion yuan Jinanqiao hydro-electric power plant in Yunnan province.
He was famous in the state-firm-dominated power sector not only because his firm was the country’s first and only privately owned firm to be allowed to invest in a hydropower project of Jinanqiao’s scale, but that it also managed to raise the required financing, and then completed it in 2012.
That hydro investment earned him his first pot of gold – but his foray into the solar power sector some seven years ago, and subsequent dealings between Hanergy Holdings and HTF, has left a deep scar on his entrepreneurial resume.
On Monday, the Securities and Futures Commission sought a Hong Kong court order banning Li – HTF’s former chairman – and four current independent non-executive directors, from acting as directors or being involved in the management of any corporation, for up to 15 years.
The SFC has also sought a court order demanding Li’s Hanergy Holding pay all its outstanding receivables due to HTF, arising from two huge solar panel production equipment sales contracts in 2010 and 2011. A contract of guarantee to secure such payment is also being sought.
