Ex-CNOOC legal executive sues firm for share options practice

Retired former head of legal department at CNOOC claimed in a writ that the firm had breached terms of various option schemes by failing to approve his requests to exercise the options

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CNOOC’s former head of legal department is taking the oil giant’s share options practice to court, according to a writ filed in Hong Kong. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 9:01am, 9 May 2017Updated: 10:55pm, 9 May 2017

A former head of legal department at CNOOC has put 16 years of grievances over his alleged inability to exercise his shares options into a rare law suit in Hong Kong against the Chinese state-backed oil and gas giant.

Zhao Liguo, a 32-year veteran who retired from the nation’s dominant offshore oil and gas producer two years ago when he was 62, claimed in a court writ that the firm had breached terms of its various option schemes, by failing to approve his requests to exercise the options.

“The defendant [CNOOC] had wrongfully detained and / or converted the share option certificates and exercise notice in respect of the share options since March 12, 2001 ... the plaintiff [Zhao] thereby suffered loss and damage being the difference between the subscription price of each of the share option that [he] would have validly exercised,” the writ claimed.

It seeks unspecified damages for the alleged failure to let Zhao exercise the options, and for the court to declare that Zhao had validly exercised the options by giving notices in the past two years.

In a statement emailed to the Post, CNOOC said “it has received the related statement of claim and will proactively cope with this matter.”

Zhao was general manager of the Hong Kong and New York-listed firm’s legal department between 2000 and 2009and subsequently was general counsel until June 2015 when he retired.