Chinese billionaire Jia Yueting’s vision of an empire to rival Apple, Tesla and Amazon is fading fast
A Shanghai court has frozen the 16 billion yuan stake Jia owns in LeEco’s Shenzhen-listed Leshi Internet Information & Technology Corp.
Chinese billionaire Jia Yueting, who once envisioned building an empire that would rival US tech giants Apple, Tesla and Amazon, is seeing it fall apart before his eyes.
The 44-year-old founder of internet media company LeEco has been forced to abort an ambitious overseas expansion, halt investments in new business ventures, fire a large number of employees to cut costs, and even sell properties and assets in exchange for cash.
Things went from bad to worse this week when the 16-billion yuan (US$2.3 billion) stake Jia owns and controls in LeEco’s Shenzhen-listed arm – Leshi Internet Information & Technology Corp – was frozen by a Shanghai court, the latest asset freeze action taken by creditors of the cash-strapped company.
According to a statement from Leshi on Tuesday night, Jia’s 26.03 per cent holding was frozen on Monday as a result of an asset-preservation action triggered by a loan Jia took out to finance LeEco’s smartphone business. Taking Leshi’s last share price of 30.68 yuan when trading was halted in April, Jia’s stake is estimated to be worth almost 16 billion yuan.
