A Chinese court has charged the founder of home appliance giant GOME (國美) — once the country’s richest man — with bribery, insider trading and illegal business dealings, state media reported.
The indictment of Huang Guangyu (黃光裕) brings China one step closer to what is expected to be the highest-profile trial yet in the country of a private entrepreneur, and one that will be watched closely in the business community.
Huang, who had been held by authorities for 14 months without charge, will be tried in a Beijing court, without specifying a start date, Xinhua news agency said on Sunday, citing local media.
He is suspected of manipulating trading in two China-listed companies, China’s Securities Regulatory Commission has previously said.
A court official declined to comment on the case when contacted by reporters yesterday.
Huang, 40, once known as the “Price Butcher” for the low prices at his chain of consumer electronics stores, was named China’s richest man with an estimated net worth of US$6.3 billion by the Hurun Report in October 2008.
He was detained and placed under investigation a month later, and resigned as GOME director and chairman in January last year.
Two top police officials, including a former deputy minister of public security, were detained on suspicion of bribery in connection with the case.
Before his arrest, Huang was revered in the media as a model entrepreneur who rose from nothing by successfully capitalizing on China’s decades of economic reforms.
A high school drop-out, he started building his fortune when he was 16, with a roadside stall in Beijing selling radios and gadgets that he bought from factories near his hometown in Guangdong Province.
GOME Group is now China’s largest electronics and appliance chain with more than 1,200 stores in more than 200 cities.
Huang also ventured into private equity as head of the Beijing-based Pengrun Investment company.
He previously topped the Hurun Report’s rankings of China’s richest in 2004 and 2005.
Trading in Hong Kong-listed GOME was suspended in November 2008 after Huang was placed under investigation.
But it resumed in June last year after new chairman Chen Xiao (陳曉) announced that private equity firm Bain Capital would invest US$233 million through a bond issue.
A spokeswoman for GOME in Hong Kong said the listed firm “has never taken any position on the ex-chairman.”
“Unless there was anything linked to the company itself, we wouldn’t make any comment,” she told reporters.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day