China’s GOME (國美) will take center stage this week in a bizarre corporate showdown pitting a jailed billionaire tycoon against executives of China’s biggest household appliance chain.
From his prison cell, the company’s founder Huang Guangyu (黃光裕) has waged a bitter war against GOME management, asking shareholders to vote tomorrow on his proposal to oust chairman Chen Xiao (陳曉), while installing his sister and lawyer on the company’s board.
Huang, sentenced in May to 14 years in jail for bribery and insider trading, is also trying to block the Hong Kong-listed firm from issuing new equity that would dilute his family’s position as its biggest shareholder.
The vote comes amid a nasty power struggle for control of the business empire that the high school-dropout built from scratch. Huang was once listed as China’s richest man before his stunning fall from grace.
GOME’s bosses have railed against Huang’s proposals, warning that he was not acting in shareholders’ interests and saying they have the support of US private equity firm Bain Capital, which owns a stake in the chain.
“It is coming down to the wire and everyone is pulling out all the stops,” said Francis Lun (藺常念), general manager of Hong Kong brokerage Fulbright Securities (富昌證券). “Everyone is acting in their own interest while shareholders be damned.”
Lun dismissed Huang’s chances of success in the vote, although he said it could be close because “his associates are buying up shares.”
“But public opinion is against him and he has no credibility,” Lun said.
A recent Financial Times editorial described the boardroom brawl as “anything but a routine battle for corporate control.”
“Rather, it sheds a light, of sorts, on the wild-west world of Chinese capitalism,” it said.
“[China’s] free market has more in common with the US robber-baron era or the more recent helter-skelter capitalism of Russia in which fortunes were handed out and snatched away before you could reach for your gun,” it said.
GOME, which has about 1,100 retail stores across China, has sued Huang over alleged breaches of fiduciary duty while he served as a director in 2008.
The chain’s management has garnered support from several investor rights and advisory groups, including Glass, Lewis & Co, a major institutional shareholder advisory.
If shareholders vote down Huang’s proposals, it would be a “victory for corporate governance,” said Jamie Allen, secretary general of Hong Kong-based Asian Corporate Governance Association.
“It is a very unusual situation,” Allen said. “If I were a small shareholder, I’d rather the current management win.”
Several top Chinese police officials were ensnared in Huang’s corruption case, including the former assistant minister of public security who was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve, according to state media reports. The conviction is usually commuted to life in prison.
Last month, Beijing’s High Court freed Huang’s wife Du Juan (杜鵑) on parole after commuting her three-year prison term for insider trading, but upheld his sentence. Huang was also fined 800 million yuan (US$120 million).
Huang then upped the ante by threatening to cut contracts between the company and hundreds of stores he still owns if Chen was not sacked. The threat was dismissed as an “empty ultimatum” by GOME management.
GOME’s founder reportedly staged a flip-flop two weeks later by offering to sell hundreds of stores back to the chain while asserting his control over the well-known brand.
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