On January 23, China Evergrande officials announced the change of two members of the board of directors. Lai Lixin resigned as an executive director to devote more time to other businesses of Evergrande Group and continue to work in Evergrande Group. Another executive director, Huang Xiangui, also resigned due to health reasons and continued to work in Evergrande Group after resigning. After two Evergrande senior executives resigned as executive directors of China Evergrande, two new faces joined the board, one is Evergrande Motor Chairman Sean, and the other is Cinda Hong Kong Chairman Liang SenlinThe incident that Liang Senlin, who has nothing to do with Evergrande, entered the board of directors of China Evergrande has attracted much attention from the outside world.
Chinese securities brokerage reporters noticed that before the change of directors, the Evergrande board of directors consisted of 6 executive directors and 3 independent non-executive directors, and all 6 executive directors were from Evergrande Group or Evergrande subsidiaries. After this change, the board of directors of Evergrande has become composed of 5 executive directors, 1 non-executive director and 3 independent executive directors. It is worth noting that this is the first time someone who has nothing to do with Evergrande has served as a non-executive director. Industry insiders believe that Evergrande’s board of directors welcomes “outsiders” and is a senior executive specializing in the disposal of non-performing assets, which may be related to Evergrande’s further resolution of debt risks.
Generally speaking, a change in a company’s board of directors can inform us of the company’s current and future priorities and goals. Sean, the new member of Evergrande’s board of directors, is the executive director of China Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group Co., Ltd. and the executive president of Evergrande Group Co., Ltd. Sean joined China Evergrande in November 2013 and served as Executive Vice President, Chairman of Evergrande Tourism Group Co., Ltd. and Chairman of Evergrande New Energy Vehicle Group. He has over 28 years of extensive business experience.
The reporter noticed that from the perspective of industrial layout, the executive directors of China Evergrande were mainly senior executives closely related to the real estate sector. But Sean, the auto sector executive joining the board, may be related to China Evergrande’s greater emphasis on the transformation of the auto sector in the future. In fact, Evergrande Automobile is an industrial sector that Evergrande has firmly invested in in recent years. In March 2021, Evergrande revealed that the cumulative investment in new energy vehicles reached 47.4 billion yuan.
After entering 2022, Evergrande’s auto sector also ushered in good news. On January 12, 2022, Evergrande officially announced that the first car of Hengchi 5 rolled off the production line at the Tianjin plant 12 days earlier than the original plan. This is the first car model launched by Evergrande. Earlier in October 2021, Xu Jiayin announced at the Evergrande Group’s resumption of work and production conference that Evergrande Group will comprehensively transform into a new energy vehicle company. He said that the sales of existing buildings will be fully implemented, and the scale of real estate development and construction will be greatly reduced, and no land will be purchased within 10 years. In 10 years, the transformation from the real estate industry to the new energy automobile industry will be realized.
According to the previous planning goal of Evergrande Automobile, the company is committed to becoming the world’s largest and most powerful new energy vehicle group.
