The chairman and vice chairman disappeared, the gold business stagnated, and the bond defaults one after another... Qiulin Group, a century-old brand that once became Harbin's business card with food and department stores, ultimately did not survive the spring of 2021.
In March 2021, after the stock was suspended from listing, the latest disclosed net profit and net assets at the end of the period were still negative, and the accounting firm issued an audit report that could not express an opinion. The Shanghai Stock Exchange decided to terminate the listing of *ST Qiulin's stock, and the delisting settlement period was from March 19 to April 30.
In the view of industry insiders, the sad exit of Centennium Qiulin was based on the mediocre performance of its food and department stores, and the operating crisis caused by long-term internal control chaos, blind diversification, and the explosion in gold business, which eventually fell from its peak.
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was once Harbin business card
On March 30, 2021, Qiulin Group issued an announcement stating that Qiulin Group's stock trading had a cumulative daily closing price decline deviation value for two consecutive trading days on March 29, 2021 and March 30, 2021, reaching the abnormal fluctuation of stock trading stipulated by the Shanghai Stock Exchange. The closing price of 0.5 yuan per share on the same day. On the news front, on March 11, Qiulin Group received the Shanghai Stock Exchange's decision to terminate the listing and entered a 30-day delisting settlement period on March 19. If the full-day suspension factor is not considered, the last trading date is expected to be April 30, 2021.
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Qiulin Group has a history of a hundred years. In 1867, the Russian Ivan Yakorevich Qiulin founded the Qiulin company in Russia, and moved to Harbin in 1917. In the war-torn era, Qiulin Company changed hands several times. From 1937 to 1945, it successively took over the United Kingdom, Japan and the former Soviet Union, and was finally handed over to the Chinese government for a fee in October 1953. On March 5, 1992, Qiulin Company, which is owned by the whole people, was reorganized into a joint-stock company, and in 1996, it was listed on the main board of the Shanghai Stock Exchange with "Qiulin Shares" as the securities abbreviation. In 1998, Qiulin formed Harbin Qiulin Group with Harbin Qiulin Co., Ltd. as its parent company, and the securities abbreviation was changed from "Qiulin Co., Ltd." to "Qiulin Group".
"The century-old Qiulin's business has become like this, it is not a matter of overnight." Investor Mr. Zhang only felt it was hard to describe the delisting of Qiulin. Once upon a time, "When you mention Harbin's specialties, you will think of Lieba and red sausage . The most representative brand of these foods must be Qiulin." Mr. Wang, a consumer in Harbin, recalled that in the 1970s and 1980s, Qiulin Group's food and department store business was in full swing. "Qiulin is a business card in Harbin. Everyone goes to Qiulin when shopping and buying specialties. If the shopping center in Daoli District is Central Street, then Nangang District must be Qiulin."
At present, Qiulin Group has two well-known department stores in Harbin, Qiulin Company and Qiulin International Shopping Center, only one street away, but Mr. Wang said that no matter which one, he and his friends rarely go there. "On the one hand, there are more shopping methods and choices now. On the other hand, Qiulin's layout and counters are not as new as emerging department stores." In the eyes of many Harbin people, the decline of Qiulin's business is due to the completion of department stores such as Yuanda and Songlei after the 1990s, and Qiulin's passenger flow has gradually dispersed.
Entering the 21st century, Qiulin Group's management has also experienced the disadvantage of being overly ill. At that time, some media pointed out that from 2002 to 2004, Qiulin Group had 19 "bos" including general manager, deputy general manager, assistant manager who enjoyed the treatment of deputy managers. The number of "bos" of Shanghai Hualian Shopping Mall of the same type was 10, and there were only four or five "bos" of Yuanda and Songlei.
From 2001 to 2003, Qiulin's net profit suffered losses of 51.802 million yuan, 140 million yuan and 159 million yuan. After three consecutive losses, Harbin’s “state-owned enterprise reform” brought new opportunities to Qiulin. In 2004, Heilongjiang Benma Industrial Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Benma Group") acquired 59.9137 million state-owned shares of Qiulin Group held by the Harbin State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission for 114 million yuan, accounting for 24.6% of the total share capital of Qiulin Group, becoming the former largest shareholder of Qiulin Group. From 2004 to 2007, Qiulin Commercial and Qiulin Industry successively transformed from state-owned enterprises into private enterprises, among which the commercial part was the listed company Qiulin Group; the industrial part was Harbin Qiulin Candy Factory; and the food part was Qiulin Food.The dividends brought by the transfer of
shares only made Qiulin Group briefly turn losses into profits in 2004. From 2005 to 2006, Qiulin Group suffered losses of 70.342 million yuan and 67.2527 million yuan. Since then, the profits from 2007 to 2009 were RMB 3.5202 million, RMB 16.4763 million and RMB 4.885 million, respectively, which is not impressive. In March 2012, Qiulin Group invested 49.48 million yuan to acquire 100% of Qiulin Food's equity and 100% of Xintiandi Qiulin Food's equity, returning to the two-way parallel stage of department stores and food.
share the name "Qiulin" to cause confusion in consumers
Currently in the food business, Qiulin Group owns the company Qiulin Food, and Qiulin Candy Factory owns the company Qiulin Lidaos Food, Qiulin Beverage Technology, etc. Because the above-mentioned products are marked with the words "Qiulin", it often causes confusion among the public. In March 2021, shortly after Qiulin Group announced its termination of listing by the Shanghai Stock Exchange, Qiulin Ridos, a subsidiary of Qiulin Candy Factory, issued a statement clarifying that Qiulin Ridos Red Sausage and Qiulin Gwas Beverage have nothing to do with Qiulin Group.
Harbin consumer Ms. Fan told the Beijing News reporter that some old Harbin people know that they can buy Daleba bread and red sausages at the Qiulin Food Store and Qiulin Lidaos Store. After the two split, for a period of time, the Qiulin Lidaos store could only buy "Qiulin Lidaos Red Sausage" and the Qiulin Food store could only buy "Qiulin Daleba Bread". Later, Qiulin Food Store also sold red sausages, but the name was "Yiya Qiulin Red sausages". "At that time, many consumers couldn't figure out who was the real "Qiulin" of Qiulin Ridaos and Yiya Qiulin Red Sauce, and they had also been on TV news, but they were actually true. However, many young people in Harbin do not understand the difference between them, and outsiders are even less clear."
"Yiya Qiulin Red Sauce" and "Qiulin Ridaozi Red Sauce".
Director of Beijing Beijing Business Circulation Strategy Research Institute and Executive Vice President of Beijing Business Economics Association Lai Yang told the Beijing News reporter that similar brand names are actually of many reasons. The similarity between "Qiulin" is not caused by mutual imitation, but by historical reasons such as enterprise reform. As a famous time-honored brand trademark in history, Qiulin brand has a good historical image and status in the hearts of consumers. When Qiulin Group and Qiulin Candy Factory separated, their respective food companies developed better, so no one was willing to give up the word "Qiulin", and there was a situation of sharing the name.
"This kind of situation is very common among the time-honored brands in the country, such as Beijing Shengxifu and Tianjin Shengxifu, Beijing Hendry , Shanghai Hendry and the ' Hendry ' in many places across the country, and there is no direct property rights connection between each other." Lai Yang pointed out that in this case, some time-honored brands will use stopgap measures to solve it. For example, some " Hendry " in different regions chose to establish institutions of similar association nature to jointly hold trademark development. However, after the separation of brands like Qiulin and other brands operating in the same region, it is inevitable that the business and product structure will intersect each other in actual operations. The above situation is not applicable. "It is difficult for consumers to clarify the historical relationship between enterprises, and it will cause confusion."
Lai Yang said that if you want to enhance the recognition of the product, relevant companies can consider developing the second and third brands, and replace the current brand after it grows, avoiding overlap. But this is also another common controversy among companies - "Why did I give up, not others give up?" Such historical problems are often difficult to solve.
Obviously, in terms of the use of the name "Qiulin", neither Qiulin Group nor Qiulin Candy Factory chose to give up. In March 2021, on the Tmall platform, a reporter from the Beijing News can see from the "Harbin Qiulin Food Specialty Store" under Qiulin Group that there are products such as "Yya Laoqiulin Company Food Red Sausage" and "Daleba Hege Gas Beverage" on sale, while in the "Qiulin Lidaos Flagship Store" and "Qiulin Flagship Store" under Qiulin Candy Factory, you can see products such as "Qiulin Lidaos Red Sausage" and "Qiulin Lidaos Beverage". At the same time, on the relevant sales page, there are still consumers consulting on the differences and differences between the two.
Qiulin Group and Qiulin Candy Factory both sell red sausage and gawas beverages.
seeks diversified development to attract "gold" into the room
department store business has gone down the altar, and the food business needs to share the name of "Qiulin" with Qiulin Candy Factory. When the main business is difficult to make breakthroughs, Qiulin began to seek other businesses to bring growth points.
In November 2010, Benma Group and Heilongjiang Benma Investment Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Benma Investment") signed a "Share Transfer Agreement". Benma Group transferred nearly 59.9137 million shares of Qiulin Group held by it to Benma Investment, and Benma Investment became the largest shareholder and relative controlling shareholder of Qiulin Group. Yihe Gold holds 70% of the shares of Benma Investment and is the controlling shareholder of Benma Investment. Ping Guijie is the largest shareholder of Yihe Gold and the potential actual controller of Qiulin Group.
According to the simplified equity change report released by Qiulin Group at that time, the transfer was due to Qiulin Group's "existing assets are not of high quality and weak profitability, resulting in weak competitiveness of the company". The purpose of reducing the holdings was to promote Qiulin Group to implement the equity split reform after Benma Investment became the largest shareholder. In November 2010, the Qiulin Group's equity split reform manual showed that Yihe Gold will propose to inject Yihe Gold's high-quality gold jewelry design, production, wholesale and retail business into Qiulin Group within 12 months from the date of completion of the equity split reform plan to ensure the sustainable development and profit growth of Qiulin Group.
From January 2011, Qiulin Group has planned a major asset restructuring. However, less than a month later, since the integration of Yihe Gold's gold jewelry business has not yet ended and the asset restructuring cannot be started as scheduled, the restructuring was terminated. In the 2011 semi-annual report, the gold business appeared in Qiulin Group's revenue list for the first time. In February 2012, Yihe Gold paid 20 million yuan in cash to Qiulin Group in accordance with its commitment, and stated that it would make every effort to promote asset integration in the future and initiate asset restructuring at an appropriate time.
In 2014, Qiulin issued a plan to purchase 100% of the equity of Shenzhen Kumjulai Gold Jewelry Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Shenzhen Kumjulai") from Tianjin Jiayi Industrial Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Jiayi Industrial"), a subsidiary of Yihe Gold. In October 2015, the equity acquisition was sold for 1.358 billion yuan. This major asset restructuring transaction has made Shenzhen Kumquat Lai’s “backdoor listing” successful.
Because Jiayi Industrial is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Yihe Gold, Yihe Gold is the controlling shareholder of Qiulin Group, and the actual controllers of Jiayi Industrial and Qiulin Group are both Ping Guijie. After the acquisition was completed, Jiayi Industrial became the largest shareholder of Qiulin Group. Qiulin's "golden age" has officially begun. Since 2015, the wholesale business of gold jewelry has become the largest revenue in Qiulin Group's sub-industry. The generous gold dividends have prompted Qiulin Group to achieve net profits of 234 million yuan, 205 million yuan and 164 million yuan from 2015 to 2017 respectively.
It is worth noting that Shenzhen Kumjulai was established in 2009 and was acquired by Yihe Gold's subsidiary Harmony World in 2011. In May 2014, Jiayi Industrial, a subsidiary of Yihe Gold, was established. One month later, Jiayi Industrial acquired Shenzhen Kumjulai for 1 billion yuan, and in September of the same year, it sold Shenzhen Kumjulai to Qiulin Group. In the end, the transaction with Qiulin Group allowed Jiayi Industrial, which was established for about one year, to obtain more than 300 million yuan in cash flow in a short period of time.
Some industry insiders pointed out that Shenzhen Kumjulai's financial data also has obvious differences from comparable companies in the same industry. In 2012 and 2013, Shenzhen Kumjulai's revenue increased by 425.53% and 104.52% year-on-year, and net profit increased by 204.4% and 17.46% year-on-year. But in fact, since 2012, due to weak consumption and sharp fluctuations in precious metal prices, the operation of the jewelry industry has been greatly impacted. The revenue growth rates of comparable listed companies in the same industry in 2012 were 20.95%, 13.04%, and 155.18%, respectively, and the net profit growth rates were 16.90%, -70.57%, and -67.53%, respectively, and the revenue growth rates in 2013 were 29.08%, 28.57%, and 37.41%, respectively. Although the growth rate of net profit and revenue is much higher than that of the same industry, Shenzhen Jinjulai's ROE (net profit/net assets at the end of the period) in 2012 and 2013 was only about 6%, which is significantly lower than the peer level of about 20% such as Lao Fengxiang .
Regarding Qiulin Group's diversified development path to introduce gold, Shen Meng, director of Xiangsong Capital, told the Beijing News reporter that diversified development depends on whether it meets the capabilities and conditions of listed companies. It is not possible to diversify by putting some unrelated businesses together. Such "diversification" is to avoid regulatory arguments about asset restructuring and is extremely risky. Judging from the consequences, the injected gold and jewelry assets caused great losses to Qiulin Group's listed companies.
The golden dream is shattered and the debt is plagued by
Due to some gold business, Qiulin Group's internal control audit reports from 2015 to 2016 were successively issued negative opinions by accounting firms. In 2019, Qiulin Group even broke out a "golden robbery" that shocked the capital market.
On February 13, 2019, Qiulin Group announced that the shares of Qiulin Group held by Jiayi Industry and its joint actors Yihe Gold and Benma Investment were both frozen by the public security organs. On February 15, Qiulin Group announced that it could not contact Qiulin Group Chairman Li Ya and Vice Chairman Li Jianxin. On February 28, Qiulin Group was caught in a "carrot seal" case and found that it had issued a "Guarantee Letter" for Bin Ao Airlines in 2017, but the company did not have a record of stamping the official seal.
Subsequently, Qiulin Group's 2018 performance announcement changed drastically. On January 31, 2019, Qiulin Group stated in its performance forecast that it expected that its net profit in 2018 would decrease by about 47% to 56% year-on-year, but on April 25 of the same year, Qiulin Group issued a correction announcement stating that its net profit in 2018 is expected to lose 3.9 billion yuan to 4.3 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of about 2544% to 2788%. The reason is that the operating status of the companies under the Gold Business Department has basically stagnated, and asset impairment losses are fully accrued for some other receivables and advance payments, as well as asset impairment losses recognized for the assets being deposited.
final annual report shows that in 2018, Qiulin Group achieved a net profit of -4.131 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of -2625.23%. The gold sector directly under Li Ya and Li Jianxin's responsibility has been in stock and a large amount of receivables that cannot be verified. Due to false accounts and "lost" gold inventory, Qiulin Group raised a total of 3.695 billion yuan in bad debt losses that year. Some people converted the gold price at that time, and the above amount was about 10 tons of gold.
For this annual report, all directors, supervisors and senior executives said that due to the loss of contact between the chief and vice chairman, the verification of huge accounts receivable, inventory, related parties, relationships and capital occupation in the gold business sector has not yet been completed, and the accounting firm issued an audit report that cannot express an opinion, which cannot guarantee that the content of the annual report is true, accurate and complete. On October 10, 2019, in the reply to the annual report inquiry letter and the revised 2018 annual report, all directors, supervisors and senior executives of Qiulin Group still stated that they could not guarantee this.
At the same time, in order to break through the limitations of income, in September 2019, Qiulin Group planned to cooperate with Peking University to rent out five properties from the latter. The cooperation was immediately inquired by the Shanghai Stock Exchange. It was under this inquiry that Qiulin Group went to Harbin Real Estate Registration and Transaction Archives Center to inquire and found that the four main properties of Qiulin Group had been seized, but Qiulin Group did not know the reason for the seizure.
On March 17, 2019, Qiulin Group disclosed that it was sued by China Merchants Bank Tianjin Branch for a factoring contract dispute with Tianjin Longtai Heating Equipment Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Longtai Heating"), but Qiulin Group has not reviewed or decided on factoring business or guarantee matters related to Longtai Heating. This also led to the illegal transfer of funds from Qiulin Group and China Construction Bank's special account funds raised.
In 2018, Qiulin Group established a special account for raising funds in China CITIC Bank Tianjin Branch, which will be supervised by China CITIC Bank Tianjin Branch. However, in February 2019, when relevant personnel of Qiulin Group handled the transfer business of the funds raised by "18 Qiulin 01" and the account detailed inquiry business, Huaxia Bank Tianjin Branch deliberately delayed and refused to cooperate on the grounds of the absence of the account manager, the system failure, the need to verify the authenticity of the official seal, and the questioning of the identity of the person in charge. It was not until Qiulin Group called the "110" to report the alarm that Huaxia Bank transferred the funds from the raised funds account without seeing the company's board of directors or shareholders' meeting resolution announcement and the transfer instructions of the bond trustee Wanlian Securities.In this regard, Qiulin Group filed complaints to the Tianjin Branch of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission on February 22, February 27 and February 28, 2019, respectively, reported the case to the Public Security Department.
Qiulin Group stated that the above incident caused Qiulin Group to fail to repay the current resumption of principal and interest payable on time of "16 Qiulin 01" and "16 Qiulin 02", resulting in the default of "16 Qiulin 01" and "16 Qiulin 02". On November 27, 2019, Qiulin Group stated that due to factors such as the loss of contact between the chief and vice chairman and the stagnation of the operation of the gold business unit, the interest on the "18 Qiulin 01" bond was temporarily unable to repay the interest on time, which constitutes a substantial default.
Litigation penalties continue to be
Gold disappeared, both the chief and vice chairman lost contact, and huge bonds were unable to be redeemed. In 2019 and 2020, Qiulin Group suffered consecutive losses of 531 million yuan and 582 million yuan, with an asset-liability ratio of 214.63% and 305.06%. The annual report was issued by an accounting firm to issue an audit report that could not express its opinions.
On May 24, 2019, the China Securities Regulatory Commission decided to file a case against Qiulin Company. At present, the investigation is still in progress, and Qiulin Group has not received concluding opinions or decisions on the matters filed. At the same time, in March 2020, the Shanghai Stock Exchange publicly condemned 14 senior executives including Harbin Qiulin Group Co., Ltd., , and then chairman Li Ya and then vice chairman Li Jianxin, and publicly determined that Li Ya and Li Jianxin were not suitable for serving as directors, supervisors and senior management of listed companies within 10 years.
regulatory authorities punish Qiulin Group and relevant responsible persons.
Under high debt pressure, in March 2020, Qiulin Group announced that it plans to apply for bankruptcy liquidation of its subsidiary Shenzhen Jinjulai, Qiulin (Shenzhen) Jewelry and Qiulin Caibao as a creditor. Qiulin Group pointed out that at the same time, the historical problems existing in the three subsidiaries are the main reason why Qiulin Group was issued an audit report that could not express opinions by accounting firms for two consecutive years. At present, the three companies and their respective subsidiaries owed Qiulin Group about 1.6 billion yuan, and production and production and sales were stagnant. Almost all employees left. The company was seriously insolvent and had been closed for nearly one year. It was unable to repay its due debts and lacked the ability to repay debts. However, according to the latest disclosed 2020 annual report, the Shenzhen Public Security Bureau is currently investigating the economic crimes involved in the company, so the company has not yet applied for bankruptcy liquidation from the court.
At the same time, the 2020 annual report pointed out that due to the impact of debt overdue, litigation and execution cases, Qiulin Group's assets and equity and assets held by its subsidiaries have been seized and frozen, and there are many litigation currently involved, and the results of the litigation are uncertain. If there is an effective judgment that is unfavorable to the company or the company's assets are enforced by the court, it may affect Qiulin Group's ability to continue operating.
In terms of the securities market, because the net assets at the end of two consecutive years in 2018 and 2019 were negative, the financial reports for 2018 and 2019 were issued by an accounting firm to express their opinions. On March 18, 2020, Qiulin Group's stock was suspended from listing. In March 2021, after the stock was suspended from listing, the audited financial accounting report in the latest fiscal year was negative for negative net profit and net assets at the end of the period, and the accounting firm issued an audit report that could not express an opinion. The Shanghai Stock Exchange decided to terminate the listing of *ST Qiulin's stock, and the delisting settlement period was from March 19 to April 30, and the century-old Qiulin ended in the secondary market.
On the first day of Qiulin Group's delisting and sorting period, the Beijing News reporter sent an interview outline based on Qiulin Group's requirements, and as of now, no response has been received. A reporter from the Beijing News found on WeChat and e-commerce platforms that as of March 28, Qiulin Food's products were in normal sales.
Qiulin Food e-commerce platform and other sales are currently normal.
In the view of economist Song Qinghui, although Qiulin Group, as the gold introduced by diversified development, was helpful to its short-term performance growth, it weakened its main business department stores and food, and it lost its foundation for its business, and eventually failed. At the same time, Qiulin's entry into the gold jewelry business seemed to be a business transformation, but in fact it was more like Yihe Gold's backdoor listing and then leaving with money.Qiulin's delisting root lies in his own serious problems, such as the loss of contact with executives and financial fraud, which eventually led to his deep business crisis and falling from the peak to hell.
At the same time, Song Qinghui believes that Qiulin's delisting is also of great warning to listed companies in seeking diversified development. There are often too many uncertain risks in seeking diversified development. If you enter industries with low correlation, management, talents, technology, knowledge, etc. will become shortcomings in corporate development, and there may be more problems in actual operation than expected. For a listed company trying to seek diversified development, it is necessary to conduct sufficient research and repeated demonstration of the selected areas in actual operations, otherwise diversification may encounter a series of setbacks.
Beijing News reporter Wang Siyang
Editor Zhu Fenglan Proofreading Li Ming
