15 years ago, Wong Kwong Yu, then a billionaire in Beijing and a retail entrepreneur, had the wind in his head. Wong crowned Forbes China’s Rich List in 2006 with a fortune of $2. 3 billion thanks to the Flagship Chain listed in Hong Kong. of retail stores he founded, Gome Electrical Appliances Holding, now called Gome Retail Holdings.
However, in 2010, Wong was sentenced to 14 years in prison for insider trading and other crimes. This setback came around the same time as e-commerce corporations such as JD. com and Alibaba were accelerating the digitization of the country’s retail landscape. The merging of social media and e-commerce into corporations like Xiaohongshu has only increased the pressure on the old guard and stores in general.
Although Wong was paroled in 2020, tension at the company has not abated. Gome on Wednesday reported a loss of 4. 4 billion yuan, or 687 million U. S. dollars, in 2021, following another big loss of 6. 99 billion yuan in 2020. Last year’s sales topped 46. 4 billion yuan from 44. 1 billion yuan a year earlier.
The effects have been difficult for Gome shares, which have lost 67% over the past year. Shares of former rival Suning. com fell for part of the period.
Wong, who is no longer a billionaire on the Forbes list of real-time billionaires, is known as Huang Guangyu.
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