If any company does not follow the rules, it will eventually pay the price.
Lenovo's Liu Chuanzhi was once a godfather-level figure on an equal footing with Huawei Ren Zhengfei and Haier Zhang Ruimin, but with the development of the times, they have gone to different paths, Ren Zhengfei and Zhang Ruimin are relatively low-key, focusing on the internal operation of the enterprise. But Liu Chuanzhi has a jianghu atmosphere, likes to make friends, engage in entrepreneur circles, what Taishan Society, China Entrepreneur Club, Liu Chuanzhi seems to be the role of the leading big brother.
However, "often walking by the river, where there are not wet shoes", Liu Chuanzhi and his association became the darkest one. According to Lenovo's revenue scale of more than 400 billion yuan, it is one of the best private enterprises in the mainland, but why has it been repeatedly criticized?
Speaking of which, everything is "self-inflicted". Abandon Huawei on the 5G vote, choose Qualcomm, in order to reflect its global strength, even said that it is not a Chinese company, the price in the United States is lower than China, etc., Lenovo and its executives a series of behaviors, let Lenovo fall into the trough of public opinion.
Although the wind evaluation has been very poor in recent years, Lenovo seems to have been little affected, and its operating performance is still good, occupying the position of the global CP market leader. Just at the end of September last year, Lenovo sprinted to the science and technology innovation board, but encountered a large wave of doubts, research and development costs are too low, executive compensation is too high and so on.
This time, Lenovo did not easily escape public opinion, because the independent scholar Sima Nan stood up and questioned Lenovo, from the loss of state-owned assets, to the high salary of executives, to the occupation of commercial land, etc., which will rip Lenovo out of its essence.
Sima Nan has always hoped that the relevant departments can pay attention to and even investigate, but it seems that he has not waited. Then lenovo really has no problem at all? In fact, it is not, just on April 14, Legend Holdings was investigated and punished by the Beijing Securities Regulatory Bureau for four violations. It is manifested as insecurity and inaccuracy of information disclosure, unclear flow of operating and non-operating funds of its enterprises, etc.
As a large listed company, in terms of corporate governance, it should be very standardized, but there is such an obvious error, is it negligence, or is it deliberate? The Beijing Securities Regulatory Bureau intervened, and Lenovo began to pay for the mistake.
On May 7, Lenovo apologized, saying that it had completed the rectification work as required and submitted a rectification report. Lenovo reflects deeply to ensure that there are no more cases of inaccurate disclosures.
During the May Day period, Liu Chuanzhi and his daughter Liu Qing emptied Weibo one after another, which aroused public concern, and some people believed that it was a red flag. But in fact, Weibo was not emptied, but it was set for half a year to be visible. Liu Chuanzhi and Liu Qing have not appeared in public for a long time, and they are also silent about the voices of doubt from the outside world.
As for Lenovo, it seems that it is really beginning to reflect. A few days ago, Legend Holdings released its 2021 financial report, which performed very brightly, with revenue of 489.872 billion yuan and net profit of 5.755 billion yuan, both of which hit a record high. However, under such financial reports, Lenovo executive compensation has dropped by 75%.
Ning Min, chairman of Legend Holdings, will be paid a total of 16.509 million yuan in 2021, compared with more than 50 million yuan in the previous year. CEO Li Peng was 13.435 million yuan, more than 46 million in the previous year. Liu Chuanzhi, who took more than 76 million yuan last year, disappeared into the list, and Zhu Linan, who took more than 60 million yuan last year, only took more than 2 million.
I have to say that the compensation of Lenovo executives is really too high, only a few billion profits a year, 9 executives took 250 million yuan. This time, executive pay declines seem to be in response to questions from the outside world. However, Sima Nan said that there was a story behind the salary cut, and he did not say what the story was.
In addition, Lenovo is also preparing to invest 20 billion yuan in research and development every year in the next three years, compared with 10 billion yuan before, doubling, which is also a response to the problem of low external research and development investment. But is 20 billion more? In fact, it only accounts for about 4% of its revenue, which is not high at all for a self-proclaimed tech giant.
Lenovo was originally a state-owned enterprise 100% controlled by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, but after a series of operations, it eventually left less than 30% of the shares, and the rest was held by private enterprises and Liu Chuanzhi himself. Lenovo because of the "trade and industry" route, low profits, but executives with extremely high salaries, dividends are also very strong, since 2006, Lenovo Group profits of 6.1 billion US dollars, dividends of 4.1 billion US dollars.
If Lenovo has less dividends and more R&D investment, it will not have such a low profit today, nor will all its technology rely on foreign countries and become a computer assembly company. The real national enterprise is an enterprise with technological innovation, continuous progress, and user respect.
With the increase of supervision, enterprises that have made mistakes are impossible to pass the customs in this way, and they are bound to pay for their own actions.