A brief history of the domineering president
Author | Edited by Xue Yaping | Zhao Jinjie
Source | Packed Lunch Finance (ID:daxiongfan)
Li Ruijie, chairman of Zhongqingbao, a listed company that claimed to fire "disobedient" employees, fired himself first.
On May 6, Zhongqingbao issued an announcement that Li Ruijie resigned as chairman and director of the company, and the chairmanship will be taken over by Li Ruijie's son Li Yilun. This succession change came a bit suddenly, you know, Li Ruijie's original term of office was until May 11, 2023. The sudden resignation of many people may be related to the mandatory overtime work exposed on May Day.
Before the May Day festival, an internal chat record of China Youth Treasure Company was circulated on the Internet, and Li Ruijie not only exploded to the employees with foul language" "I want to blow up all of you" and "all the water blowers!" Buy a piece of tofu yourself and crash it to death", and forced employees to work overtime during the May Day holiday, and said that they were "dissatisfied with it, and immediately fried".
After this remark was exposed, it caused an uproar on the Internet. Subsequently, Zhongqingbao issued an apology statement, saying that it would "strictly implement the provisions of the Labor Law and other legal rules on the May Day holiday leave and overtime system" and "for the improper actions made in this emergency, the chairman himself has deeply realized the seriousness of the matter and made self-reflection." ”
As the chairman of a listed company, this is not the first time that Li Ruijie has "gone out of line" and reflected on the apology. More than a decade ago, he beat others twice in public because of his hot temper, and after being reported by the media, he also spread the words that "whoever dares to sue me, I will teach whom, I will beat whom".
Li Ruijie's out-of-line remarks and beating behavior were even ridiculed by Zhongqingbao's gamers. In February 2022, the company's game "Brewmaster" was launched, and the gamers joked that they wanted to talk to Lao Li in person about the game and let him beat me.
As a veteran game company in the A-share market, in the past ten years, Zhongqingbao has been deeply branded as a founder. People familiar with Li Ruijie know that this company has many amazing moves, such as "National Day military training", let the departing employees "die, to help children change diapers", "eliminate money-losing goods" and other remarks.
In 2011, the online game industry was in a slump, and rumors of layoffs in the game industry were rife. As the "first stock of online games on the ChiNext board" at that time, Zhongqingbao, which was listed in the second year of listing, was on the cusp of the storm many times because of the chairman's excessive remarks.
At the end of September 2011, according to Tencent Technology, Li Ruijie, CEO of Zhongqingbao, issued a battle declaration to eliminate all the 'money-losing goods' of the company, and also said that "whoever loses money please die" and let the employees who do not earn money all get out of the egg.
Source: Tencent Technology
Just two months after the declaration of the battle, Li Ruijie was condemned by public opinion for publicly beating the female lawyer.
That year, the American company Adobe sued Zhongqingbao for infringing its computer software copyright. After being accepted by the court, Zhongqingbao Legal Counsel contacted liao Aimin, the other party's lawyer, and the two sides discussed the settlement. Unexpectedly, before the two sides met and discussed, the lawyer was intimidated by Li Ruijie and asked to withdraw the lawsuit.
According to the Yangcheng Evening News, after Liao Aimin refused to withdraw the case, he was threatened by Li Ruijie that if she represented the case, he would chase her home and chase her lawyer's office, Li Ruijie smashed his fist at her while speaking, and even picked up a chair and smashed it on her head, causing her to faint on the ground with blood on her head.
Image source: Daily Economic News
After being taken to Nanshan Hospital, the lawyer received 6 stitches in the head and injured many parts of the neck, back, waist and knees. The diagnosis showed "concussion, scalp laceration, acute lumbar disc herniation". On the day of the peace talks, the lawyer also received a text message from a person claiming to be Li Ruijie, including the sentence, "Tonight send a representative to your home to talk to you overnight."
After the beating incident, Zhongqingbao was shocked by public opinion, and Li Ruijie apologized, saying, "I am really sorry, I am also deeply reflecting, in the future, we must be cautious in words and deeds, and we can no longer act rashly." ”
However, according to a January 2012 report by Tencent Technology, Li Ruijie believes that although the incident has damaged his personal reputation, he still feels proud, and some individuals' malicious rights protection behavior has been temporarily suppressed.
In 2013, Li Ruijie was once again exposed to beating people, and he still beat his own people.
While attending the dinner of the 2012 China Game Industry Annual Conference, Li Ruijie clashed with Wu Peng, the company's former vice president, and injured him in the head. Afterwards, Wu Peng sent a Weibo post: "When you are bitten by a dog, what do you do?" ”
Li Ruijie's entanglement with Wu Peng dates back to Wu Peng's departure in 2011. When Wu Peng was still in Zhongqingbao, he was in charge of overseas business. On the occasion of his departure, Wu Peng was personally issued a non-compete order by Li Ruijie. In a 2011 interview, Li Ruijie said that he personally issued a non-compete order to Wu Peng because his departure was seriously damaging to the company, and he controlled the resources of the entire overseas business, posing a huge potential risk to the company's overseas business.
Li Ruijie believes that Wu Penglai Zhongqingbao is gilded, and said that "this method of gilding in a company and riding a donkey to find a horse is not advisable." ”
In addition to making shocking remarks and beatings, Li Ruijie's outrageous behavior in those years also included asking employees to conduct military training on National Day, which in the eyes of the helmsman was "not a simple military training, but a melting trip."
"I myself was born as a poor child, and I was fortunate to take the college entrance examination at Jieyang No. 1 Middle School through my own efforts, go to college, and through several years of hard work, I have made a little achievement."
Li Ruijie, who graduated from Nankai University with a double bachelor's degree in economics and electronics, once said this about himself in an event.
In the 1950s, Li Ruijie's father was the first college student in the village, until 1989, Li Ruijie graduated from Nankai University and became the second person.
After graduation, Li Ruijie, the salary of the first job was only 240 yuan, "smoking can only smoke 2 cents, it is simply impossible to live", three months later, Li Ruijie left the company, and then jumped to two companies in a row. Working for less than a year, Li Ruijie did not want to be a hit worker anymore, this kind of day at a glance made him "very uncomfortable, no passion, not exciting enough", he said that he is not the material of part-time work, nor is he a good part-time worker.
In the spring of 1990, Li Ruijie quit his job and began to follow others in business. By chance, Li Ruijie came into contact with the network card and entered the door of the IT world. In 1992, Shenzhen ushered in the opportunity to flourish, Li Ruijie also opened his first company, mainly to do computers, and later also to do compatible machines, but also to Compaq server as a proxy. But he thinks there is something wrong with Compaq, and it is at this time that Li Ruijie runs into Intel.
In 1999, Intel was preparing to promote its own AI architecture servers and standards in the mainland, but it was unprecedentedly cold, and finally reached a cooperation with Li Ruijie's Boyd. In the server market, Baode was supported by Intel, and by 2000, Baode occupied 5% of the domestic market share, becoming the third state-owned brand of servers.
If Li Ruijie after 2011 is a bit "out of line", then before Zhongqingbao, Li Ruijie also created an entrepreneurial myth. In the jianghu of servers, Li Ruijie took a small company with only more than 20 people, and in only three years, he rushed into the top three of China's server market. In 2002, the five-year-old Baode Technology was successfully listed in Hong Kong, and the rise of Baode was once summarized as the "Baode phenomenon".
After experiencing the Internet bubble in the early 21st century, online games have become a life-saving straw for almost all Internet companies, such as NetEase and Shanda.
Although the main battlefield is still in the server market, Li Ruijie has also found a new breakthrough for Baode - games. At the end of 2003, Baode's game "Great Qing Empire" was released. In an interview, a reporter asked him, what should I do if I lose money? Li Ruijie said, I only earn and do not lose. It was also this year that Zhongqingbao Company, which positioned online games, was established in Shenzhen.
In the first few years of Baode, Li Ruijie attached great importance to talents, and the culture of good people ran through the corporate values. Different from other enterprise awards for "hard-working employees" and "sales champions", Baode has been evaluating "Baode Good People" internally. In the view of Li Ruijie, "derby is important", which is Li Ruijie's fixed sentence for talents.
At the time, he explained that the current society is too much emphasis on a "utilitarian" color, and he believes that Baode is correcting a very impetuous mentality of the times.
Li Ruijie, who advocates "derby is important", has to move closer to "utilitarianism" in the face of performance, and the former "only earns and does not lose" and "correct impetuousness" seems quite ironic.
After entering the second decade of the 21st century, the game industry has once again ushered in a period of change, with large-scale production and high-cost heavy games piling up, and the game sector intensifying differentiation. Zhongqingbao, known for its "red online games", has also ushered in a painful period of transformation, and since 2012, Li Ruijie, who has been listed for two years, has tried to seize industry opportunities through large-scale mergers and acquisitions.
However, the performance is like a roller coaster. According to the performance report of Zhongqingbao, from 2010 to 2014, the revenue of Zhongqingbao increased year by year, but from 2015 to 2021, it declined as a whole, of which 2019 was slightly up but never reached 2014. The gross profit margin of Zhongqingbao also fell from 85.52% in 2010 to 31.24% in 2020.
Since the beginning of 2022, Zhongqingbao's stock price has fallen by 45%, and it has experienced a net loss for two consecutive years. According to the performance report of the first quarter of this year, the revenue of Zhongqingbao in the first quarter was 69.6 million yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 12.86%; the net profit was also reduced by 42.06% year-on-year. In the two days from April 28 to 29, CYB issued 29 consecutive announcements.
Performance and stock price forced Li Ruijie to be impetuous, and once said "second quarter, two months!" Give some urine sex is not OK" kind of words. Zhongqingbao's apology letter also mentioned that the chairman made inappropriate remarks because he did not complete the set performance target in the first quarter in the face of "adverse effects such as the epidemic".
It is worth noting that at the end of last year, Zhongqingbao issued an announcement on the granting of 2021 stock options to incentive recipients, and the company intends to grant 2.63 million stock options to the actual controller, chairman Li Ruijie and general manager Li Yilun respectively, that is, the father and son together account for 50% of the number of incentive plans granted.
Because of this matter, Zhongqingbao received a letter of concern, asking for clarification on the necessity and rationality of Li Ruijie's father and son becoming the object of incentives, and whether there was a situation of profit transmission.
In the incentive plan, there is a detail that needs to be paid attention to, the performance appraisal requirements for the first exercise period are based on the operating income in 2021, and the growth rate of operating income in 2022 is not less than 10%. According to the revenue of Zhongqingbao in the first quarter of the decline of more than 12%, if the revenue in the second quarter cannot be improved, then the difficulty of Li Ruijie's father and son wanting to get stock option rewards will undoubtedly increase.
In order to change the decline in performance, Zhongqingbao once rubbed on the hot spot of the meta-universe, and in September last year, the stock price of the "meta-universe" game "Brewmaster" soared, but it also attracted the attention of the regulator. The Shenzhen Stock Exchange twice issued a letter of concern asking it to make a detailed explanation of the concept of "Master Brewer" and the meta-universe, and Zhongqingbao replied that there is no motivation to "rub" the hot concept of the meta-universe to hype the stock price.
Although he stepped down as the chairman of Zhongqingbao, Li Ruijie is still the actual controller of Shenzhen Baode Technology Co., Ltd., which is the largest shareholder of Zhongqingbao. This also means that Li Ruijie still firmly controls Zhongqingbao behind the scenes, and his son Li Yilun, who was pushed to the front of the stage, has not yet obtained the actual shares of Zhongqingbao.
Public information shows that Li Yilun was born in 1994 and graduated from the University of California. In 2017, Li Yilun, who had just turned 23, served as the chief operating officer of Zhongqingbao and served as general manager since January 2020, director since May 2020, and chairman in May 2022.
The succession of the "second generation" of the family business has always been a long-term test for the enterprise. Whether the hastily succeeded Zhongqingbao can change the performance decline in the hands of this 28-year-old successor who has not yet had sufficient management experience is full of uncertainties at present.
Resources:
"Zhongqingbao CEO Li Ruijie: Eliminate money-losing goods, don't make money, employees get out of the egg" Tencent Technology
"The chairman of the listed company smashed the female lawyer with a chair", Yangcheng Evening News
"Zhongqingbao Li Ruijie: The online game industry needs intense sound" game grand view
"Zhongqingbao Li Ruijie: Injuring Adobe lawyers can curb malicious rights protection" Tencent Technology
"Li Ruijie: The server is also deep" knowledge hero, Zhuang Xianhai