Bottom leaf flying pseudo-market value management: collusion of "horse boys", "black eat black" disputes continue

Ye Fei, who had reported market manipulation by others and boasted of being a "hero in cracking down on 'pseudo-market value management'", was recently arrested and arrested by the public security organs. With Ye Fei's arrest, how this secondary market player operates in the A-share market has also become the focus of market attention. The reporter interviewed a number of people close to Ye Fei or involved in his trading operations, trying to restore the way and characteristics of his stock trading.

In fact, a few years ago, Ye Fei was already negatively entangled, encountering regulatory penalties, being listed as untrustworthy, etc., so the demand for listed companies to directly ask him to conduct trading plummeted. However, under the aura of the former private equity champion, Ye Fei is still deeply involved in the "pseudo-market value management" business, and the trading model is becoming more and more obvious to show the characteristics of collusion with the disk side. Ye Fei positioned himself as a "horse boy" of capital and disk, and used the vest to enter the fight, often breaking into the camp of the top ten outstanding shareholders of listed companies, and then quickly retreated.

The Ye Fei arrest incident can be regarded as a mirror of the "pseudo-market capitalization management" of A-shares. The regulator has "zero tolerance" to crack down on malicious market manipulation, full coverage of monitoring, full chain crackdown, and all-round accountability, so as to more effectively protect the legitimate rights and interests of investors and maintain the healthy and stable development of the capital market. At the same time, the Ye Fei incident also sounded the alarm for the actual controllers and directors and supervisors of listed companies involved in the "pseudo-market value management".

The conspiratorial "horse boy"

Judging from the Nanling Minbang trading case given by the regulatory investigation, Liu Jinye's gang controlled dozens of securities accounts by means of stock allocation and entrusted financial management, and was suspected of manipulating Nanling Minbang stocks by means of centralized capital advantages, shareholding advantages and continuous trading. Ye Fei actively provided relevant help and suggestions when he knew that he was manipulating stock prices, creating favorable conditions for manipulating the market and seeking illegal benefits.

What role did Ye Fei play in this? Wang Can, a person close to Ye Fei, told reporters that Ye Fei and his institution are actually the outsourcers of Liu Jinye's control of Nanling civil explosions, and the two sides jointly provide stock capital accounts, and Liu Jinye tracks and monitors Ye Fei's movements at any time and adjusts the asset allocation plan in a timely manner.

This division of labor is typical of leaf-flying trading. In the may report incident, Ye Fei was defined by the market as an intermediary and broker, but according to Wang Can, Ye Fei himself is more accustomed to seeing himself as a "horse boy" of the disk and the capital.

T Company in Jiangsu is the latest case of participation in trading before Ye Fei was arrested, and the son F of a leading entrepreneur family in Hebei Province is the trader. According to the cooperation agreement obtained by the reporter, the actual controller of Company T, as Party A and F as Party B, is responsible for investing in the purchase of the investment target designated by Party A during the cooperation period, with a total market value of 800 million to 1.5 billion yuan and a cooperation period of 3 years, with the goal of making the market value of Company T from 1.5 billion yuan to 4.4 billion yuan. F had previously planned to acquire a controlling stake in an A-share company, but it was unsuccessful.

People who understand the whole process of the operation revealed to reporters that the actual controller of T Company invested 50 million yuan to pay the deposit, and the net profit generated by the total investment of the two sides was distributed according to the proportion of 35% and 65%. However, after the trader opened a series of operations such as sucking chips, washing, pulling up and so on for the stock of Company T, it failed to raise the stock price as desired for a long period of time, which directly led to the loss of F-related accounts.

An accounting firm in Hangzhou once provided a special audit report for F. The reporter learned that from October to December 2018, F's trading volume with T Company was 15.91 million shares, and the loss was 11.71 million yuan. From January to June 2019, F's trading volume with T Company rose to 69.38 million shares, with a loss of 56.13 million yuan. This means that F has accumulated losses of more than 67 million yuan in the course of 8 months of trading, and at about a certain point, Ye Fei entered the game, and he positioned himself as F's "horse boy".

Wang Can introduced that after Ye Fei was punished by the regulatory authorities and included in the list of dishonest executors, the enthusiasm of listed companies to directly connect with them in market value management has cooled down significantly, and the actual controllers and important shareholders of listed companies have no longer dared to directly hand over the trading funds to Ye Fei.

"In the years after Ye Fei won the private equity championship, many listed companies welcomed the research of Ye Fei's team, usually received by the chairman of the listed company and the actual controller of the group." Wang Can said, "With the landing of a series of penalties, more and more listed companies dare not directly hand over funds to Ye Fei to operate, but on the other hand, the demand for trading is still strong, and many major shareholders of listed companies believe that whether it is mergers and acquisitions, industrial integration, or large and small non-reduction, equity investment and financing or equity incentives, these operations require the cooperation of secondary market stock prices to achieve the best results." ”

Wang Can said that because of this, Ye Fei began to contact more and more with Liu Jinye, Fan Mingke and other "rich second generation" as the disk, thus forming a certain sense of "collusion" model.

Benefits and Risks

In the process of close contact with the disk side, the interests of multiple parties are very clear.

Ye Fei's Yitian Investment is suspected of being involved as an outsourcer in the manipulation of nanling minbang stock price. Li Wei, a person close to Yitian Investment, told reporters that the agreement at that time was that when the total assets of the stock account were less than the sum of the initial funds of the stock account provided by the account owner and the cost of funds with an annualized return of 12%, it was regarded as a loss of the stock account. 70% of the loss is borne by Liu Jinye, and 30% is borne by Yitian Investment. In addition, the definition of risk control standards is that when the loss ratio of the total assets in the account reaches 10%, it is a liquidation line, and Yitian Investment should stop buying stocks and settle the position with Liu Jinye, if the stock is purchased, Liu Jinye has the right to liquidate the position at any time. For losses within the liquidation line, Liu Jinye bears 70%, Yitian Investment bears 30%, and for losses beyond the liquidation line, Yitian Investment undertakes to bear full responsibility for losses.

This reflects the caution of Ye Fei's trading. Wang Can introduced that Ye Fei had some concerns before participating in the trading of T Company, worried that the stock price would not be shipped after it was done, and he would be covered. At that time, in order to dispel his concerns, the parties involved agreed that after the disk party got the balance from Company T, it would allocate funds according to 1:3 and package it into a capital of 200 million to 300 million yuan, which would be managed by Ye Fei and others. This only dispelled Ye Fei's worries. Wang Can said.

This caution is also reflected in the trading process. Li Wei introduced, "In the Case of the Nanling Civil Explosion, Ye Fei once advised Liu Jinye not to have a high degree of control over the outstanding shares of a single stock, generally not more than 50%, but Liu did not adopt Ye's opinion. At the same time, in terms of shipments, Ye Fei also advised Liu absolutely not to ship to retail investors on the stop board, so that the public anger would be great. Judging from the continuous multi-day decline and stop of nanling minbang at the end of 2020, Liu also failed to listen, and finally deduced into a secondary market pig killing plate.

In many trading cases, Ye Fei will often observe the entry and exit of important shareholders and funds by asking for shareholder registers from listed companies, and thus weigh his position among important shareholders.

In fact, due to the large scale of trading funds, in some cases, Ye Fei has repeatedly bought the top ten outstanding shareholders. Taking T Company as an example, the name Huang Moujun appeared in the list of shareholders in the third quarter of 2019, ranking the ninth largest outstanding shareholder with 1.4 million shares.

Previously, some market interpretations believed that Huang Moujun was a well-known bull in A shares. However, the reporter interviewed a number of people close to Ye Fei and learned that this is actually a personal account that Ye Fei and others conduct independent transactions or entrust financial management.

The Hidden "Vest"

According to the reporter's combing, Huang Moujun has appeared in the relevant cases of Ye Fei's trading many times before.

In ST Huayu's 2019 semi-annual report, Huang Moujun was the seventh largest circulating shareholder of the company, holding more than 1.3 million shares, and quickly retreated in the third quarter of 2019. The reporter learned from informed sources that in the ST Huayu trading case, Ye Fei adopted the independent trading mode of entrusting financial accounts.

However, for st. Huayu's trading, it eventually triggered contradictions between the two sides. In May this year, because of the report of Zhongyuan Home was considered by the market to be "black eating black", Ye Fei posted that the last real-name report was ST Huayu, which has been investigated by the Securities Regulatory Commission.

Wang Can revealed that Ye Fei's trading of ST Huayu was "good", but just when the company's stock price was rising, he found that many large funds were smashing the market. Later, Ye Fei checked the company's shareholder register and believed that some important shareholders of ST Huayu had taken advantage of the opportunity to reduce their holdings and liquidate in violation of the previous agreement. This caused Ye Fei to be extremely unhappy, so he took a hit in the circle of friends and Weibo.

In addition, in the first quarterly report of *ST Zhongying in 2019, Huang Renjun also suddenly entered, becoming the eighth largest circulating shareholder with 1.4 million shares. The reporter also learned from people close to the company that this was a transaction that Ye Fei would carry out after someone promised to make a promise.

Li Wei introduced that Ye Fei's participation in the market value management or trading of listed companies will never appear in his own name, and generally he will control multiple securities accounts by means of entrusted financial management, and then continuously buy and sell through capital advantages to affect the stock price trend of individual stocks. Therefore, the "vest identity" can be regarded as a typical feature of Ye Fei's trading.

This feature has been around as early as 2015. At that time, Ye Fei had concentrated his capital advantages on buying 5 stocks such as Xinwei Group (delisted), Jinxi Axle, Jianghuai Automobile, Aotexun and Zhongqingbao in the tail end stage, affecting the price and trading volume of related stocks, and then selling in reverse, which caused regulatory attention and was punished. Among them, in cases such as Xinwei Group, the main account involved in Ye Fei was Yang Qian.

It is reported that at that time, Ye Fei and Yang Qian signed the "Entrusted Financial Management Agreement". In a "Stock Account Handover Confirmation Form" obtained by the reporter, Yang Qian's account opening broker, account type (margin account), account number, communication code and other information were written in detail. According to the documents, on April 30, 2015, Ye Fei received 80 million yuan of funds and acted as a trader in Yang Qian's account. Since then, Yang Qian has made rapid fund additions, adding 20 million yuan and 70 million yuan on May 13 and 14 of that year, respectively, and the account funds have reached 170 million yuan.

In the 2015 semi-annual report of Xinwei Group, the company's largest circulating shareholder became Yang Qian, but Yang Qian quickly withdrew in the third quarter report of 2015.

"Black eats black" disputes continue

Although he has won the title of private equity champion, from the final operation, many cases have disputes.

Public information shows that in 2015, Ye Fei's entrusted financial investment was only more than two months, and the principal of 305 million yuan was lost only 27 million yuan, with a loss of 278 million yuan, with a loss ratio of more than 90%. Later, the parties sued the court, and Ye Fei was awarded about 220 million yuan in damages by the court. Ye Fei, who was entangled in lawsuits, was also restricted by the court from spending and became a dishonest executor. This is also an important fuse for Ye Fei's transformation into a "conspiratorial horse boy".

Li Wei told reporters that at that time, Ye Feigang won the private equity championship and began to teach people to speculate in stocks, and the object was still a group of high-net-worth EMBA students. As a result, many students have made huge losses, and the tuition fees paid by the students for this loss are not low, and the training fees are often hundreds of thousands or even more than 200,000 yuan.

Even if the stock prices of listed companies operated by Ye Fei have experienced flowers and flowers and fiery cooking oil, there will be various disputes. In the end, the market value management of T Company not only failed to bring about a positive interaction between capital operation and entity operation, but also triggered a debt dispute. According to people familiar with the matter, when T Company rose to a market value of 4.4 billion yuan, F was unhappy with the listed company because of the balance problem. In June 2021, F and Ye Fei signed a power of attorney entrusting the latter to handle all matters between F and T.

In Ye Fei's trading, not all cases can be completely withdrawn. Among them, when trading T Company, although the company's stock price achieved a sharp rise at a specific stage, Ye Fei was trapped, with a loss of between 20% and 30%, and the amount of loss was about 10 million yuan.

Li Wei told reporters that there is a popular saying in the trading circle, "One person does not enter the temple, two people do not look at the well", which means to prevent the inner volume of "black eating black". "Although Ye Fei once regarded himself as a whistleblower after the last market value management was exposed, the market has eyes and the law has teeth, so as to better create a capital market ecological environment of honesty, credibility, fairness and justice, win-win sharing, inclusiveness and inclusiveness."

Wang Can also said that in the A-share market, although "pseudo-market value management" is not mainstream, there is indeed a gray and black interest chain in which individual manipulation gangs collude with capital allocation intermediaries, market brokers, stock market black mouths, etc. From the perspective of regulatory actions, this is one of the key types of illegal acts cracked down on by "zero tolerance" in recent years. In fact, in addition to Ye Fei as a horse boy or a trader, including the actual controllers of listed companies and the directors, supervisors and other relevant parties, they should learn lessons from it, and should not take chances to engage in illegal and improper pseudo-market value management and stock price manipulation. The optimization of the capital market ecosystem requires the joint efforts of every participant. (Wang Can and Li Wei are pseudonyms in the text)

Column Editor-in-Chief: Gu Wanquan Text Editor: Lu Xiaochuan Caption Source: Shangguan Tu Editor Photo Editor: Yong Kai

Source: Author: Securities Times Aisti