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In the 10th year of the debt crisis, Sichuan's largest private iron and steel enterprise - Chuanwei Group*** hereinafter referred to as "Chuanwei Group") is still on the long road to repay debts.
Recently, Beijing Shougang International Engineering Technology ***, one of the creditors of the "Chuanwei Department", hereinafter referred to as "Shougang Engineering"), told Jiupai Finance that two subsidiaries of Chuanwei Group owed it hundreds of millions of yuan in project payments and had not been settled for more than ten years. As of October 17 this year, the total amount of execution money recovered by Shougang Project was only 18.65 million yuan, less than 5% of hundreds of millions of arrears.
In addition, similar to Shougang Engineering Company, on February 28 this year, Beijing Jinzi Tianzheng Intelligent Control Co., Ltd. issued an announcement, saying that Chuanwei Group's Chengyu Vanadium and Titanium delayed 0The contract payment of 9.5 billion yuan has not been paid, and the company has filed a lawsuit with the court.
Chuanwei Group's above-mentioned debt burdens are related to the collapse of the capital chain 10 years ago. In March 2014, a month after the "100 billion" vision, Wang Jin, the actual controller of Chuanwei Group, announced at the senior management meeting: "The cold wave has come";In July of the same year, Chuanwei Group submitted an application for judicial reorganization to the court, and more than 10 listed companies in cooperation fell into the debt quagmire.
Up to now, the scale of the remaining debts of Chuanwei Group is unknown. But judging from the results, the creditors who have been waiting for the Chuanwei project money have been unable to execute the property for a long time. Tianyan check shows that Chuanwei Group still has 16 records of dishonest persons subject to execution, of which 15 have not been performed, and the proportion of unfulfilled is as high as 938%。
It is located in the factory area of Chuanwei Group in Lianjie Town, Weiyuan County, Neijiang City, Sichuan Province.
Paradoxically, after dumping the debt to the subsidiary, Chuanwei Group's revenue performance has repeatedly reached peaks. On the list of "Top 100 Private Enterprises in Sichuan in 2023" released in November, Chuanwei Group ranked 815The revenue of 6.6 billion yuan ranked third, second only to New Hope and Tongwei Group.
I can't find any property available for execution, but I can earn more than 80 billion yuan, where does Chuanwei's money come from?Some creditors have questioned this. In order to clarify the reason, Jiupai Finance recently visited a number of factories of Chuanwei Group in Sichuan Province, during which a person close to the Chuanwei debt incident told reporters that Chuanwei Group and its subsidiaries are suspected of completing the "extracorporeal circulation" by entrusting an unknown number of companies to collect and pay on behalf of others, which not only avoids debts but also achieves huge revenues.
In response to the scale of debts and the issue of collection and payment, Jiupai Finance has repeatedly contacted the head of the legal department of Chengdu-Chongqing Vanadium and Titanium, the director of the legal department of Chuanwei Group, the chairman of the board of supervisors and others. When asked about the scale of debt currently faced by Chuanwei Group, the operator of Chengdu-Chongqing Vanadium and Titanium Official Website said "no comment", and the chairman of the board of supervisors of Chuanwei Group said "I don't know". The head of the legal department of Chengyu Vanadium and Titanium said that the company's debt problem should be resolved through legal means.
[1] More than 80 billion revenue can not be executed
Lianjie Town, Weiyuan County, Neijiang City, Sichuan Province is the location of the old factory of Chuanwei Group. After the debt crisis in Chuanwei, Lianjie Town proposed to "do everything possible to ensure the normal production order of Chuanwei Group". In 2017, with the help of local ** and relevant banks, Chuanwei Group gradually resumed production and operation.
On December 20, when the Jiupai financial reporter visited, a train full of black ore was arriving in Lianjie Town through the Guilian Railway. A train worker told reporters that the ore comes from Panzhihua, Australia, etc., and there are up to a dozen ore trains arriving every day, all of which are used by Chuanwei Group for steelmaking. On that day, production operations were underway at the plant site, gray-white smoke was rising from several chimneys, several forklifts were passing through the factory area, and rust-red steelmaking wastewater soaked the mud floor.
The train filled with black ore arrives at the town of Lianjie via the Guilian Railway.
In February this year, the local ** reported the good start of Chuanwei Group: "The blast furnace of the ironmaking plant has achieved rapid production and efficiency within 72 hours of opening;Orders from plate mills are in short supply after the holiday";In November, Chuanwei Group appeared on the list of "Top 100 Private Enterprises in Sichuan in 2023", ranking third.
Behind the triumphant progress, the huge debt that is actually owed has not disappeared. In 2018, Chuanwei Group's financial liabilities exceeded 20 billion yuan, and according to Shougang Engineering, due to the continuous accumulation of interest, as of now, Chuanwei's debt scale is estimated to remain at this level. Jiupai Finance asked the Weiyuan County People's Court Office for confirmation on the debt scale of Chuanwei Group, and the operator said that "we need to understand and then reply". As of press time, the reporter has not received a response.
It is worth noting that there have been a number of lawsuits surrounding the debts of Chuanwei Group, but most of them were eventually terminated because "no property was found that could be enforced". Tianyancha shows that Chuanwei Group still has 48 final cases, with a total unfulfilled amount of more than 2.4 billion yuan, a proportion of 9988%。
Taking the Shougang Project case as an example, in August 2018, the Sichuan Provincial High People's Court ruled that two subsidiaries of Chuanwei, Chengyu Vanadium and Titanium Technology *** (hereinafter referred to as "Chengyu Vanadium and Titanium") and Neijiang Bowei Energy *** (hereinafter referred to as "Bowei Energy") respectively paid the arrears of Shougang Project16.9 billion yuan, 3$2.1 billion plus interest. However, up to now, the Bowei case has been finally adjudicated three times, and the vanadium and titanium case has also been finally ruled twice.
According to the enforcement ruling, the land use rights, houses, and vehicles of the two companies seized by the Weiyuan County People's Court have been seized in a separate case, and "there are no conditions for disposal for the time being".The court did not find any property available for enforcement by the person subject to enforcement through the online enforcement investigation and control system investigation and on-site investigation, so it ruled to terminate the enforcement procedure.
Regarding this result, the relevant person of Shougang Engineering believes that Chuanwei Group is suspected of transferring the cash flow of Chongqing vanadium and titanium through collection and expenditure, resulting in the false impression that the subsidiary has no executable assets. According to the "Letter of Entrustment and Collection" provided by a relevant person close to the case, Chengyu Vanadium and Titanium entrusted a company named "Weiyuan Pilot**" to collect wire remittances on behalf of them from May 26 to September 30, 2021 "due to business needs".
In addition, according to the account transaction details of Weiyuan Pilot**, from May 26 to June 9, 2021, Weiyuan Pilot collected 40 transaction payments for Chengdu-Chongqing Vanadium and Titanium, all of which were marked with the words "Collected on behalf of Chengdu-Chongqing", "Payment for Chengdu-Chongqing Vanadium and Titanium", "Steel Vanadium Titanium", etc., with a total transaction amount of 7008980,000 yuan. In addition, the company applied for a simplified cancellation before the deadline for its capital contribution subscription. This means that Chengyu vanadium and titanium have become an "empty shell" at the asset execution level.
[2] The intricate "Chuanwei system."
At present, the implementation of the vanadium titanium and Bowei cases of Shougang Project has come to a standstill. Shougang Engineering told Jiupai Finance that in the past two years, Chuanwei Group has proposed a number of plans to resolve debts, but has no intention of directly paying off debts.
In February 2022, Chuanwei Group proposed a debt-to-equity swap, that is, to convert the debt of Shougang Engineering into the equity of Sichuan Xingxin Vanadium Technology *** hereinafter referred to as "Xingxin Vanadium"). Chuanwei Group said that Xingxin Vanadium will undertake Chuanwei's vanadium and titanium industry in the future, which is the key direction of the group's transformation and upgrading, and Xingxin Vanadium will also land in the capital market in the future.
In addition, Chuanwei Group also proposed many times last year that it hoped that Shougang Engineering Company would continue to undertake Chuanwei's projects, and Chuanwei would pay the new project funds in a timely manner, and the old debts would be slowly resolved.
Shougang Engineering did not agree to the above plan. However, in order to further obtain the debt, Shougang Engineering had requested that the profits of Sichuan Xingxin Vanadium Technology Co., Ltd. and Sichuan Xingchuan City Cement Co., Ltd. *** (hereinafter referred to as "Xingchuan City") and Sichuan Zhongxin Tourism Resources Development Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Zhongxin Tourism") be used to repay the debts, but many legal counsel of Chuanwei refused on the grounds that "the legal subjects are different and cannot be executed".
Judging from the equity penetration chart, Xingxin Vanadium, Zhongxin Tourism and Chuanwei Group do not have an equity relationship, and Starship City is only indirectly held by Chuanwei Group146%。However, whether it is the statement of people close to Chuanwei Group, or the visit and observation of Jiupai financial reporters, the three companies have intersections with Chuanwei Group in terms of management personnel and office addresses.
On December 19th, the factory located in Checheng East 6th Road, Longquanyi District, Chengdu, roared continuously. Although the exterior of the factory is written "Sichuan Longwei Metal Products", the heart-shaped logo of Chuanwei Group on the internal building is very eye-catching. A security guard told reporters that there are several companies that actually undertake production in the factory, all of which belong to Chuanwei Group. Among them, a building in the factory area is marked with "Sichuan Xingxin Vanadium Technology *** Chengdu Branch". Starship City and Zhongxin Tourism are located on the floor of Chuanwei Building on Tianfu Second Street, Wuhou District, Chengdu.
On the day of the visit, the reporter found that the logos of the three companies were similar to Chuanwei Group. The second production plant of Xingchuan City, which is 21 kilometers away from Lianjie Town, has the words "Chuanwei Xingchuan City Cement" written on the office building, and the words "Chuanwei Cement" are also written on the trucks queuing up for loading outside the production area.
The office building of Starship City Production Plant 2 and the tanker trucks queuing up to load goods outside the production area.
In terms of personnel and financial relations, Xingxin Vanadium, one of the three companies, also has some connection with Chuanwei Group. The equity penetration chart shows that three of the five shareholders of Xingxin Vanadium are also shareholders of Chuanwei Group.
Shougang engineering related people believe that it is precisely because of the inconsistency of the "legal subject" on the surface that Xingxin Vanadium, Starship City, Zhongxin Tourism and other companies have not only avoided the debts of Chuanwei Group, but also supported more than 80 billion yuan of revenue for the group.
[3] "Debt repayment" is a long road
In Lianjie Town, Chuanwei occupies most of the town's area.
Every day at half past four in the afternoon, Chuanwei Group's buses pass through the town, and Chuanwei employees wearing yellow safety helmets and blue uniforms can be seen everywhere. Here, there are signboards that specifically point to Chuanwei's warehouse and production area. Locals told reporters that almost every household in the town has someone who has worked at the Chuanwei factory. At the same time, Chuanwei also has its own gas station system in the town, and even Chuanwei of the Guilian Railway has a 44% stake.
Chuanwei Group's gas station in Lianjie Town.
It is understood that the predecessor of Chuanwei Group was Weiyuan Iron and Steel Plant, which was founded in October 1929. In the more than ten years after the restructuring in 1998, Chuanwei Group has achieved vigorous development. At the beginning of 2014, Chuanwei has more than 100 holding and shareholding subsidiaries, as well as two overseas listed companies, China Iron and Titanium and Singapore Shengshi, with total assets of more than 40 billion yuan and more than 20,000 employees.
However, on July 7, 2014, Chuanwei Group submitted an application for judicial reorganization to the court, and the debt crisis broke out. The company's leadership once said at the internal briefing that the group had a serious shortage of funds due to the large investment in the construction of the new area of the Chengdu-Chongqing vanadium and titanium project in the early stage, coupled with the bank loan collection and the recession of the steel industry.
The importance of such a company to the local community cannot be overstated. After the emergence of the debt crisis of Chuanwei Group, the relevant departments of Sichuan Province and Neijiang City immediately intervened in mediation, and more than 30 financial units reached an agreement with Chuanwei Group on debt restructuring, and "stop withdrawing loans and conditionally renew loans" became a consensusIn June 2019, at the Chuanwei Vanadium and Titanium Steel Base, Chuanwei and a number of banks held the "Signing Ceremony for Supporting the Private Economy and Debt Restructuring", marking that the systemic risks of Chuanwei Group were controlled.
In recent years, Chuanwei Group has promoted the transformation of the manufacturing industry to new materials and new energy, prefabricated buildings, green and low-carbon intelligent manufacturing, and the integrated development of secondary and tertiary industries. At present, Chuanwei Group has started the construction of a 3,500-cubic-year short-process vanadium electrolyte demonstration project, and its "vanadium titanium" industrial output value accounts for 99% of Neijiang City in 2022. At the same time, Chuanwei Group also promotes the development and operation of the cultural tourism industry, and successfully builds a tourism football town in Chuanshi Lake.
However, "repaying the money" still seems to be a difficult thing for Chuanwei Group. The reporter noted that in recent years, Chuanwei Group and its subsidiaries have successively returned some small arrears, but there are still a large number of arrears left. Shougang Engineering revealed that since the beginning of this year, the company has only taken back hundreds of thousands of yuan in arrears from Chuanwei, and Chuanwei has only paid 100,000 yuan in the least time.
In the same year that the case was filed for enforcement, Chengyu Vanadium and Titanium also issued a "Report on Requesting Temporary Non-Enforcement of Vanadium and Titanium Technology" to the Weiyuan County People's Court. The report listed 43 state-owned land use rights and 318 houses that had been mortgaged or seized, and told the Weiyuan County People's Court that due to the difficulties in the steel industry after July 2014, the company had a broken capital chain and was unable to pay the debts due to creditors on time.
Chengyu Vanadium & Titanium said that the company needs to comprehensively resolve the cases involved in enforcement and related debts. Chengyu Vanadium & Titanium said that the company's assets have been mortgaged and pledged to different financial creditors, and if the executor applies for the division and disposal of its company assets, the possibility of the company resuming production is almost zero, which will ultimately damage the interests of all creditors.
As early as 2018, the head of publicity of Chuanwei Group once told ** that Chuanwei will never repay the debt, but it does not have the ability to pay it off at one time. Now, five years later, in the eyes of creditors, Chuanwei still has a long way to go to repay its debts.
*: Jiupai Finance.
Reporter: Huang Mengqi Guo Zihao.
Photo by Huang Mengqi.