On June 1, 2026, Xinyuan Real Estate issued a statement that put the chairman of Xinyuan Services' board, Shen Yuanqing, in the spotlight. Four years ago, he was invited to clean up the mess as a "firefighter."

Taking on the challenge in a crisis, gradually increasing shareholding after assuming office

Back to 2022, Xinyuan Services was forced to suspend trading due to its parent company, Xinyuan Real Estate, illegally pledging 402 million yuan in time deposits, facing the risk of delisting. At that time, Xinyuan Real Estate's founder, Daniel Zhang, invited Shen Yuanqing, who had previously worked at JD Cloud, to join the management team to address historical issues. This appointment was widely viewed in the industry as a firefighting measure for corporate risk management.

After joining, Shen Yuanqing led efforts to promote internal audits, recover debts from related parties, and repair internal governance systems. After nearly two years of handling these issues, Xinyuan Services successfully resumed trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in June 2024, becoming one of the few listed companies in the Hong Kong property management sector to successfully restore trading after being suspended due to violations by its controlling shareholder.

A turning point occurred at the equity level. Starting in the second half of 2024, Shen Yuanqing continued to build his position through company equity incentives and self-purchases in the secondary market, accumulating 61.488 million shares of Xinyuan Services, with a shareholding ratio of 10.37%, becoming the company's second-largest shareholder. During the same period, Xinyuan Real Estate was mired in a liquidity crisis, facing operational pressures and a continuous decline in its ability to manage the listed platform.

Intensive adjustments of directors and executives over four days, real estate management personnel gradually leaving

From April 26 to April 30, 2026, in just four trading days, Xinyuan Services continuously announced multiple changes in directors and executives. The financial head was replaced, several independent non-executive directors were changed, and the board secretary was also replaced. All three directors originally belonging to the Xinyuan Real Estate system exited, and the new directors all had backgrounds in cloud computing and big data, primarily sourced from the former JD Cloud and Alibaba Cloud sectors.

On May 29, the president responsible for the property segment, Wang Yantao, was removed from his position, with the reason disclosed by the company being: unauthorized external communications.

After the series of personnel adjustments, Xinyuan Real Estate could no longer sit idly by. On June 1, the parent company issued a formal statement, directly pointing to the board personnel decisions led by Shen Yuanqing, stating that there had been no prior communication or consultation with the controlling shareholder, and that the legal decision-making process had not been followed, leading to a disruption in the company's corporate governance order. Xinyuan Real Estate has now filed a lawsuit in the High Court of Hong Kong and initiated the process to convene a special shareholders' meeting, intending to vote to remove Shen Yuanqing from his positions as director and chairman of the board.

Annual salary data significantly revised, salary levels raise market doubts

Just days before the intensive personnel changes, on April 23, Xinyuan Services released a thought-provoking salary correction announcement: Shen Yuanqing's salary for 2023 was adjusted from 1.638 million yuan to 7.263 million yuan; In 2024, the salary was corrected from 6.886 million yuan to 13.886 million yuan—an increase of 7 million yuan in a single year. The company's official explanation stated that this was due to prior statistical omissions and unintentional misreporting.

In a horizontal comparison with leading listed property management companies in the industry: in 2024, the only executive salary at Country Garden Services that exceeded 10 million yuan included a large equity payment cost; core executives at leading companies such as Wanwu Cloud, Yongsheng Services, and Sunac Services generally had annual salaries concentrated in the range of 5 million to 7 million yuan. In contrast, Xinyuan Services had a full-year net profit attributable to the parent company of only 87.04 million yuan, and the company's overall market value was just over 200 million Hong Kong dollars. The discrepancy between the million-level salary and the company's scale and industry average level has raised questions from many investors on communication platforms.

Xinyuan Real Estate also mentioned in its statement that it has received relevant reports pointing directly to issues with the disclosure of executive salaries.

Parent Company Under Debt Pressure Delists, Listed Property Management Becomes Core Quality Asset

The deep background of the concentrated contradictions lies in the sinking trajectory of the real estate parent company. In January 2026, Xinyuan Real Estate (XIN.US) officially delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. Before delisting, the company experienced substantial defaults on multiple offshore US dollar bonds, and many domestic real estate projects were suspended, with the entity listed as a dishonest executor, effectively losing its position in the real estate main business.

Among all the assets of the parent company, Xinyuan Services is one of the few quality assets that continue to generate stable profits and have marketable value, and it is also a key bargaining chip in Xinyuan Real Estate's debt restructuring process. A legal professional close to Xinyuan Real Estate's debt restructuring stated that maintaining control over the property management platform is the only important leverage left for the real estate parent company at this stage, "it cannot be easily relinquished."

From the actions of Shen Yuanqing's side, the frequent changes in the board of directors and the removal of the original real estate management team likely indicate a core demand to sever the deep binding between the listed company and the troubled parent entity, with plans to introduce external strategic investors in the future, and even the possibility of changing the company's name. The statement from Xinyuan Real Estate on June 1, along with the subsequent lawsuit and the convening of an extraordinary shareholders' meeting, essentially represents a desperate counterattack by the troubled controlling shareholder to maintain the last control.

Separation of Equity and Management Rights, Company Operations in a Dilemma

Hui Sheng International Capital President Huang Lichong analyzed that from the perspective of the equity structure, Xinyuan Real Estate is still the controlling shareholder and has control at the equity level; however, Shen Yuanqing concurrently serves as the chairman of the board, executive director, and CEO, fully controlling board decisions and daily management. The separation of equity ownership and actual management rights is the fundamental cause of the contradiction's outbreak—this governance structure itself does not comply with the governance rules for Hong Kong-listed companies.

However, regardless of the outcome of the Hong Kong court litigation or whether the extraordinary shareholders' meeting can successfully remove Shen Yuanqing, one thing has already happened: Xinyuan Services has fallen into high-intensity internal strife. In the fiscal year 2025, the company achieved revenue of 905 million yuan and a net profit of 99.43 million yuan, with seemingly stable profitability in its main business. However, the CFO has changed, the secretary of the board has changed, the head of the property division has changed, and the board structure has been completely reshuffled. Coupled with historical issues such as receivables from related parties and asset pledges, the internal management of the company is already in a state of high tension An analyst who has been tracking the Hong Kong property management industry for a long time privately lamented that there are no winners in this battle now. Perhaps the real question worth asking is: when the dust settles on the lawsuits and dismissals, what will be left of this property management company with a market value of less than HKD 200 million?