FXstreet

Li Hejun has emerged as China’s richest man by virtue of his controlling ownership in Hanergy Thin Film Power Group, the publicly-listed and thinly traded unit of Hanergy Group.

Hanergy Thin Film Power Group’s stock has increased by more than 400% in the last year even though it’s a solar company that produces a technology that currently makes up a small portion of the overall solar power industry and sells most of what it manufactures to its parent company. Hanergy Thin Film might have a bright future, but at a market capitalization of some $35 billion, it is the biggest solar company in the world. It is the world’s biggest clean energy company, too—worth more than Tesla.

The Financial Times analyzed the trading of Hanergy Thin Film’s stock on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and discovered that most of the stock’s gains come late in the trading day. Specifically, the stock surges at 3:50 p.m., 10 minutes before the close of trading in Hong Kong.

According to the Financial Times, an investor who held Hanergy Thin Film shares from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. each day during the stock’s sizzling run between January 2013 and February 9, 2015, would have lost money.

Hanergy Thin Film said it is not responsible for the way its stock trades and denies doing anything to influence the late trading day surges of its publicly-traded shares. Still, something strange is going on in the trading of Hanergy Thin Film’s stock.

The stock’s soaring value currently puts Li’s net worth at more than $30 billion. The 47-year-old started in the electronics business before getting into hydropower, running one of the world’s largest privately owned hydropower plants in western China. He founded Hanergy group in 1994. In recent years he bought several thin film solar companies in the West in order to try to capitalize on China government incentives to grow the industry.




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