Citing ‘personal reasons,’ Wang Yuan, chairman at embattled turbine manufacturer Sinovel, has resigned his post effective immediately, according to a filing with the Shanghai Stock Exchange.
The announcement comes 14 months after Yuan took the helm from Wei Wenyuan, who held the post briefly until he quit after two months. Notably, the executive Wenyuan replaced, Han Junliang, also cited personal reasons upon his March 2013 departure.
Sinovel said it will name a replacement for Yuan as soon as possible.
Once a leading manufacturer of wind turbines, the company's sales and profits have tumbled precipitously in the last few years. According to a Bloomberg report, Sinovel had a 2013 net loss of 3.45 billion yuan ($556 million), widening from 582.7 million yuan in 2012. The company's 2.8 billion yuan of bonds was suspended from trading on the Shanghai exchange on April 30. What's more, it faces possible delisting after the loss.
Sinovel remains embroiled in an ongoing series of intellectual property lawsuits with Devens, Mass.-based AMSC, which claimed that the China-based company (and its largest customer) stole its intellectual property and, ultimately, voided AMSC's contract.
Making matters worse is that the turbine maker is no longer the dominant option even in its home market, according to Dan Shreve, partner at MAKE Consulting.
‘Sinovel has continued to lose ground to up-and-coming Chinese original equipment manufacturers, such as Envision and XEMC,’ Shreve notes. ‘The churn in their upper- management ranks and continuing financial difficulties will only further weaken their position.’
