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Convoy’s board swells to 16 directors as boardroom manoeuvres continue in shareholders’ jostle for control

  • Convoy Global Holdings appointed three directors to its board on January 1, adding to the two who were named in November
  • The five expand the company’s board to 16 directors

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Pedestrians walk past the "@Convoy" building, which houses the headquarters of Convoy Global Holdings Ltd., in Hong Kong on Monday, December 11, 2017. Photo: Bloomberg
Enoch Yiu

Convoy Global Holdings ushered in the new year the same way it closed the old one, with yet another boardroom manoeuvre as two shareholders with razor thin difference in stakes between them jostled for control of one of Hong Kong’s largest financial service providers.

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The company, controlled by the family of Richard Tsai Ming-hsing of Taiwan’s Fubon Financial Holding, appointed three new directors on January 1 – adding to the two named in November – to expand Convoy’s board to 16 directors, according to a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange.

The enlarged board would strengthen the hand of the Tsai family, which owns 29.98 per cent stake, against an attempt by Kwok Hui-kwan – with 29.91 per cent shareholding – to seize control of the company, one of the financial advisers for Hong Kong’s mandatory pension fund. A shareholders’ meeting is scheduled on January 7 – adjourned since November 26 over a dispute in the voting process – to vote on Kwok’s resolution to replace Convoy’s previous 11-member board with his nominees, including former Hong Kong minister Fred Ma Si-hang.

“There is a deadlock as the two major shareholders own almost the same number of shares, with no majority control,” said Tom Chan Pak-lam, chairman of the Hong Kong Institute of Securities Dealers. “As such, the boardroom tussle of Convoy will be likely to drag on.”

Former Convoy director Roy Cho Kwai-chee walks out of the District Court in Wan Chai after his acquittal in November 2020. Photo: Nora Tam
Former Convoy director Roy Cho Kwai-chee walks out of the District Court in Wan Chai after his acquittal in November 2020. Photo: Nora Tam
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Fubon’s press relations unit in Hong Kong, and Convoy’s executives in Hong Kong declined to comment on the new board appointments on Monday, while a call to Tsai in Taipei was not picked up. Kwok, the son of the founder of the Shenzhen-based developer Kaisa Group, is seeking to appoint himself and five others including Ma to Convoy’s board.

At stake is a group that counts more than 100,000 customers in fund and wealth management products. Yet, much of the value, HK$25 billion at its peak, has been destroyed since Convoy became synonymous with Hong Kong’s biggest corporate scandal in the so-called Engima Network of companies. Trading of its shares was suspended in December 2017 after market regulators and corruption busters probed into its financial affairs, snaring more than 4,000 shareholders in its web.
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