Author | Gao Linglang Editor | Ai Qingshan

On September 10, a significant data error surfaced in Xingyu Shares' 2024 annual report, sending shockwaves through the financial community.

The annual report indicated that Xingyu Shares' total labor outsourcing remuneration for that year was recorded at a staggering 2,435,263,884,900 yuan (approximately 2.44 trillion yuan), dwarfing the company's total annual revenue of only 13.25 billion yuan for the same period by a factor of about 184.

Correspondingly, the outsourced labor hours were logged at 8.6382 million, translating to an hourly remuneration of approximately 282,000 yuan. For context, the company's 2025 annual report revealed the actual outsourced remuneration for that year to be 302 million yuan, marking a discrepancy of over 8,000 times between the two reports.

Remarkably, on September 9, Xingyu Shares had just issued a correction notice, apologizing for inaccurately listing Deputy Chairman and Deputy General Manager Zhou Yuheng's age as 58 in the 2025 annual report.

Based on the annual report data, the 65-year-old Chairman and General Manager Zhou Xiaoping would only be 7 years older than his son, a clear deviation from their actual age gap of approximately 25 years, as explicitly stated in multiple previous company announcements.

On the same day, the Shanghai Stock Exchange issued a regulatory letter to Xingyu Shares concerning these matters, involving the listed company, its directors, senior management, controlling shareholders, and actual controllers.

Information disclosure errors are not exclusive to Xingyu Shares and have recently plagued multiple A-share companies.

According to a China Newsweek report, from September 1 to 7 this year, 18 minor errors were identified in 14 announcements from 14 A-share companies. Among the tens of thousands of announcements disclosed in August, 68 contained obvious errors, involving 67 companies.

Zijin Mining, for instance, erroneously wrote "People's Government of Mozhugongka County" as "Renminbi Government of Mozhugongka County" in its 2026 semi-annual report, a typographical error that had persisted since 2020 for six and a half years. Zhongxin Shares mislabeled its "Chief Financial Officer" as "Financial General Temporary," and an impossible date, "June 31st," appeared in Demei Chemical's timeline.

These errors, which could be easily identified through common sense, managed to slip through multiple layers of internal company review, leading netizens to lament that the world is just a vast "amateur troupe."

Regular reports from listed companies typically undergo rigorous review processes, including self-review by the preparer, confirmation by the financial officer in charge, and review by the board secretary. Annual reports also require opinions from external audit firms and must be signed by directors, supervisors, and senior management before disclosure.

Lawyer Shao Ying from Zhong Lun Law Firm analyzed for China Newsweek that the long-standing reliance on historical templates for annual report preparation, the perception that textual content has minimal impact, and perfunctory review processes have allowed errors to accumulate repeatedly in annual reports over the years.

Zheng Zhigang, a finance professor at Renmin University of China, pointed out that financial reports are the primary window for investors to assess a company's value. The occurrence of obvious low-level errors in this critical area indicates that some companies do not attach sufficient importance to annual reports, reducing information disclosure from a substantive obligation to a mere formality.

Xingyu Shares' information disclosure issues have emerged amidst an even larger crisis.

In August this year, the company's batch layoff of 107 fresh graduates came to light. Recordings revealed that these employees, who had only been with the company for about a month, were coerced into choosing between resigning for personal reasons with half a month's compensation or accepting a mandatory transfer to the frontline assembly line.

On September 7, Xingyu Shares issued a notice, publicly admitting "misjudgment and hasty decision-making." The company imposed a one-year salary cut on General Manager Zhou Xiaoping, a half-year salary cut on Deputy General Manager Li Shujun, dismissed Human Resources Director Yu Zhiming, and demoted several department heads.

Such a level of public accountability is rare among A-share listed companies. Lang Hua, a partner at Shangdao Consulting, pointed out to Caijing that while accountability at the senior management level addresses the issue of "who is responsible for the past," what clients and the market truly want to see is how similar risks can be institutionally prevented from recurring.

The layoff controversy, coupled with information disclosure errors, is significantly impacting Xingyu Shares' Hong Kong stock exchange listing process.

On July 29, the company completed its second submission of the Hong Kong stock exchange application. On August 15, the China Securities Regulatory Commission issued a Notice of Filing (filing notification), approving the company's plan to issue no more than 44,799,650 H-shares.

Following the usual schedule, the listing hearing at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange could occur one to two weeks after filing approval. However, as of September 9, more than three weeks after approval, the company had still not received a specific hearing date.

Multiple sponsors close to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange confirmed to various media outlets that the Listing Division had requested supplementary explanations from the company regarding the labor dispute, focusing on verifying whether it constituted a significant compliance risk not disclosed in the prospectus.

Zhou Jianbing, chief analyst at Sinolink Securities, publicly judged that this incident would have a direct impact on Xingyu's Hong Kong stock listing, with no prospect of completing the listing in the short term.

On the supply chain front, pressure is also mounting. Xingyu Shares' 2025 annual report showed that sales to the top five customers were approximately 9.874 billion yuan, accounting for 64.7% of that year's revenue, with customers including major automakers such as Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW. According to reports from media outlets like Economic Observer, Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz have both initiated special ESG investigations into this labor incident.

Generally, significant labor dispute records of suppliers are retained long-term in automakers' procurement evaluation systems and may have collateral impacts when bidding for new model platforms, costs that are often underestimated by the outside world.

From a financial perspective, Xingyu Shares is not in operational distress. The company's revenue increased from 10.248 billion yuan in 2023 to 15.257 billion yuan in 2025, with over 3.6 billion yuan in monetary funds on hand in the first half of 2026 and no interest-bearing liabilities. However, the total number of employees decreased from 10,426 in 2025 to 7,532, a reduction of about 28%, a figure that has also come under client compliance review.

While senior management disciplinary actions can be implemented swiftly, the external reevaluation of a company's governance capabilities requires a longer period of verification.

For Xingyu Shares, the convergence of consecutive annual report errors and labor controversies sends a signal to the market that transcends technical mistakes.

Disclaimer: The content of this article is for reference only. The information or opinions expressed herein do not constitute any investment advice. Readers are advised to make investment decisions cautiously.