Jan. 8 (NBD) -- Jia Yueting, founder of LeEco, unloaded his shares in the Hong Kong-listed Coolpad Group Limited (Coolpad) and ceased to be the single largest shareholder of Coolpad.

Last Thursday, Coolpad announced that the company has been notified by Leview Mobile HK Limited (LMHK), a company wholly owned by Jia Yueting, that LMHK has sold 897,437,000 shares at HK$0.9 (0.12 U.S. dollar) per share in cash, representing a total consideration of HK$ 807,693,300.00 (about 103 million U.S. dollars).

Coolpad also has been notified that the completion occurred on 4 January, 2018, and after the completion, LMHK and the purchaser which Coolpad didn't elaborate on will hold a 10.95 percent and 17.83 percent stake in Coolpad, respectively.

NBD noticed that in June, 2015, LMHK, on behalf of Jia Yueting, purchased approximately 780 million shares of Coolpad at the price of HK$1.9 (0.24 U.S. dollars) per share, about four times as much as the selling price of the new deal.

Just one day after Jia Yueting reduced his shares, Coolpad announced that Zhang Wei has resigned as the executive director, and Ma Lin, Wang Junmin and Yang Yongqiang have resigned as non-executive directors, with effect from 5 January, 2018.

Coolpad explained the reasons behind the resignations, saying that resignees want to devote more time to personal commitment.

NBD noticed that while Jia Yueting quitted his position as the chairman of the board of the directors at Coolpad in November last year, Ma Lin, Wang Junmin and Yang Yongqiang, executives of Leshi at the time were designated as the non-executive directors at Coolpad. The resignations came after less than two months.

LeEco and its founder Jia Yueting have been burdened with serious debt and it seems no surprise that Jia Yueting chose to cash in his shares.

Jia Yueting left for the U.S. after stepping down from most of his roles in Leshi, the Shenzhen-listed unit of LeEco, and claimed to focus on the development of the electric car startup Faraday Future Inc.

At the end of last year, the China’s Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) issued an order which instructed Jia Yueting to return to the mainland before December 31, 2017 to deal with the financial problems facing LeEco.

However, Jia Yueting failed to comply with the order.

In response to the order of the CSRC, Jia Yueting posted a letter on his personal WeChat official account, saying that he has entrusted his wife Gan Wei and his elder brother Jia Yuemin to exercise the rights of Leshi's shareholders and discharge his obligations including disposing of assets and other related work.

Jia Yueting also said in the announcement that he felt terribly sorry for the consequence brought by LeEco’s financial crisis to the society, the government, investors, suppliers and the staff and he will try his utmost to solve the debt issues and make up for the losses.

Jia Yueting's wife Gan Wei later announced on her Sina Weibo account that the money generated by selling around 18 percent stake in Coolpad was paid immediately to the China Merchants Bank, settling approximately 60 percent of the standing debt owing to the latter.

Email: gaohan@nbd.com.cn