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HNA Group
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HNA Group’s leader Gu Gang rallies staff after conglomerate enters bankruptcy restructuring, saying light is at the end of tunnel

  • In a letter that was light on specifics on HNA Group’s restructuring, Gu Gang urged for “patience” and “hard work”
  • Gu called on staff to help the Haikou-based company pull through its darkest hour, according to a letter posted on HNA Group’s corporate WeChat account

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Travellers wearing face masks to protect against the spread of the coronavirus wait in line at the Hainan Airlines check-in counters at Beijing Capital International Airport in Beijing on March 6, 2020. Photo: AP
Pearl Liu

Gu Gang, head of the working committee responsible for untangling an estimated 500 billion yuan (US$77.8 billion) of debt owed by one of China’s biggest global asset buyers, has written to his staff to rally for their patience while the company goes through bankruptcy restructuring.

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In a letter that was light on specifics on HNA Group’s restructuring, Gu urged for “patience” and “hard work” to help the Haikou-based company pull through its darkest hour, according to a letter widely circulated on Chinese social media. HNA Group executives were not immediately reachable to verify the letter’s authenticity.

“We’ve been fumbling in a pitch black tunnel for three years,” Gu wrote in the so-called family letter to 100,000 of his colleagues, emphasising that the past 12 months had been spent in preparation for restructuring, not bankruptcy.“Through our work in the past year, we can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.”

The rallying cry by the leader of HNA Group, appointed in February 2020 by regulators and the Hainan provincial government to lead the company’s debt workout, comes a day after one of China’s largest private conglomerates received a court petition to undergo bankruptcy restructuring. Earlier this week, HNA Group’s founder Chen Feng was left out of the company’s Communist Party committee, a sign that he was no longer involved in key decisions involving the airline-to-property group.
An undated photograph of HNA Group’s leader Gu Gang. Photo: Sina
An undated photograph of HNA Group’s leader Gu Gang. Photo: Sina
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HNA Group was established on the foundations of Hainan Airlines in 1993 by Chen, who worked for the civil aviation authority before going into business.

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