Li Ruigang is expanding his film and television empire and plans to take a controlling stake in Huayi Brothers with 800 million yuan.

ST Huayi, which was on the verge of delisting, has finally welcomed a white knight. Li Ruigang, a media tycoon known as "China's Murdoch", may become the new head of this former "leading film and television stock" on the A-share market.

After the market closed on September 16, ST Huayi announced that it had finalized the restructuring industrial investor. China Media Capital Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "China Media Capital") will acquire 896 million transferred shares of the company at a price of about 0.93 yuan per share, accounting for 17% of the total share capital after restructuring, with a total cost of about 836 million yuan. After the completion of the restructuring, China Media Capital will become the controlling shareholder of ST Huayi, and Li Ruigang will become the actual controller of the company.

The past few years have been the darkest moment for ST Huayi. Since 2018, the company has continued to suffer losses, with a cumulative loss of more than 8.5 billion yuan, and its share price has also fallen all the way. At the same time, the company was faced with tight capital and heavy debt. Even after selling off assets, it failed to reverse the situation, and was eventually applied for restructuring by creditors in April this year.

As the founder of China Media Capital, Li Ruigang is very famous in the media industry. His companies include Hong Kong TVB (00511.HK, TVB Group), Shaw Brothers Holdings (00953.HK), Daylight Entertainment, Caixin Media, and Huasheng Media etc. At the beginning of this year, he just packaged his core film and television assets into Shaw Brothers Holdings. If he successfully takes shares in ST Huayi this time, Li Ruigang's media territory will be further expanded.

Regarding issues such as the considerations for taking over ST Huayi and the follow-up arrangements, Times Finance contacted China Media Capital, and relevant people said that they would not respond for the time being, and everything shall be subject to the announcement.

The above information failed to reverse the downward trend of ST Huayi's share price. On September 17, ST Huayi finally closed at 1.79 yuan per share, down 10.05%, with the latest market value of only 4.966 billion yuan.

The Whole Story of ST Huayi's Restructuring

The announcement shows that ST Huayi will implement the capital reserve to convert share capital on the basis of the existing total share capital of about 2.775 billion shares, at the rate of 9 shares for every 10 shares, with a total of about 2.497 billion transferred shares. After the transfer, the total share capital will increase to about 5.272 billion shares, and the transferred shares will not be distributed to the original shareholders.

Among them, China Media Capital obtained 896 million shares at 0.93 yuan per share, accounting for 17% of the total share capital after restructuring, costing about 836 million yuan; financial investors obtained 1.128 billion shares, accounting for about 21.4%; the remaining transferred shares are used to pay off the debts of bankruptcy restructuring. All parties plan to strive to complete the implementation of the restructuring plan before December 31, 2026.

ST Huayi was founded by brothers Wang Zhongjun and Wang Zhonglei. It landed on the ChiNext in 2009, being the first A-share listed company in the film and television industry, and was once named the "leading film and television stock" of the A-share market. In its heyday, hit film and television works such as *Cell Phone*, *If You Are the One*, *Aftershock*, and *The Eight Hundred* came out one after another. Meanwhile, the company invested in the Internet entertainment, real-scene entertainment and other sectors by acquiring relevant companies.

The turning point came in 2018. Affected by the "Yin-Yang Contract" incident, ST Huayi suffered huge losses that year, and has been losing money ever since. In the 8 years from 2018 to 2025, its cumulative attributable net profit loss exceeded 8.5 billion yuan. In the first half of 2026, the company achieved operating revenue of 85.4477 million yuan, down 44.10% year on year; the attributable net profit was a loss of 36.3851 million yuan.

While the performance continued to deteriorate, the company fell into a debt crisis. From 2018 to 2025, its asset-liability ratio rose from 48.01% to 96.26%. In order to ease the capital pressure, ST Huayi once sold subsidiaries such as Dongyang Meila to recover funds, but that was still far from enough.

Against this background, the brothers Wang Zhongjun and Wang Zhonglei are no longer as prominent as before. They have been restricted from high consumption for many times, and their equity has been auctioned judicially one after another. The latest announcement of ST Huayi shows that their total shareholding ratio has dropped to 5.41%.

ST Huayi's share price collapsed accordingly. Wind data shows that in the middle of 2015, the company's market value once approached 90 billion yuan. As of the close on September 17, 2026, this figure is less than 5 billion yuan.

Due to the default of a mature debt of 11.4052 million yuan, on April 15, 2026, the creditor applied to the Intermediate People's Court of Jinhua, Zhejiang Province for restructuring and pre-restructuring on the grounds that ST Huayi was unable to pay off its due debts, was obviously insolvent but had restructuring value. On April 23, Jinhua Intermediate Court decided to launch pre-restructuring for the company; on April 30, the company's stocks were subject to other risk warnings, and the abbreviation was changed from "Huayi Brothers" to "ST Huayi".

According to the announcement, in June this year, the temporary administrator decided to publicly recruit and select the company's restructuring investors; by the expiration of the registration period on July 6, a total of 6 intended investors (counted as 1 in the form of consortium registration) submitted registration materials to the temporary administrator and paid the registration deposit; by the expiration of the submission period of restructuring investment plans on August 6, a total of 5 intended investors (counted as 1 in the form of consortium registration) submitted restructuring investment plans to the temporary administrator. On the basis of reviewing the restructuring investment plans, the temporary administrator carried out reverse due diligence on the intended investors, and launched the selection procedure for intended restructuring investors.

Finally, by organizing the review committee and carrying out multiple rounds of on-site review meetings, the temporary administrator carried out the selection process of "5 into 3" review, "one-on-one consultation", "select one and reserve two" for the intended restructuring investors, and confirmed China Media Capital as the restructuring industrial investor of the company's pre-restructuring case on September 15.

The announcement shows that after the restructuring, China Media Capital will use its own industrial and resource advantages to help improve the profitability of ST Huayi, introduce business resources or inject synergistic assets in due course according to the situation of the enterprise, so as to promote the development of the listed company.

However, ST Huayi also reminded that as of the date of this announcement, the company has not received the relevant legal documents from Jinhua Intermediate Court on accepting the restructuring application of the company and its wholly-owned subsidiary Huayi Film, and there is great uncertainty about whether the company and Huayi Film will enter the restructuring procedure subsequently.

The Capital Game of "China's Murdoch"

Public information shows that after graduating from the School of Journalism of Fudan University, Li Ruigang entered Shanghai Television Station, and was appointed as the president of Shanghai Media Group (now Shanghai Media Group) at the age of 33.

In 2010, Li Ruigang founded CMC Capital, the first private equity investment institution in the domestic cultural industry, and served as the founding partner and chairman of the investment committee. In 2015, he established China Media Capital, a comprehensive media and entertainment company.

The official website of CMC Capital shows that since its establishment, CMC Capital has gone through the complete management cycle of multiple US dollar and RMB funds, focusing on innovative opportunities in the Internet, consumption, software and hardware technology, new energy and other fields, and investing in outstanding enterprises representing the future growth direction of China's economy. In addition, as early as 2018, China Media Capital completed a round A financing of nearly 10 billion yuan, with a post-investment valuation of nearly 40 billion yuan, led by Vanke, followed by the two founding shareholders Alibaba and Tencent.

With industry assets in one hand and investment in the other, Li Ruigang has built a huge media territory. In 2015, China Media Capital took shares in Hong Kong TVB, and Li Ruigang served as the vice chairman of TVB's board of directors in 2016. In the same year, China Media Capital Holdings acquired Daylight Entertainment, which produced high-score TV series such as *Nirvana in Fire*, *Ode to Joy*, *Like a Flowing River*, *A Land So Rich In Beauty*, and *The Story of Ming Lan*.

In addition, the official website of China Media Capital shows that it has rich entertainment media and sports cultural tourism resources, including a number of leading companies in the industry such as Shaw Brothers Holdings, Caixin Media, Huasheng Media, CMC Pictures, Oriental DreamWorks, UME Cinemas, and Zilong Games. The film and television works it participated in include *Lost in the Stars*, *Ne Zha: Birth of the Demon Child*, *The Lychee Road to Chang'an*, *The Tree of Life*, *Detective Chinatown 1900* etc.

According to the disclosure of ST Huayi's announcement, from 2023 to 2025, the operating revenue of China Media Capital was 4.571 billion yuan, 4.022 billion yuan, and 3.178 billion yuan respectively; the net profit was 287 million yuan, 363 million yuan, and 297 million yuan respectively.

It is worth noting that at the beginning of 2026, Li Ruigang just led a "small big fish swallows big fish" drama in the capital market. Shaw Brothers Holdings announced that it would acquire the core film and television assets under China Media Capital, including Daylight Entertainment, CMC Pictures and so on, by issuing shares, with a transaction consideration of more than 4.5 billion yuan, while the market value of Shaw Brothers Holdings at that time was less than 500 million Hong Kong dollars.

If this restructuring is successfully completed, China Media Capital will obtain an A-share listed platform, adding an important puzzle to the capital territory of the media industry. However, for China Media Capital, taking over is only the beginning. How to make ST Huayi "reborn" is the real problem.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Times Finance APP" (ID: tf-app), written by Zhang Jie and Wen Siting, edited by Wen Siting, and released with authorization from 36Kr.