The ambition of the wealthy tycoon from Inner Mongolia has come to light: he intends to take control of the loss-making company by paying a premium.

The ambition of Ji Xingye, a wealthy entrepreneur from Inner Mongolia, is spreading outward from Asia's largest single silver mine in Chifeng: on one hand, he is pushing Xingye Silver Tin (000426.SZ) to list in Hong Kong and making large-scale mergers and acquisitions, attempting to extend the territory of his "Silver Empire" from Inner Mongolia to overseas markets; on the other hand, he is targeting the controlling stake of *ST Weiling (002667.SZ, hereinafter referred to as "Weiling Shares"), and seems determined to secure it even as the purchase price keeps rising.

On October 18, Weiling Shares announced in a bulletin that Tibet Shannan Antimony Gold Resources Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Shannan Antimony Gold") would raise its shareholding to 11.05% through a combination of tender offer and two rounds of judicial auctions, becoming the largest shareholder of the company. Shannan Antimony Gold is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Xingye Silver Tin, with Ji Xingye as its actual controller.

Times Finance noted that this marks Ji Xingye's third attempt to acquire equity in Weiling Shares, following the collapse of the share transfer agreement in December 2025 and the lukewarm response to the partial tender offer in August 2026.

This time, he is one step closer to his goal of taking control of Weiling Shares.

Three Attempts Made, Purchase Price Keeps Rising

At the end of 2025, Weiling Shares announced that its controlling shareholder Shanghai Lingyi New Materials Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Shanghai Lingyi") and shareholder Wen Ping had signed a "Share Transfer Agreement", planning to transfer their combined 20,233,800 shares (accounting for 7.76% of the company's total share capital) to Shannan Antimony Gold at a transaction price of 15.21 yuan per share, with a total transaction value of 308 million yuan.

After the completion of the transaction, Shannan Antimony Gold would become the largest shareholder of Weiling Shares. Meanwhile, Shanghai Lingyi and Yang Yongzhu, the spouse of Wen Ping, promised to waive the voting rights corresponding to their held shares. After nominating and replacing all 5 directors of Weiling Shares as required, Shannan Antimony Gold would obtain the controlling right of the company.

However, this transaction was terminated in June this year, as Weiling Shares' 2025 annual report was issued with an audit report of qualified opinion, triggering delisting risk warning and other risk warnings.

Only two months later, Shannan Antimony Gold made a comeback. Instead of relying on the cooperation of the controlling shareholder, it directly launched a partial tender offer to all shareholders of Weiling Shares at a price of 18 yuan per share, planning to spend a maximum of 1.407 billion yuan to acquire 30% of the shares to obtain the controlling right.

However, when the tender offer expired on September 29, the number of shares that accepted the offer was only 15,936,400, accounting for 6.12% of the total. Although it exceeded the 5% effectiveness threshold, it was far from enough to secure controlling stake. Shannan Antimony Gold paid about 287 million yuan only to obtain the status of a "shareholder holding more than 5% of shares".

The core reason for the lukewarm response to the tender offer is the price inversion: the closing price of Weiling Shares on September 29 was 22.19 yuan per share, and the intraday highest price was close to 24 yuan per share, both higher than the tender offer price of 18 yuan per share. Obviously, minority shareholders preferred to sell their shares on the secondary market.

Nevertheless, Shannan Antimony Gold did not give up after the partial tender offer failed to meet expectations. At that time, Shannan Antimony Gold stated that it planned to continue increasing its shareholding in the company within the next 12 months through one or more methods including but not limited to centralized bidding, block trading, agreement transfer, and tender offer.

Therefore, Shannan Antimony Gold continued to make moves in the two judicial auctions in October: it won 2.85 million shares on October 9 with a total transaction value of 73.4908 million yuan; on October 16, it won 10 million shares at a price of 261 million yuan. The average transaction prices of the two deals were 25.79 yuan per share and 26.08 yuan per share respectively.

Up to now, Shannan Antimony Gold has spent more than 600 million yuan to obtain the controlling right of Weiling Shares, and the single shareholding cost has risen from 15.21 yuan per share to around 26 yuan per share. After the transferred shares from the judicial auction are registered under its name, it will become the largest shareholder of Weiling Shares.

Purely judging from the financial reports, Weiling Shares does not seem to be a high-quality asset. It not only has non-standard internal control and is under delisting risk warning, but its financial situation has also deteriorated year by year. From 2023 to 2025, the revenue of Weiling Shares dropped from 1.141 billion yuan to 320 million yuan, and the total attributable net loss in the three years was nearly 1 billion yuan; by the end of June 2026, its asset-liability ratio soared from 45.39% at the end of 2023 to 90.77%.

However, from the perspective of business synergy, the main products of Weiling Shares include lithium compounds and derivatives, lithium concentrate and associated products, tungsten concentrate, tin concentrate, lead concentrate, zinc concentrate, vibrating screens and PC production lines, etc., which are mainly distributed in Hunan Province. The main products of Shannan Antimony Gold and its related parties include mineral silver, tin, zinc, lead, iron, copper, antimony, gold and other products, which are mainly concentrated in Inner Mongolia. Both businesses are involved in the non-ferrous metal mining and beneficiation industry, with a certain overlap in product categories.

If Shannan Antimony Gold obtains the controlling right of Weiling Shares, Xingye Silver Tin is expected to further enrich its varieties of non-ferrous mineral resources, and can also develop and integrate the mineral resource market in Hunan Province.

Ji Xingye Further Expands His Capital Territory

Shannan Antimony Gold's current impact on the controlling right of Weiling Shares is only one piece of the puzzle of Ji Xingye's capital territory expansion after the reorganization of Inner Mongolia Xingye Gold Smelting Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Xingye Group", formerly known as Inner Mongolia Xingye Group Co., Ltd.).

Xingye Group is the controlling shareholder of Xingye Silver Tin. In 2019, it fell into crisis due to a safety accident at its main Yinman Mine and high debt, and was later ruled by the court for reorganization. In this reorganization, Xingye Group introduced the "Xiangyun No.20" service trust from Yunnan Trust, separated the operation right from the property right, used the income right of shares to repay debts, and kept the original team to continue the operation. The reorganization was finally completed in 2025.

During the duration of the trust plan, Yunnan Trust entrusted all voting rights to Ji Xingye for exercise. Under this arrangement, Ji Xingye still serves as the actual controller of Xingye Silver Tin. After the reorganization, Xingye Group holds 20.46% of the equity of Xingye Silver Tin, Ji Xingye remains the actual controller of Xingye Silver Tin, and his capital operations have accelerated significantly.

In January this year, Xingye Silver Tin announced that it planned to issue H shares and submitted its listing application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in May. However, in July, the company received a notice from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that its listing application was returned (commonly known as "filed on the desk") because "the valid date of the mining report and the expected date of the prospectus issuance need to be updated". The company plans to resubmit the listing application in the third quarter after completing the update of the application documents with the benchmark date of June 30, 2026.

Up to now, Times Finance has noted that Xingye Silver Tin has not resubmitted its listing application yet.

While preparing for the Hong Kong listing, Xingye Silver Tin is simultaneously promoting domestic and overseas mergers and acquisitions. In October 2025, Xingye Gold (Hong Kong) Mining Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Xingye Hong Kong"), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Xingye Silver Tin, completed the tender offer and share change registration procedures for Atlantic Tin Limited (hereinafter referred to as "ATL"), making Xingye Silver Tin the 100% controlling shareholder of ATL.

Entering 2026, in May, Xingye Silver Tin announced that Shannan Antimony Gold's newly established wholly-owned subsidiary Tibet Xinda Mining Co., Ltd. planned to acquire 100% equity of Tibet Sunshine Mining Investment Co., Ltd., aiming to obtain the exploration license for the Chalapu Gold Mine in Longzi County, Shannan, Tibet, and the proposed mining license for the Ⅱ ore section; in the same month, Xingye Hong Kong also launched a full tender offer for Australian listed company Far East Gold Limited (ASX code: FEG), and finally became its largest shareholder with 34.57% shareholding, cutting into projects such as the Idenburg Gold Mine in Indonesia and copper-gold mines in Australia.

In June, Xingye Silver Tin announced the acquisition of the remaining 25% equity of its holding company Atlas Tin SAS at a total consideration of 23.1136 million US dollars, to further strengthen the control of the Achmmach Tin Mine in Morocco; in July, it also subscribed for the private placement of Australian listed company Tartana Minerals Limited (ASX code: TAT) at a price of 5.1827 million Australian dollars, to deploy multi-metal exploration of silver, copper and zinc.

From domestic silver and tin mines to Tibet gold mines, and then to overseas tin mines, copper-gold mines and other projects, the resource map of the "Xingye System" has rapidly expanded from Chifeng to Tibet, Indonesia and Australia in the past year.

Looking back at the performance of Xingye Silver Tin in recent years, against the backdrop of rising silver prices, its revenue and net profit have been rising steadily, which is largely attributed to its pace of merger and acquisition expansion.

At the end of 2024, Xingye Silver Tin acquired 85% equity of Chifeng Yubang Mining Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Yubang Mining") at a consideration of 2.388 billion yuan. This acquisition is of great significance: the single silver mine resource reserve of Yubang Mining ranks first in Asia and third in the world. After acquiring Yubang Mining, the silver reserve of Xingye Silver Tin doubled, making it the largest silver enterprise in China.

In 2025, both the operating revenue and attributable net profit of Xingye Silver Tin hit record highs, reaching 5.555 billion yuan and 1.704 billion yuan respectively; in the first half of this year, its operating revenue increased by 73.13% year-on-year to 4.282 billion yuan, and the attributable net profit doubled to 2.263 billion yuan, exceeding the full-year attributable net profit of 2025 in one go.

This may be the confidence of Xingye Silver Tin to dare to spend huge sums of money to seek the controlling right of Weiling Shares. For Weiling Shares, this is another restructuring of controlling rights after its transformation from construction machinery to lithium mining failed and it was put under special treatment. For Ji Xingye, it is just one step for the "Xingye System" to grow from the "Silver King of Chifeng" to a multi-metal layout and global expansion.

This article is from the WeChat Official Account "Times Finance APP" (ID: tf-app), written by Gao Qiurong, edited by Jin Zhihui, and published with authorization from 36Kr.