(Yicai Global) Jan. 6 -- The executive chairman of Yango Group, one of the top 25 property enterprises in China, has quit amid the company's liquidity issues.

Zhu Rongbin, president of the real estate company, has submitted his resignation letter, the Fujian province-based firm said in a statement yesterday.

A source close to Yango said to Yicai Global that the resignation had been confirmed about a month ago. The decision may have been based on a recent equity transfer and an executive appointment, the person added.

Zhu has been in charge of a variety of issues including strategy, investing, and sales, boosting his stake in the firm during his more than four years of service, Yicai Global has learned. He joined Yango in June 2017 with an annual salary of CNY6 million (USD941,339). Before that, Zhu had served several large property companies, including China Overseas Holdings, Guangzhou R&F Properties, and Country Garden, as a senior manager.

Yango has been having a rough time lately. On Dec. 27, the company said units of Taikang Insurance Group have cut their holdings at a discounted price of CNY1.2 billion (USD188.1 million), about half of what the insurer paid for the shares a bit more than a year ago. This might have been the last straw for Zhu, said the above-mentioned insider.

Property sales have dropped. During the first 11 months of 2021, Yango recorded an almost 8 percent decline in revenue to CNY173.6 billion (USD27.2 billion) from a year ago, according to its earnings report. Thus, the firm dropped six places down to rank as No. 22 among China's biggest property firms based on sales. Meanwhile, the scale of its sold housing area decreased by 18 percent to 10.8 million square meters.

Yango has not been saved from the Chinese property sector's slowdown. The company has been delaying its bond repayment while watching its stock price slump after running into liquidity problems in October 2021. On Dec. 21, Sunshine Group, the biggest shareholder of Yango with its 18.8 percent stake, defaulted on a repayment of USD300 million.

The troubles have prompted the property firm to adjust its executive set-up. Vice President Xu Guohong was promoted to executive president three months ago. The industry insider said to Yicai Global that the move signaled a falling-out of Zhu and Chairman Lin Tengjiao.

For many years, Zhu was doing a good job. Before he took the helm, Yango, a medium-sized real estate company with tens of billions of yuan in sales, had a debt to net worth ratio as high as 258 percent. But during the first fiscal year since Zhu joined the team, the company's sales exceeded CNY100 billion, continuing to grow rapidly to exceed CNY200 billion in 2019 and in 2020, while its debt ratio fell to 95 percent.

Yango's stock price [SHE: 000671] closed flat at CNY3.12. The shares have slumped by more than half in value over the past 12 months.

Editor: Emmi Laine, Xiao Yi