Author: Du Sumin

Only 7 months after voluntarily resigning due to "personal reasons", Zhou Bin, the former chairman of Sinoparma Hyundai (600420.SH), fell.

On January 31, according to the website of the State Supervision Commission of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, Zhou Bin, former party committee member and deputy general manager of Sinopharm Group, former party secretary and chairman of Shanghai Modern Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Sinopharm Hyundai"), was suspected Serious violations of discipline and law are currently undergoing disciplinary review and supervision and investigation by the Discipline Inspection and Supervision Team of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council of the State Council of the State Council of the Central Commission of the State.

Zhou Bin was born in 1968 and is 56 years old. He graduated from China Pharmaceutical University in 1990. Since then, he has obtained a master's degree in business administration, a doctorate in economics and a researcher title. In August 2008, Zhu Baoquan, former chairman of Sinopharm Hyundai, resigned as chairman and director of the company because he had reached retirement age. At the same time, Zhou Bin, then secretary of the party committee and dean of the Shanghai Pharmaceutical Industry Research Institute, was elected as the chairman of Sinopharm Hyundai.

Since then, Zhou Bin has been repeatedly elected by the board of directors of Sinopharm Hyundai as the company's chairman. In August 2015, Zhou Bin had resigned from the relevant positions of modern medicine due to work reasons. But only five months after leaving office, Zhou Bin returned to the modern medicine in January 2016 and served as chairman.

Based on this calculation, Zhou Bin has served as the chairman of Sinopharm Hyundai for a total of more than 14 years.

In November 2022, the eighth board of directors of Sinopmedicine Hyundai agreed to elect Zhou Bin as the chairman of the company with 9 votes for a term of three years. However, only seven months have passed, and in June 2023, Zhou Bin suddenly resigned from all positions in the National Pharmaceutical Group and the National Pharmaceutical Hyundai.

According to the announcement issued by Sinopa Hyundai at that time, the company's board of directors recently received a letter of resignation from Chairman Zhou Bin. Zhou Bin applied for personal reasons to resign as a director, chairman, member and chairman of the strategy and investment committee of the company's eighth board of directors. After his resignation, Zhou Bin will not hold any position in the company.

Zhou Bin's sudden resignation surprised the outside world before his term of office expired and he was not old enough to retire. In mid-May 2023, Zhou Bin also appeared on the guest list of the company's collective performance briefing as usual.

Times Weekly reporter noted that unlike the previous resignation announcements of company supervisors, directors, and financial directors, Sinopar Hyundai did not express its gratitude at the end of the announcement for Zhou Bin, who has served for more than ten years. When looking at the resignation of other senior executives in the past, there is always a sentence at the end of the announcement that "the board of directors of the company and on behalf of all employees express gratitude to xxx for his contribution to the development of the company during his tenure.

source: screenshot of modern announcement of national medicine

Looking at Sinopharm Hyundai Annual Report and other media reports, Zhou Bin has a rich resume. He entered the Shanghai Pharmaceutical Industry Research Institute at the age of 22. Since then, he has served as the director of the information office, the director of the market and investment department, the assistant dean, the deputy dean, and the dean; Deputy General Manager and Party Committee Member of China Pharmaceutical Group Co., Ltd. Director of Sinopharm Holdings Co., Ltd; chairman of China Biotechnology Co., Ltd.

However, Zhou Bin himself is very low-key and rarely appears in media reports. Now he has suddenly fallen from the horse, and the most cited related reports still date back to 2010. At that time, Zhou Bin was interviewed by Shanghai Medicine magazine as the chairman of Shanghai Modern Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. In the article, Zhou Bin was called "a humble and foolish strategist", and the motto was "studious if hungry, humble if foolish".

When asked why he deliberately avoided public attention, Zhou Bin said that Hyundai Pharmaceutical is a growing company, and the achievements it has achieved are nothing. It is not appropriate to go better and more stable. "The resources of enterprises and the energy of people are limited. I hope to make good use of these resources, focus on R & D, management and sustainable development of enterprises, and talk about other things when things are done well." He called.

According to the official website, Sinopharm Hyundai, founded in 1996, is a high-tech enterprise in the pharmaceutical industry founded by academicians of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, specializing in the research and development, production and sales of pharmaceutical products. The company landed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in 2004 and entered China Pharmaceutical Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Sinopharm Group") in April 2010 as a member of Sinopharm Group.

At present, Sinopharm Hyundai has pharmaceutical intermediates and raw materials, chemical preparations, animal vaccines, health and other business sectors. Its products cover systemic anti-infection, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular, anti-tumor and immunomodulatory agents, central nervous system, etc. In the field of treatment, there are more than 30 kinds of dosage forms such as tablets, capsules, etc.

The performance of Sinopharm Hyundai in recent years is not bright. Financial data show that from 2020 to 2023, Sinopharm Hyundai achieved revenue of 12.556 billion yuan, 13.945 billion yuan, 12.959 billion yuan and 12.139 billion yuan respectively, and realized net profit of 0.649 billion yuan, 0.568 billion yuan, 0.628 billion yuan and 0.703 billion yuan respectively.

In addition, the cost of sales is also the focus of attention. Financial report data show that from 2018 to 2021, the sales expenses of Sinopharm Hyundai were high all the year round, which were 3.243 billion yuan, 3.61 billion yuan, 3.397 billion yuan and 3.485 billion yuan respectively. Among them, sales expenses in 2018 more than doubled from 1.49 billion yuan in 2017, and the proportion of sales expenses in total revenue rose to 28.65 percent from 17.49 percent in 2017.

The company's sales expenses will not be reduced until 2022. According to the annual report, Sinopharm Hyundai's sales expenses will be 2.746 billion yuan in 2022, down 21.19 percent from 2021. As for the reasons for the change in sales expenses, Sinopharm Hyundai explained that in 2022, due to the impact of end market demand, the sales volume of some of the company's main products decreased, resulting in a year-on-year decrease in sales service fees. In addition, the company complied with the implementation of the national drug centralized procurement and other medical reform policies, actively adjusted the marketing model, strengthened the control of sales expenses, and continued to deepen the quality and efficiency, driving the overall sales expense rate down year-on-year.

Over the past year, the anti-corruption storm has hit the pharmaceutical sector violently. In May 2023, the National Health Commission and other 14 departments jointly issued the ''Key Points for Correcting Unhealthy Practices in the Field of Pharmaceutical Purchase and Sale and Medical Services in 2023 '', requiring a sound and perfect governance system, focusing on rectifying prominent corruption problems in the pharmaceutical field; the same year On July 28, the discipline inspection and supervision organs cooperated with the national centralized rectification of corruption in the pharmaceutical field to mobilize and deploy a video conference in Beijing, and the clarion" the strongest medicine anti-corruption in history "was sounded.

According to media statistics, as of the end of September 2023 alone, nearly 250 hospital directors and secretaries across the country have been investigated. In terms of pharmaceutical companies, the chairmen of several listed companies, including Weining Health (300253.SZ), Salen Bio (688163.SH), Gude Pharmaceuticals (871584.NQ), Wohua Pharmaceuticals (002107.SZ) and Huaxia Ophthalmology (301267.SZ), were detained for investigation.

on February 2, 2024, according to Shi Weizhong, deputy ministerial full-time member of the Procuratorial Committee of the Supreme people's Procuratorate and director of the third Procuratorate, from January to November 2023, procuratorial organs prosecuted nearly 500 people for job-related crimes in the medical system.