LeEco tycoon steps down

The embattled Internet tycoon behind struggling Chinese tech company LeEco has resigned from all his positions at the company’s publicly traded arm, the latest action in a stunning fall for one of the country’s most flamboyant tech leaders.

Jia Yueting has stepped down as chairman of Leshi Internet and has also given up several other positions at the company, the company said in a filing. Jia will become global chairman of LeEco’s electric car business, a separate announcement said.

Jia’s departure from Leshi Internet ended his tenure at the helm of one of China’s most ambitious tech companies. Last week, a court in Shanghai froze $182 million of assets tied to Jia, and Tuesday, shares connected to Jia totaling 40 percent of Leshi Internet’s outstanding stock were frozen by courts, according to a company filing.

Jia led his company into an array of businesses that have not panned out. He invested hundreds of millions of dollars in developing LeEco’s smartphone business Le Mobile, in what the new LeEco chief executive, Liang Jun, last week conceded was mistimed: Fierce competition has eroded profit for most handset makers.

Jia’s guarantees bind together much of LeEco’s debt, setting up a potentially messy situation that could embroil all of the LeEco companies as creditors battle for assets. No LeEco company has filed for bankruptcy, a company spokesman said, and LeEco could still receive a bailout from investors or a stateowned company.

LeEco’s electric car ambitions are centered on Los Angeles, where the financially troubled startup Faraday Future, with more than 1,400 employees, is developing high-end electric cars in a bid to challenge Tesla Motors.

Faraday had been negotiating with Vallejo officials to build a factory on Mare Island, but backed out. LeEco bought property in Santa Clara from Yahoo and had planned to build a campus there, but its plans appear to have fizzled out.

Jia remains Faraday Future’s largest shareholder and emphasized in his letter Thursday that he would dedicate his energy to getting the company’s first production-ready model, called the FF 91, into mass production.

Faraday Future is in the process of raising more than $1 billion, a spokesman for the company said in an email, noting that LeEco and Faraday Future are separate companies.