Wins Finance Holdings

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This Chinese Stock Soared 4,500% on Nasdaq and No One Knows Why

by Lily Katz and Zeke Faux
March 30, 2017, 12:01 PM GMT+8

Investors who put money into U.S. index funds usually aren’t looking for surprises. Those who bought into the Russell 2000 recently got one anyway: a little-known Chinese stock that went crazy for no apparent reason.

Shares of Wins Finance Holdings Inc., a company that guarantees loans for small businesses in China and leases equipment to them, have soared as much as 4,555 percent since debuting on Nasdaq in 2015. The firm’s market value surpassed $9 billion in February, about four times as much as LendingClub Corp., an online lender with 50 times the revenue. Even Wins said in a release that it had no idea what drove the surge in its stock, which boasts the best performance in the Nasdaq Composite Index over the past 12 months.

So how did a tiny Chinese company make it into the portfolios of U.S. retirees? And how did its biggest shareholder, Wang Hong, become a billionaire, at least on paper?

The mystery begins on the 37th floor of a shiny Times Square skyscraper. That’s where Wins’s U.S. headquarters are located, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings. But there aren’t any signs of the business. Instead, the floor is occupied by Forefront Capital Advisors, a financial-services firm founded by Bradley Reifler, who used to be on the board of Wins.

More details in https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/...-knows-why

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China Company That Soared 4,500% Is Puzzled Again by New Surge

by Lily Katz
June 8, 2017, 4:19 AM GMT+8

Wins Finance Holdings Inc., the Chinese loan guarantor that saw its stock jump 4,500 percent as 2017 began before erasing those gains, said it doesn’t know why it’s suddenly skyrocketing again.

The stock climbed as much as 184 percent to $230 on Wednesday -- up from about $20 at the start of this month -- before Nasdaq halted trading of the shares. In a statement, the exchange said trading won’t resume until the company has “fully satisfied Nasdaq’s request for additional information.” A spokeswoman for the exchange declined to comment further.

“We really don’t know what’s going on,” David Rudnick, an investor relations representative for Wins in New York, said by phone as the stock doubled on Tuesday. As it continued the hot streak Wednesday, he said it’s not his job to respond to Nasdaq. “I don’t know who would know” what information the exchange needs, he said.

More details in https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/...-new-surge