Late on August 31, Fu Shou Yuan (01448), after months of suspended trading, released a significant announcement: under Article 105(h) of the company's articles of association, it formally removed Wang Jisheng from his directorship and terminated his service as an executive director. Notably, this was neither a voluntary resignation nor a natural end of term, but a formal dismissal requiring written notice signed by no fewer than three-quarters of the incumbent directors to trigger. Using this high-bar removal announcement as a starting point, if one pieces together the public information from Fu Shou Yuan over the past eight-plus months (questionable transactions, independent investigations, delayed annual reports, and share suspension), a previously unclear main thread begins to emerge: this suspension was not caused by problems in the company's core business itself, but rather a serious governance crisis rooted in matters related to the tenure of former President Wang Jisheng. Clarifying this distinction is crucial because it shapes investors' judgment logic: "whether the entire company has a problem" versus "whether specific individuals and matters have problems" are two entirely different scenarios.

The seed: collapsing performance, crisis brewing in advance. To understand this turmoil, one must not only focus on this year's suspension but first examine the "report card" delivered by Fu Shou Yuan under the former president's leadership. During Wang Jisheng's tenure as president, Fu Shou Yuan's performance was dragged into the mire. In 2024, full-year revenue was 2.078 billion yuan, a year-on-year decline of 20.9%, while net profit attributable to shareholders was 373 million yuan, down 52.8%. In the first half of 2025, revenue was 611 million yuan, plummeting 44.5% year-on-year, and net profit swung from profit to a massive loss of 261 million yuan. The main business collapsed across the board: cemetery service revenue fell 47.3% year-on-year, while funeral service shrank 33.8%. Shanghai, the company's home base, saw revenue drop sharply from 526 million yuan to 241 million yuan (a decline of over 54%), and the operating margin for cemetery services plunged from 54.4% in the same period last year directly to -44.9%. As for the full year 2025, results remain elusive to this day. Under the combined pressure of suspension, investigations, and management reshuffles, the annual figures will only look worse.

The evolution: from single president to co-presidents, pulling up radish brings up mud. The timeline moves to December 12, 2025. Wang Jisheng was the first to bear the brunt, no longer serving as Fu Shou Yuan's president. Concurrently, the company altered its previous highest operational management structure, shifting from a single president to a co-presidency system. If subsequent events had remained calm, this might have been just an ordinary management system adjustment. But in the following months, dominoes began to fall: president adjustment, management system restructuring, questionable transaction investigations, expansion of independent investigations, delayed annual reports, and share suspension. Especially as the investigation progressed, multiple questionable transactions surfaced. Currently publicly disclosed investigations cover the period from 2016 to 2025, with the amount of questionable transactions expanding to 19.7 million. A series of issues affected the audit and the publication of annual results, causing the company to fail to release its annual report before March 31, 2026, and leading to the suspension of share trading from March 20.

The eruption: a desperate struggle, Wang Jisheng's fierce countermoves. After the investigation was launched, Wang Jisheng did not fade quietly into the background. Instead, leveraging his retained executive director status, he stirred up another storm. In its latest announcement, Fu Shou Yuan clearly disclosed to the market that Wang Jisheng had filed complaints and expressed concerns with regulatory bodies and the board regarding related matters. The company's tough response is also noteworthy: it stated that it had assessed Wang Jisheng's allegations and considered them "without substantive basis." On one side, the company is struggling to advance the questionable transaction investigation, audit, and resumption of trading; on the other side, an individual who has already stepped down from the highest operational management position continues to raise objections and complaints around these matters. For ordinary investors, whose rhetoric is harsher no longer matters; what matters is which side the final facts of the independent investigation will support.

The outcome and reflection: consequences borne by the company, responsibility must be assigned to individuals. The current-stage outcome of this confrontation is the scene at the start of this article: Fu Shou Yuan used the high-bar clause of its articles to formally remove Wang Jisheng from the board, completely eliminating his residual influence within the corporate governance framework. This continuous series of actions sends a strong governance signal to the capital market: this is not an isolated incident but different stages of the same governance problem progressively unfolding. Re-examining Fu Shou Yuan's suspension, we must separate two questions. Does the company bear responsibility? Certainly. As a listed company, it must bear the consequences of the suspension, complete the investigation, finalize the audit, rectify internal controls, and meet the Hong Kong Stock Exchange's resumption requirements; this is an obligation Fu Shou Yuan must fulfill. Who caused the current situation? From the comprehensive collapse in performance, to continued obstruction after stepping down, to being jointly removed by more than three-quarters of the directors, public facts are piecing together a complete picture. Although the latest announcement states that the questionable transactions are still under investigation and conclusions cannot yet be simply drawn at the legal level, as more details are disclosed subsequently, the complete context of the events and the boundaries of responsibility will gradually become clear.