On its long way to profitability, NIO now needs a new leader for fundraising.
After the recent weakness in share price and financing troubles, NIO today announced that Mr. Louis T. Hsieh has tendered his resignation as chief financial officer of the company for personal reasons, effective October 30, 2019.
The company has commenced the search for Mr. Hsieh's replacement and is committed to moving quickly to fill the role. William Li, NIO's founder, chairman and chief executive officer said, "On behalf of the Board of Directors and management team, I want to thank Louis for his contributions to NIO and wish him all of the best in his future endeavors."
Louis has been NIO's CFO since May 2017, and took charge of the financing and IPO projects and reported to the CEO William Li directly. Before joining NIO, he had been working for top foreign financial institutions such as JPMorgan, UBS asset, UBS Investment Bank for years and became the CFO of New Oriental Education & Technology Group. Even though Louis left NIO, he still keep multi positions such as being an independent director and audit chairman for JD.com (NASDAQ: JD), YUM China Holdings (NYSE: YUMC), and Nord Anglia Education (NYSE: NORD).
NIO's finance arm is under the control of Louis and Wang dongning, VP of finance who focuses on the cost controlling. The stock performance of NIO has been disappointing, the cash flow has also been suffering due to the high cost, which makes the fundraising more necessary and urgent than ever.
It's hard to keep people from conjecture that the resign of its CFO was triggered by the widening losses and financing troubles. Except for the executive's left, NIO has also announced layoffs of about 1,200 of the company's 9,000 global employees and the spinoff of some noncore businesses to cut the cost, waiting for the new money injection.