Covid-19 Spread In China Hits Nike, Adidas Supplier; Billionaire Chairman’s Fortune Shrinks

Shenzhou International Group, a supplier of sports apparel to global brands such as Nike, Uniqlo and Adidas, managed to avoid heavy fallout from Covid-19 disruptions at its Southeast Asia plants last year with help from capacity at home in China.  Today, its shares and the fortune of its billionaire chairman were hurt by word that Covid disruptions were leading to production suspensions in the mainland city where it is headquartered.

Shenzhen said in a statement today that 10 cases of Covid have been discovered in a Ningbo city district, and local authorities has started “large-scale nucleic acid testing work” in the area affected.

“In view of the recent epidemic in the area where the Ningbo production sites of the group (are) located, in order to prevent the spread and aggravation of the epidemic, the local government has immediately adopted control measures to the epidemic and has announced a lockdown in some of the group’s production sites’ areas in Beilun district, Ningbo,” Shenzhou said. “The group is actively cooperating with the lockdown and isolation measures imposed by the local government. It is expected that some of the production sites in Beilun district, Ningbo will be affected by a short-term suspension of production.”

Shenzhou will “actively evaluate and assess the impact of the epidemic on the operations of the group and will make further announcements as appropriate after the local government further announces on the lockdown measures in the relevant area and our evaluation on the extent of impact to the group,” the company said.

Shares plunged as much as 10% at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange this morning, slicing nearly $1 billion from the fortune of Chairman Ma Jianrong at the session’s low. Shenzhou ended the morning down 7.9%, reducing Ma’s fortune by close to $760 million. 

Ma was still worth $11 billion on the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List today. Board members Huang Guanlin and Ma Renhe are also billionaires.

China has avoided much of the worst of the global Covid pandemic. The mainland on Sunday reported 101 new locally transmitted COVID-19 cases, according to a report today in the government-published Shanghai Daily.

China is home to the world’s second-largest number of billionaires after the United States.

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