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After eight years in China and several changes of hands, Bowo, which claims to be on a par with Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz, ended in bankruptcy. On the evening of November 29th, BAIC Foton Motor Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Foton Automobile") issued a notice that Beijing No. 1 Intermediate people's Court (hereinafter referred to as "Court" or "Court") issued (2022) Beijing 01 Breaking 91 "Civil order" on November 29th, declaring the bankruptcy of Beijing Baowo Automobile Co., Ltd. The court held that, based on the results of the confirmation of the claim and the assets of the debtor confirmed by the assessment, Bowo Motor Company was unable to pay off the debts due and the assets were significantly smaller than the liabilities and insufficient to pay off all the debts. So far, no application for restructuring or reconciliation has been submitted. To sum up, Bowo Motor Company already has the legal conditions to declare bankruptcy. At this point, Bowo Motor officially declared bankruptcy.

In fact, this is not the first time Bowo has declared bankruptcy. As early as the 1960s, Bowo Motor went bankrupt because of poor management. Until 2014, when Foton bought the brand from Bowo owner BorgwardAG for 5 million euros and revived it, the resurrected Bowo again spread its brand in the Chinese market with the slogan "German ancestry, German luxury car". However, due to Baowo's own reasons, it was thought that the resurrection would be able to shine, but in fact it was more like falling into another quagmire.

In June 2021, there were reports in the market that Bowo would enter bankruptcy proceedings, which was later denied by Bowo. In December of the same year, the assets related to Beijing Baowo were seized by the Beijing Municipal No. 3 Intermediate people's Court, with a book value of 2.209 billion yuan, all of which were necessary for the production and operation of Beijing Baowo. In January 2022, Foton Motor once again announced that Beijing Baowo had entered a shutdown because it was unable to maintain its operation due to the depletion of funds. The assets deposited in the Miyun factory have been seized by the court as a whole, the foreign liabilities are basically overdue, and Beijing Baowo has become insolvent. In April 2022, Futian Motor disclosed the announcement that Beijing Baowo had received a decision from the court to accept the bankruptcy liquidation application, and the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate people's Court ruled to accept Beijing Baowo's bankruptcy liquidation application.

Unlike other new car-building forces, although the resurrected Bowo car has not been established for a long time, it was once a century-old German car brand. In 2014, in order to develop the passenger vehicle business, Chinese commercial vehicle brand Foton Motor spent 5 million euros to acquire the Bowo brand, hoping to enter the passenger car market with the help of Bowo's German genes. In 2015, Christian Borgward, the heir to the Bowo brand, announced the return of the Borgward brand at the Geneva Motor Show and named the brand "Bowo" in Chinese. Fukuda declared it a "German" lineage and shouted the slogan "German brothers", known as "BBBA", on a par with Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Audi.

Beijing Baowo Automobile Co., Ltd. was established on January 18, 2016. the equity penetration map shows that the company is 75.2% owned by Shenzhou Youche (Xiamen) Information Technology Co., Ltd., and BAIC Foton Automobile Co., Ltd. holds 24.8%. At present, Chen Liangyun is the legal representative of Beijing Baowo, and the chairman is Lu Zhengyao.

Only half a year after the establishment of the company, Bowo launched its first SUV model, BX7, in the domestic market in July 2016. soon after the new car came on the market, its monthly sales exceeded 5500. Based on the BX7 model alone, Bowo sold about 30, 000 cars. Then Bowo successively launched BX5, BX7 TS, BXi7 and BX6 models. In sharp contrast to the first model, BX5 sold only about 1500 vehicles in the first month, followed by BX6 and new energy models such as BXi7. Although Bowo has a wide range of products, it sold only 44000 vehicles in 2017 and did not improve to 32900 in 2018.

For Fukuda, the emergence of Bowo not only did not help it open the passenger car market, but led to years of losses. According to the financial report, the net losses of Beijing Bowo from 2016 to 2018 were 484 million yuan, 985 million yuan and 2.54 billion yuan respectively, with a cumulative loss of 4.014 billion yuan over three years.

In order to stop losses in time, in May 2018, Foton issued a "three-year action plan" to spin off the lossmaking passenger vehicle business and focus on the main business of commercial vehicles. In October of the same year, Foton transferred 67% of Bowo Motor's shares to Changsheng Xingye at a price of 3.973 billion yuan, and the 4.271 billion yuan of shareholder loans owed by Baowo Motor to BAIC Foton was also transferred to Changsheng Xingye. Changsheng Xingye is required to repay 4.271 billion yuan of shareholder loans owed to Foton Motor in instalments within three years from the date of completion of the equity transfer. Behind Changsheng Xingye is Shenzhou Youche, headed by Lu Zhengyao. In March 2019, Shenzhou Youche bought a 67% stake in Bowo Motor from Changsheng Xinye for 4.109 billion yuan. After the completion of the deal, Shenzhou Youche directly became the largest shareholder of Beijing Baowo. From then on, Shenzhou Youche officially entered Bowo Automobile.

After taking over, Shenzhou Youche launched a new retail platform for Shenzhou Bowo Automobile. The sales volume of Bowo Automobile ushered in a short-term improvement. In 2019, the annual sales volume of Bowo Automobile was 54500. Under this background, Lu Zhengyao wanted to apply Luckin Coffee's retail model to Bowo cars, but Shenzhou Youche was implicated by Luckin Coffee's financial fraud in 2020, and there has been no new car launch since Shenzhou Youche acquired Bowo. A series of decisions directly led Bowo car sales to fall into a cliff stalemate again. Figures show that Bowo's annual sales in 2020 were only 8703, down more than 45000 from the same period last year, and plummeted to 3612 in 2021.

Of course, for Futian Motor, it is undoubtedly a "big burden" to get rid of Baowo, so it has achieved a turnaround in profits, with net profits of 190 million yuan in 2019 and 150 million yuan in 2020. However, the final payment of Shenzhou Youche's acquisition of Bowo has not been settled, and the impact of Bowo still exists. Luckin Coffee was exposed for financial fraud in April 2020, coupled with the long-term poor performance of the "Shenzhou Department". As a result, the relevant companies fell into financial crisis. During the acquisition of Beijing Bowo, Shenzhou Youche announced that it would pay the price in cash before the specific date agreed between the two parties. According to the agreement, Changsheng Xingye should pay 1.48 billion yuan of the final transaction and all interest to BAIC Foton before December 31, 2020. the designated party of Changsheng Xinye will provide guarantee for the payment of the remaining transfer price, but as of December 31, 2020, Futian did not receive the above payment. According to the announcement of Foton Motor, as of December 31, 2021, the final payment and interest of Beijing Baowo equity transfer received by Foton Motor had not been recovered on time, and there was a risk that it could not be recovered. In order to safeguard its legitimate rights and interests, it applied to the Beijing Arbitration Commission for arbitration and preservation. The relevant arbitration case has been accepted by the court, and Lu Zhengyao has become one of the respondent.

In 2021, the net loss of Foton Motor belonging to shareholders of listed companies was 5.061 billion yuan, and the net loss of shareholders of listed companies after deducting non-recurrent gains and losses was 5.708 billion yuan, and the loss was enlarged compared with the same period last year. Futian Motor said that the main reason for the loss was the increase in the impairment of assets related to Beijing Baowo, taking into account the fact that the company's recognized investment income from its shareholding in Beijing Baowo affected the total profits of listed companies by-5.291 billion, affecting the profit of the current period by 3.553 billion yuan compared with the same period last year. Excluding the influence of Baowo, the total profit of the company is about 342 million yuan. In the latest announcement, Fukuda Motor said: "based on the principle of prudence, the company has made an impairment of the relevant assets of Bowo Motor Company." And stressed: "the bankruptcy of Bowo Motor Company will not affect the company's existing main business, will not have a significant impact on the company's continued operation." "

"good is expensive", "expensive is good" and "Baowo is very expensive". This magical advertisement once made Bowo very popular, but now it inevitably makes people feel sad when it ends in the way of "bankruptcy". Of course, for a brand that has gone bankrupt twice, it is understandable that it cannot keep up with the changes of the times, but it is a bit heart-wrenching for those car owners who have bought Bowo. After all, it involves the follow-up maintenance and quality assurance of vehicles.

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