From starving pigs to disappearing chairmen: Chinese companies offer some bizarre excuses for plunging profits, missed deadlines amid worst earnings season on record

Earlier this week Kangmei Pharmaceutical, one of China’s biggest drugmakers, blamed an “accounting error” for overstating its cash holdings by an eyewatering 30 billion yuan (US$4.5 billion), making headlines around the world.

The staggering blunder, amid China’s worst corporate earnings season on record, sent the firm’s stocks and bonds plummeting and sounded alarm bells about the quality of auditing in one of the world’s fastest-growing markets.

But Kangmei is by no means alone in offering up surprising or downright bizarre explanations for plunging profits, irregular disclosures or failure to disclose at all.

Chuying Agro-Pastoral, one of the country’s biggest pig farmers, needed an excuse when it reported annual losses of 3.9 billion yuan, more than double its previous estimate. It said it had run out of money to buy food for the pigs during last year’s liquidity crunch.

This had led to “many unexpected deaths of pigs”, Chuying said in a statement, without giving a specific figure. The company’s annual pig production is around 3 million, according to a previous estimate.