China's 'first baking stock' ran 1,052 stores, then nine years of losses and a court

Christine (克莉丝汀) opened in 1992 and became the bakery of Shanghai's high street, expanding to roughly a thousand chain stores by 2000. In February 2012 it rang the bell at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, marketed as China's 'first baking stock' (烘焙第一股), and at its 2013 peak ran 1,052 outlets, 543 of them in Shanghai.

The listing was the turn. The financials show nine straight years of losses from 2013 through 2021 — a net loss of RMB 224 million in 2019, RMB 110 million in 2020, RMB 170 million in 2021 — while the store count fell to 246 by the first half of 2022. Founder Luo Tian'an later said that after the IPO 'hearts became inflated, and no one was seriously running the business any more', and blamed funds chasing a quick return for management infighting that left strategy unexecutable.

In December 2022, after the Shanghai lockdown, every remaining store closed. On 10 March 2023 the company disclosed that it owed about RMB 57 million in store rents, supplier payments and staff wages as of 28 February, with only around RMB 3 million of bank deposits left and the rest frozen. Trading was suspended on 3 April 2023; the HKEX revoked its listing on 27 December 2024.

On 12 March 2025 the Shanghai No. 3 Intermediate People's Court accepted bankruptcy liquidation of the operating entity (case (2025) Hu 03 Po No. 187); Tianyancha records 907 judicial cases against it. The first creditors' meeting was set for 8 May 2025. The brand that defined Chinese high-street baking for a generation ended in a court-ordered search for assets the company could no longer find.