Qtone Education Group’s eye-popping 1.5 billion yuan ($223 million) acquisition of the company operating a well-known WeChat public account may collapse, according to a Monday filing by Qtone to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.

The purchase of Hangzhou Bajiuling Culture & Innovation, the company that operates the business-focused account “Wu Xiaobo Channel,” has been locked in a regulatory brouhaha since its initial proposal in March. The new filing reveals that Qtone and Bajiuling also disagree on several deal-breaking details, including the final acquisition price.

Blaming Wu Xiaobo Channel’s financial performance, issues with regulators, and the overall economic situation for the plodding pace of negotiations, the filing warned that Qtone may be forced to abandon the deal if its board cannot issue notice by Saturday of a shareholders’ meeting to discuss the issues.

Established by a veteran Chinese finance journalist of the same name, Wu Xiaobo Channel boasts more than 2 million followers and was valued at 2 billion yuan in 2017. The deal has turned heads among regulators and analysts, as WeChat public accounts, which are essentially in-app content creation platforms to which users can subscribe, rarely attract such deep-pocketed interest. Many see Qtone’s proposed purchase as a bellwether for future acquisitions in China’s flourishing online content creation industry.

But Chinese regulators remain cautious about rubber-stamping deals involving public accounts whose opaque operations have been known to distort their true value. The Shenzhen Stock Exchange has issued several notices instructing Qtone to clarify the deal’s motives and pricing.

Contact reporter Zhao Runhua (runhuazhao@caixin.com)