The long-rumored financial group has finally been disclosed by Wang Jianlin, Chairman of the Wanda Group. Barring any surprises, Wang Guiya, former Investment and Wealth Management Director and General Manager of the Investment Banking Department at China Construction Bank, will take actual charge of operations, while other members will be selected following Wanda's "poaching + parachuting" approach used in the commercial and cultural sectors. Wang Jianlin said, "If all goes smoothly, within 1-2 years Wanda will make major moves in the overseas financial industry."
In a work report disclosed yesterday, Wang Jianlin revealed for the first time the positioning of Wanda Finance, namely that it "meets Wanda's new transformation requirements and is also a new pillar industry and new profit growth point that Wanda is building." He also disclosed the pace of establishing the group: it plans to register and establish the Wanda Financial Group in the third quarter of this year, after which all of Wanda's controlling, equity participation, and financial investments will be handled by the financial holding company. To this end, Wanda has already registered and established an investment company at the 10-billion-yuan level, is applying to establish a finance company with registered capital of 30 billion yuan, and also plans to invest in other financial industries. Starting in the second half of this year, Wanda will roll out financial business step by step, investing in multiple financial industries, and Wanda had already made preparations in terms of funding.
Regarding staffing, in Wang Jianlin's own words, "Just like doing other industries, we must find suitable talent. Whether we can run the financial industry well depends not on approvals, not on funding, but on talent." Citing commercial real estate and cultural tourism as examples, he indicated that poaching talent from the financial sector with high salaries will be the main preparatory work for Wanda Finance in the future. Although Wang Jianlin did not disclose in that day's speech who would run Wanda Finance, the industry had previously reported that Wang Guiya, former Investment and Wealth Management Director and General Manager of the Investment Banking Department at China Construction Bank, had been appointed Senior Vice President of the Wanda Group. In the list of members of the group promoting listed companies subsequently disclosed by Wang Jianlin, a Beijing Business Today reporter found that the deputy group leader was none other than Wang Guiya. Industry insiders speculate that, given the intention to list and also for financing purposes, it is essentially certain that Wang Guiya will run the financial group.
Wang Guiya's ties with the Wanda Group can be traced back to 2008. According to public reports, Wang Guiya, then Chairman of CCB International (Holdings) Limited, twice led strategic investments in Wanda Commercial Properties. By the end of 2011, the top three shareholders of Wanda Real Estate were the Wanda Group, Wang Jianlin, and CCB International Capital Management (Tianjin) Co., Ltd., with shareholding ratios of 53.533%, 8.594%, and 5.782%, respectively.
In addition to establishing a financial group, Wanda's listing plan has also attracted attention. Wang Jianlin admitted that Wanda currently has two listed companies overseas, but neither is a main company of Wanda. Therefore, this year's goal is to strive to push 1-2 main companies to list. To achieve this goal, Wanda will set up a dedicated internal organization. In addition to the aforementioned Wang Guiya as deputy group leader, Senior Vice President Ding Benxi will serve as group leader, with Commercial Properties President Qi Jie and CFO Zhang Lin as members. Although Wang Jianlin did not disclose which one or two "main companies" would be pushed to list, judging from the composition of the group members and Wanda's own business, commercial real estate, which had just terminated its IPO application, is still seen by the industry as the most likely candidate. Of the Wanda Group's revenue of 92.07 billion yuan in the first half of the year, commercial real estate reached 66.85 billion yuan, still firmly holding the position of Wanda's number one pillar industry. From the perspective of Wanda's overseas acquisitions, although there have been successful experiences such as AMC, Wang Jianlin still places considerable importance on acquisitions of commercial buildings. Therefore, industry insiders speculate that Wanda Commercial Properties is very likely to be pushed forward again. As for speculation about the listing venue, Yan Yuejin, a researcher at the Shanghai E-House Real Estate Research Institute, said that because overseas capital markets have different corporate evaluation systems and most adopt a registration-based approach, there are fewer obstacles for a company with Wanda's strong strength, so the next step is very likely to be an overseas listing.
Related news
Wanda May Team Up with Alibaba and Tencent for E-commerce
After achieving its first half-year report in three years that met targets for its department store business, Wang Jianlin once again put forward the view that "department stores are not dead." Nevertheless, regarding e-commerce, Wang Jianlin revealed that next he will join forces with several of China's largest e-commerce companies to establish Wanda E-commerce, with an initial investment of 5 billion yuan, and stressed that companies are already willing to invest. People familiar with the matter revealed that Wanda had already been in contact with Alibaba and Tencent, and that in the future it does not rule out developing Wanda E-commerce using the JD.com and Yixun model.
"Wanda will next 'go all out to develop the e-commerce company.' In the future, individual systems will not be allowed to set up e-commerce separately; all online resources will be given to the e-commerce company. This is to ensure that 'resources are concentrated.'" Wang Jianlin said the core task of e-commerce is to find a profit model in about three years, "even if we are not profitable, I must see the direction toward profitability." He also asked the e-commerce company to figure out and innovate a "more convenient, faster, and more useful 'One Card'" that can be used for consumption at Wanda Plazas, hotels, and resorts nationwide, and even for home purchases, with discounts, points, lotteries, value-added services, and more.
As early as December 2012, at the "CCTV China Economic Person of the Year" awards ceremony, Wang Jianlin and Jack Ma, who received awards on the same stage, made a 100-million-yuan bet on "whether e-commerce can account for more than half of retail market share in ten years." A year later, Wang Jianlin dismissed the bet with the explanation that it was "just a joke." Subsequently, cooperation between the two sides continued: in December 2013, Wanda Cinemas joined the Alipay Wallet public service platform, allowing users who bought tickets online to "collect tickets by sound wave" at cinemas. At the time, Wang Jianlin and Jack Ma both said that this cooperation was only the beginning, far from the whole picture. Earlier, several departed senior executives of Wanda E-commerce complained that Wanda managed e-commerce with traditional thinking and gave the e-commerce department too little autonomy.