In a little over 35 years China’s economy has been transformed Week in China from an inefficient backwater to the second largest in the world. If you want to understand how that happened, you need to understand the people who helped reshape the Chinese business landscape. china’s tycoons China’s Tycoons is a book about highly successful Chinese profiles of entrepreneurs. In 150 easy-to- digest profiles, we tell their stories: where they came from, how they started, the big break that earned them their first millions, and why they came to dominate their industries and make billions. These are tales of entrepreneurship, risk-taking and hard work that differ greatly from anything you’ll top business have read before. 150 leaders fourth Edition Week in China “THIS IS STILL THE ASIAN CENTURY AND CHINA IS STILL THE KEY PLAYER.” Peter Wong – Deputy Chairman and Chief Executive, Asia-Pacific, HSBC Does your bank really understand China Growth? With over 150 years of on-the-ground experience, HSBC has the depth of knowledge and expertise to help your business realise the opportunity. Tap into China’s potential at www.hsbc.com/rmb Issued by HSBC Holdings plc. Cyan 611469_6006571 HSBC 280.00 x 170.00 mm Magenta Yellow HSBC RMB Press Ads 280.00 x 170.00 mm Black xpath_unresolved Tom Fryer 16/06/2016 18:41 [email protected] ${Market} ${Revision Number} 0 Title Page.qxp_Layout 1 13/9/16 6:36 pm Page 1 china’s tycoons profiles of 150top business leaders fourth Edition Week in China 0 Welcome Note.FIN.qxp_Layout 1 13/9/16 3:10 pm Page 2 Week in China China’s Tycoons Foreword By Stuart Gulliver, Group Chief Executive, HSBC Holdings alking around the streets of Chengdu on a balmy evening in the mid-1980s, it quickly became apparent that the people of this city had an energy and drive Wthat jarred with the West’s perception of work and life in China. The streets were teeming with traders, selling and buying goods of all description. Not only was the warm air heavy with the smells of food and spices, it was busy with the shouts and yells of commerce. Jumping forward 30 years, the sounds of commerce are echoing not just across China, but around the world. What in Chengdu seemed like unusual freedoms at the time have come to embody the potential of this great country. And they have enabled Chinese businesses to ‘go out’ and make their presence felt in global markets. The successful businessmen and women portrayed in this book are leading the charge. What is striking is that many of them began with virtually nothing. Liu Yonghao, who started selling quails eggs in Chengdu and is now one of China’s richest men, is a great example of triumph over adversity. Liu went shoeless as a child yet, armed with an entrepreneurial streak and applying focus and hard work, he and the other tycoons have built businesses that stretch around the globe. It has been my privilege to work with a number of these entrepreneurs. I spent many years stationed in Hong Kong with HSBC and was fortunate to be running a business that supported the growth and development of China’s emergent business class. As China encourages more of its companies to go global, our support has grown to include helping Chinese firms to undertake rapidly-increasing levels of M&A activity overseas, cross-border infrastructure development and trade. I hope this fourth edition of China’s Tycoons will give readers a flavour of China’s many achievements and of its further potential. The first edition contained 75 businesspeople and this one has 150. Coincidentally last year also marked 150 years since HSBC was founded in Shanghai and Hong Kong to support local and international trade. China remains absolutely central to HSBC’s strategy today – and I fully expect future editions of this book to feature even more of China’s international tycoons. 2 “ONCE THE WORLD’S FACTORY FLOOR, CHINA’S PEARL RIVER DELTA IS NOW THE SILICON DELTA”. David Liao – President and Chief Executive Offi cer, China, HSBC Does your bank really understand the Pearl River Delta? HSBC is the largest international bank in the area and the only foreign bank in all 21 cities in the key Guangdong region. When combined with our long history and expertise in China and Hong Kong, this makes us well-placed to support your business’s growth in the Pearl River Delta. Tap into China’s potential at www.hsbc.com/rmb Issued by HSBC Holdings plc. Cyan 611469_6006571 HSBC 250.00 x 170.00 mm Magenta Yellow HSBC RMB Press Ads 250.00 x 170.00 mm Black xpath_unresolved Tom Fryer 16/06/2016 18:23 [email protected] ${Market} ${Revision Number} Week in China China’s Tycoons Journey to the West n 1978 China’s foreign exchange reserves amounted to just $167 million. It was a poor country This edition Ithat was both technologically and economically backwards. It was also a country that was about to undergo a profound change thanks to economic reforms brought about by Deng includes more Xiaoping. What followed were over three decades of rapid GDP growth and entrepreneurial than 30 new activity. entries, and This is the fourth edition of China’s Tycoons, a book that seeks to explain some of that growth features by profiling the individuals whose business dynamism helped shape it. This latest edition updated contains the largest number of tycoons Week in China has featured yet – a total of 150 – meaning profiles of 150 there are quite a few new additions (over 30) as well as fully updated profiles of those who of China’s top appeared in the last volume. tycoons In fact, much has changed since that edition, most notably that having achieved billionaire status in their homeland, these Chinese tycoons have shown a growing appetite to go global, often purchasing famous overseas companies and their brands. All of which means China’s tycoons are now a meaningful driver of global M&A. This may seem like a relatively new phenomenon, but for those interested in Chinese corporate history, the country’s overseas M&A activities date back to 1984. That’s when the state-backed Citic Group became the first Chinese firm to invest abroad. It put about $50 million into a US-based joint venture that shipped construction timber back to China from California and Alaska. In 1986 it also acquired 10% of an Australian aluminium smelter for $140 million. That constituted the largest Chinese overseas M&A deal at the time. Chinese companies have certainly come a long way from Alaskan lumber. And in the past couple of years they have become one of the major investors in Australia. So what else have the tycoons been buying? Somewhat like their Japanese counterparts in the Photo: Reuters Photo: We’ll take Manhattan: one of Anbang’s trophy investments 4 Week in China China’s Tycoons Almost all the tycoons behind the ongoing global M&A activity are featured in this book Photo: Reuters Photo: The iconic Italian football club was purchased by one of China’s biggest retail tycoons 1980s (who bought Rockefeller Center and the Empire State Building) there have been a few trophy investments. The iconic Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York, for instance, was sold to Anbang Insurance for $2 billion in 2014. Controlled by tycoon Wu Xiaohui and backed by some of China’s most influential political princelings, Anbang also paid $6.5 billion to Blackstone Group for US-based Strategic Hotels and Resorts. Wu very nearly became the world’s biggest hotel owner too, only to back away at the eleventh hour from a $14 billion deal to acquire Starwood Hotels. Besides taking over landmark buildings in gateway cities, the Chinese are keen to snap up some things that are more intangible too. Heritage has been made one of the buying criteria. The 168 year-old House of Fraser department store chain in the UK and Hamley’s, the world’s oldest toy shop (which first opened in 1760) have been respectively acquired by Yuan Yafei, the Nanjing-based retail tycoon behind Sanpower, and his brother-in-law, Chen Yixi. Some of Britain’s oldest football clubs are also Chinese-owned today (such as Aston Villa) as is Inter Milan (bought by one of China’s biggest retail tycoons, Suning’s Zhang Jindong). Athletico Madrid is now part-owned by Wang Jianlin, the tycoon often referred to as China’s richest man. Wang is also one of the most acquisitive. He bought the vast American cinema chain AMC, and in mid-2016 acquired Odeon & UCI Cinemas Group in Europe, along with Legendary Entertainment, a Hollywood studio responsible for blockbuster hits like Jurassic World. His company, Wanda, has completed or unveiled over $16 billion worth of M&A deals in 2016, tripling the amount spent a year earlier. That also compares with the less than $500 million Wanda had invested overseas a mere five years ago. Indeed, in the first six months of 2016, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, Chinese firms have invested $134 billion in overseas M&A deals, tripling the amount year-on-year spent in 2015. Technology know-how is another priority. White goods makers, for instance, spearheaded China’s post-reform industrial drive by making low-tech appliances. The likes of Midea and Haier are now driving their own industrial revolution, via robotics and the Internet-of-Things. To do so, Midea has acquired Germany’s leading robot maker Kuka; Haier has bought General Electric’s home appliances business in the US.