Wanda, they disappeared

In 2015, Gao Qunyao joined Wanda as CEO of the International Business Division, and someone made a bet with the new executive:

You won't survive more than a quarter in Wanda.

Gao Qunyao, who used to be the president of Microsoft China, quickly understood what he meant. On the first day of employment, Wanda Human Resources always led him into the conference room and showed him a PPT titled "Wanda Survival Guide".

In ancient times, before local officials went to the capital to meet the emperor, they had to go to the Ministry of Rites to perform the ceremony and learn the etiquette of Xi meeting the emperor. Gao Qunyao also watched the PPT and performed a ceremony for more than an hour.

For example, if you want to call the richest man the chairman, you can't turn around when you meet him, you have to face it; the leader has not entered, he has advanced; the leader has not come out, he has gone out first; take the initiative to help the leader press the elevator, not only to run over and press, but also to bend down when running......

The cost of non-compliance is dearly. A year after Gao Qunyao joined Wanda, he introduced himself at the meeting and said that he had just come for a year as a newcomer...... Zhang Lin, president of the Culture Group, didn't hold back his laughter:

In our case, a year is already an old man.

He wasn't joking.

Wanda's power center is on the 25th floor of Wanda's headquarters. A large road paved with extravagant stones leads to the richest man's gold-style office.

As the king of Wanda, he spends most of his time in offices and conference rooms on the 25th floor. The morning court was held in a private room on the fourth floor of the headquarters. It was a room that could accommodate more than a dozen people, and the vice president and above were there before 7:20 a.m., waiting to have breakfast with the chairman.

The richest man took Lu Yu there to eat a box of blueberries and leeks. In that room, there are usually people who make soup and vegetables, and the seats are also exquisite.

On January 30, 2012, the first day of Wanda's work after the Spring Festival, a group of senior executives of Wanda Group paid New Year's greetings to employees, and the richest man walked in front with his hands in fists. It was followed by more than a dozen executives such as President Ding Benxi, Li Yaohan, Yin Hai, Zhang Lin, Qu Dejun, Qi Jie, and Xiao Guangrui.

In the era of fighting the world, the atmosphere is always free and relaxed. The same goes for Wanda.

In this year, Wanda registered 5 billion yuan and established Wanda Culture Group. It invested 2.6 billion US dollars to acquire the world's second largest cinema company, and also started construction of Changbai Mountain International Resort, which invested tens of billions of yuan.

At the end of the year, Wanda Group's revenue increased to 130 billion yuan, and a "ten-year strategy" plan to become a multinational group was formulated. By the first working day after the holiday in 2013, there were only four executives left on Wanda's official website who followed the richest man to pay New Year's greetings:

Ding Benxi, President of the Group, Qi Jie, Executive President of Commercial Real Estate, Zhang Lin, Executive President of Culture Group, and Yin Hai, Vice President of the Group.

Later, the New Year's greeting became a New Year's group meeting at the conference hall, and the richest man stood in front of everyone to give a speech.

In the hierarchical pyramid, only one person has the power to approach Wang Jianlin. When he holds a meeting, the senior executives must enter the venue 15 minutes early, and no one dares to be late; if he fails to complete the last goal after reporting at the meeting, he will be left to "practice alone"; and if he usually summons someone, the other party will tremble for a while.

In the private room on the fourth floor, there are two chairs that cannot be sat even if the owner is not there, one belongs to Wang Jianlin, and the other belongs to him:

Ding Benxi, President of Wanda Group.

Uncle Bao said that many times I watch the news:

Not to see who's still there, but who's gone.

1

On the evening of December 18, Wanda Hotel announced that from September 1, 2023, the board of directors will not be able to contact Ding Benxi. In other words, Wanda Group's former No. 2 person:

Ding Benxi has been out of touch for 108 days.

It is very strange that the day after the announcement of Ding Benxi's disappearance, various media collectively received news from a mysterious insider, saying that the rumors of the disappearance were untrue, and the announcement said that Ding himself was not contacted, because of objective reasons such as the change of personal information.

What personal information changes, can't Mr. Ding be contacted when he changes his mobile phone number?

At the beginning, it was said that Mr. Ding lost contact, and then he refuted the rumors and lost contact, and the explanation of a large international company was really magical. Mr. Ding didn't come out to nag a few words?

Mr. Ding was born in 1955, one year younger than the richest man Wang. Like Pan Shiyi and Zhang Xin, Ma Yun and Cai Chongxin, Wang Jianlin is just an ordinary young man who went to join the army after graduating from middle school, while Ding Benxi is a top student who graduated from the National People's Congress.

Before joining Wanda in 2001, Mr. Ding had been a senior executive for many years in large companies such as Hong Kong Yifeng Group and Dalian COSCO, and Wanda was still a nationally owned enterprise in Xigang District, Dalian, with annual sales of 3 or 4 billion yuan.

After Mr. Ding joined Wanda, he successively served as the general manager of Wanda Commercial Management Company and the senior vice president of the group. Wanda began its transition from residential to commercial real estate and initiated the privatization process.

In 2009, Mr. Ding was promoted to the president of Wanda Group and officially became the second person in Wanda Kingdom.

During his tenure as president, Mr. Ding participated in almost all major changes in Wanda's work.

He introduced the streamlining of the talent model to solve the problem of Wanda's urgent shortage of talents; promoted the listing of Wanda Commercial and Wanda Film and Television, and set up a special team internally, with Mr. Ding as the team leader; and completed the establishment control of Wanda's de-real estate.

During the 11 years that Mr. Ding served as the president of Wanda, Wanda has developed from a medium-sized company with an annual revenue of less than 40 billion yuan to a global business giant with an adult revenue of 300 billion yuan, spanning real estate, cultural tourism, film and television, and finance, and has sent Wang Jianlin to the throne of the richest man for three consecutive years.

In January 2020, without warning, 65-year-old Mr. Ding suddenly retired. There are many versions of rumors about why he retired, and there are many versions within Wanda after that.

Some people say that this is a tragedy caused by a power bank; some people say that the second chief was written a report letter; and some people say that before Mr. Ding retired, he had a very fierce quarrel with the richest man.

Rumors are rumors, after Dante retired, a lot of things did happen to Wanda.

2

On the morning of August 3, 2023, the richest man held a group meeting involving real estate business at Wanda's headquarters. Police from Shanghai suddenly broke into the venue and took away several executives in full view.

Most of these executives are from the Wanda Group Development Center. The highest positions are the Group Chief Vice President, Head of the Development Center:

Bangs Haibo.

After graduating from Beihang University in 1991, Liu Haibo became a teacher in the Department of Electronic Engineering of the university. For more than 10 years after 1994, Liu Haibo served as the deputy general manager of Eton Development, a commercial real estate company invested by Chen Yongzhi, the richest man in the Philippines. In 2010, Liu Haibo joined Wanda and rose all the way up to the top vice president in charge of investment and land acquisition.

Except for his own national son, Lao Wang rarely praises people. But he praised Liu Haibo as the No. 1 talent of Wanda Group. Liu Haibo's investment ability has made great contributions to the layout of Wanda Plaza. In the photos of the richest man and local leaders discussing cooperation, Liu Haibo can often be seen sitting on the side with a thick stack of materials in front of him.

Two days before Liu Haibo's accident, the richest man also took Liu Haibo to participate in a work symposium with the leaders of Datong City.

After Liu Haibo was taken away, some media reported that Liu Haibo was self-examined by Wanda for corruption, and it was said that it was related to the Shanghai project.

Wanda's audit department is well-known in the industry. The richest man does not care about any specific business in Wanda, and the only person in charge is the audit department.

Every time the Wanda Audit Department goes to a place, even the sweeping aunt and the driver are not allowed to leave. The auditor slapped a piece of paper on the general manager's desk, on which the audit instructions were written, and the payment was made:

Wang Jianlin.

The internal audit committee will take the "suspect" to the conference room, confiscate the mobile phone, and use a software that can call up all chat records, transfer records, and collection records.

Auditing is the embodiment of the will of the richest man. Wanda has two sets of signature procedures, one is an electronic OA system, which is basically electronically signed and approved. As long as the richest man is required to sign, it is a different set of procedures. It must be submitted on paper, and without Wang Jianlin's signature on the important signing form, things cannot be moved in the slightest, just like a holy decree.

But Wanda's internal audit will generally give the steps down. Some Wanda employees told the media that Liu Haibo did not give him a chance at all.

A general manager-level executive of Wanda's Shanghai company left his post after being audited for a day and a night, and was not handed over to the public security organs. Some time ago, it was also rumored in the industry that an executive left his post after handing over the stolen money.

But the richest man this time does not seem to give the meritorious veteran Liu Haibo the slightest hope.

Liu Haibo has just joined Wanda and is the general manager of Wanda's development department in South China. There are more than 800 senior executives at the general manager level in Wanda. The gears of fate turned in 2013, when he served as assistant to the president of Wanda Group, a level where there were only more than 60 Wanda.

In the second year of serving as assistant to the president, Liu Haibo was promoted to vice president of commercial real estate and officially entered Wanda's inner circle.

In this resume, the most important identity is the assistant to the president of Wanda Group, and the then president of Wanda is:

Ding Benxi.

Similar to Liu Haibo's fate, there is also Qu Dejun, director and co-president of Xincheng Holdings, who has left the company. At the beginning of this year, Qu Dejun, who had been with Xincheng for more than three years, suddenly lost contact with him, because he was in charge of Wanda's financial technology business during his tenure at Wanda.

Qu Dejun joined Wanda in 2002 and has worked in Wanda for 17 years, serving as vice president of commercial real estate companies and senior vice president of the group. In those years, his top bosses were all Ding Benxi.

In 2015, Wanda Group de-real estate, Qu Dejun left the commercial real estate sector and began to take charge of Wanda Finance. In the second year, Wanda Network Technology Group was split from Wanda Financial Group, and it consisted of Feifan, Quick Money Payment, Credit Investigation, Network Data and other companies, which became one of Wanda's four major sectors, and Qu Dejun served as the president of Network Technology.

After experiencing the turmoil in 2017, the network technology quickly cooled down, and Qu Dejun was transferred to the marginal Baobaowang Group as the chairman. Ding Benxi left Wanda half a year before his official retirement. Qu Dejun's successor is Zhu Zhanbei.

In 2010, Zhu Zhanbei, an expert in the field of domestic informatization, entered Wanda and took over Qu Dejun's Feifan Company in 2018.

Zhu Zhanbei was taken away by the Shanghai police in 2020 on charges of seeking improper benefits in the bidding for the procurement of IT equipment. At the same time as him, there were four executives from the information management center of Wanda Group.

After Zhu Zhanbei entered the detention center, he wrote a confession to the richest man. He said that he deserved it, betrayed the trust of the chairman, and regretted it very much:

I hope to repay the company with the second half of my life.

His son, who studied abroad, also wrote a letter of blood and tears to the richest man, asking the richest man to open up.

Wanda's audit department went to the detention center to interview Zhu, and used Zhu's downfall as a case to organize a large number of senior executives to go to Wanda College for education and training.

Even if there are thousands of riches, it is not worth half a bowl of porridge in the mortal world.

The richest man doesn't seem to be on the net.

3

On February 6, 2012, the richest man took the executives to pay a New Year's greeting to the employees, and then took them to Langfang, Hebei Province to attend the opening ceremony of Wanda College.

In 2011, Wanda built a Wanda College in Langfang, Hebei Province, which is half the size of a bird's nest for the training of the group's senior and middle-level managers, and is known as the best enterprise college in China. The richest man proposed in the first lesson of the school year:

To be an international Wanda and a century-old enterprise.

The first president of Wanda College was Chen Ping, vice president of Wanda Commercial Real Estate.

Chen Ping is also the one who fights the world with the richest man. He entered Wanda in 2001 and was named and praised by the richest man at the annual meeting as an outstanding talent. Chen Ping is known for his diligent thinking in Wanda, and his friends at Wanda's top management only used three words when evaluating him:

Thinker.

Chen Ping is also good at solving problems and is one of the very few people who does not flatter the richest man.

When Wanda entered a city, because of the policy, it couldn't even get the richest man. Chen Pingmao recommended himself to try, and the richest man said, I can't do it, what are you going to do?

Chen Ping replied, I didn't succeed in going, don't you just spend two more tickets?

After Chen Ping came out, the problem was solved in a week.

In 2012, Chen Ping was unable to adapt to the increasingly swelling interior of Wanda, the increasingly suffocating atmosphere and pressure, and proposed to resign. The richest man gave him a vacant position as the dean of Wanda College.

In the years that followed, he played football and did research at the academy, specializing in commercial real estate and doing his own thing.

Five years later, in 2017, the richest man and his fate collided head-on. Since this year, Centennial Wanda and International Wanda have become completely different companies.

Chen Ping and Yin Hai, another veteran who had been with Wanda for 24 years, left this year. The thinker Chen Ping left Wanda a famous quote that only circulated among the top levels:

Wanda is only allowed to have one thinker.

Counting on his fingers, the dozen or so veterans who paid New Year's greetings together and were born and died together in Wanda back then are now left with Qi Jie, Zhang Lin, and Xiao Guangrui. Others, the resignation of resignation, the retirement of retirement, the disappearance of vanishing.

The richest man is also very interesting about the arrangement of these three people.

When Qi Jie first took over as Ding Benxi's president of Wanda Group and chairman of the business management group, he also served as the president of the business management group and the chairman of the investment group.

But soon, Qi Jie only had the main title of president of the group: the chairman of the business management company was assigned to Xiao Guangrui, and the position of president of the business management company and chairman of the investment group was given to Zhang Lin, and Zhang Lin also took over the responsibility of Zeng Maojun as the chairman of the cultural group.

According to the level of their positions, these three people are naturally the highest in the Qi world, but according to their importance, Xiao Guangrui is the first, and if they are in charge of the number of businesses, Zhang Lin will lead again.

After Ding Benxi, Wanda no longer has a real No. 2 leader.

4

Two events that changed Wanda's fate again happened almost simultaneously in December.

One is that Zhuhai Wanda Commercial Management lifted the listing crisis.

After 2017, Wanda seems to have no wind, and it is not a tailwind. The richest man has lost a lot of weight, and his image is no longer full of red faces; he no longer tells young people that their goals should not be too big, and that "set a small goal of 100 million yuan first"; and he no longer makes cruel words like "Disney doesn't want to make a profit in 20 years".

Public opinion has begun to favor the development of private enterprises in the past two years. The young people stopped opening their mouths at station B and said that they were hanging street lamps, and they began to miss Ma Yun and Wang Jianlin.

But I don't know why, Wanda has not been able to get the road to listing. Before the end of this year, if Zhuhai Wanda's listing fails, Wanda will pay 16 investors with a total investment of 38 billion yuan, and 44 billion yuan of equity repurchase with interest.

As a last resort, he sold his most cherished Wanda movie, and once again spread out his family wealth and put it on the table.

It's just that compared to 6 years ago, no one is keen on the big deal of the century anymore. Several protagonists who have participated in the transaction, Lao Sun, Li Silian, and Zhang Li, have just completed domestic and foreign debt restructuring and are lying down with peace of mind.

At the last moment, PAG became Wang's white knight. After Wanda redeems its investment, PAG will reinvest Wanda with other investors. PAG and the new investors will hold 60% of the shares after the investment, and Wanda Commercial Management will hold 40% of the shares. Wanda will receive 30 billion incremental funds.

Combining these pieces of information, we can probably judge the two consequences of Zhuhai Wanda's listing failure:

The richest man lost absolute control, and the market value of Wanda Commercial Management shrank a lot.

If calculated according to the highest new valuation of 120 billion yuan speculated by the media, 38 billion new investment funds can almost obtain 31% of the equity. Wanda also said that it has 30 billion yuan of incremental funds, which means that Wanda may also sell about 30% of its shares to new investors.

If you just look at the prospectus, Zhuhai Wanda, as the world's largest commercial management company with nearly 500 businesses under management, has an annual after-tax income of nearly 30 billion yuan, and a valuation of only 120 billion yuan, which is really a good target.

Of the original 38 billion investment, PAG alone contributed 18 billion, and the top investor took the lead in reinvesting, and many investors should replace them with new shares. Wanda has also set up some obstacles for investors who have cleared their positions.

For example, Country Garden, the beast master learned that Country Garden, which invested 3.2 billion yuan in Wanda that year, and the exit condition was that the principal was 95% off:

There is also a three-year interest waiver.

Therefore, in the absence of Country Garden's urgent need to replenish cash flow, ordinary investors still think that Wanda is still a good investment.

In addition to the US$500 million invested in Zhuhai Wanda, Country Garden Services and the Yang family also invested US$500 million respectively. Have you heard that the Yang family withdrew?

As for Wanda's newly sold 30% shares, with the support of PAG, there seems to be no shortage of receivers. Last year, the Middle East sovereign fund entered China in full swing, and I was the richest in the world with a piece of cloth on my head.

Friends familiar with the matter said that among PAG's LPs, there should be many large investors such as Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Qatar Investment Authority, and Saudi sovereign fund, which can easily reach trillions:

In recent years, Lao Shan and the princes of the Middle East have been fighting hotly.

If the funding problem is solved, Wanda's investors will of course be down-to-earth.

However, for Wanda Group, Wanda's three major businesses, business management, investment and culture, culture and business management, the two most cash-flowing sectors, have been taken out from Wanda, and the difficult real estate development business is still in the hands of Boss Wang.

In December, the second thing that happened seemed to be related to Wanda's future - Wang Sicong "started a business" again.

According to the data released by Sicong's Huanju Commercial, they have more than 6 billion assets under management, more than 70 layout projects, and more than 100 offline stores.

Huanju Commercial has either invested in or participated in the landing and operation of some leading brands of eating, drinking and playing. The commercial projects that have been implemented include Hangzhou ICON CENTER Trendy Night Entertainment Complex, Queen's Park Guochao Industry Incubation Center, Meihetang Michelin Catering Cluster Center, etc.

Friends in Hangzhou should know that these places are the top locations in Hangzhou, and they are not far from the West Lake.

How did these businesses come about? Where did the investment money come from? Where did the business operation team come from? There is no need to ask, I believe everyone knows it.

Except for Wang Sicong, the statement that any professional manager succeeded Wanda in those years now seems unreliable. There is no possibility of the Wanda Empire being left behind.

The most famous succession story in Chinese history took place during the Hongwu Dynasty. Zhu Biao, the successor of the Ming Dynasty, complained that his father was too ruthless, and Boss Zhu used a barbed wooden stick to tell Zhu Biao:

I plucked the thorn from this stick for you.

5

After PAG entered Wanda, many people asked the beast master what Shan Weijian did.

His resume, everyone knows about it during this time. After graduating from the University of International Business and Economics, he went to the United States to study and received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, under the supervision of the current US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

After graduating with a Ph.D. and working as a professor at the Wharton School for several years, he joined Morgan and Newbridge Investment, and led the acquisition of famous banks such as Korea First Bank and Shenzhen Development Bank, which had several times the return on investment.

Shan Weijian has always been firmly optimistic about China's economy. For example, at PAG's annual investor meeting in November, he calmed the emotions of many people.

He is optimistic about real estate, saying that the negative contribution of real estate to GDP has narrowed from 4% in 2022 to 2%; he is optimistic about China's policy space, the Chinese government's debt ratio is only 110%, far lower than the 140% of the United States and 260% of Japan; he feels that the trade war does not have such a big impact on China, and he even believes that Vietnam, as well as the entire ASEAN and India, are the channels for China's trade with the United States.

This is the person who sings about China's economy.

PAGs rarely fail. However, before taking over Wanda this time, many people in the financial circle knew that PAG's funds had suffered heavy losses due to heavy positions in real estate dollar bonds. Mr. Shan is not casually singing about the economy, it is said that his investment target is some of the demonstration real estate enterprises.

A friend of a leading investment bank said that everyone's previous expectation was that 50% was reasonable to be killed, but now it is almost 100%. Such a result may not only be beyond the expectations of the single general.

Although the dollar bond investment was a loss, it was not without returns. He was rewarded by the times. The Middle East's sky-high currency investment in China, PAG has become an unavoidable link. He was standing in the center of the stage all the time.

During this time, I read a few books by Mr. Shan, and I think Mr. Shan has two very interesting points, the first point is that he cares a lot about control in investment, and the second point:

He is very good at ingratiating himself with the people who decide his own fate.

In 1972, the 5th Company of the 19th Regiment of the 2nd Division of the Inner Mongolia Production and Construction Corps was allocated three places to go back to the city to go to university.

At that time, the educated youths spent all day in the wind-blown Gobi, digging ditches, picking sand, and cultivating the land. It is difficult to get a quota to return to Beijing. Shan Weijian made some wine for his friends to practice, and everyone sat together and talked loudly, and Shan joked that if you go to learn a foreign language, you will definitely have the opportunity to go abroad:

Maybe one day we can meet again in London or Paris.

Someone heard Shan Weijian's words and reported the content to the company commander and instructor. At the company-wide meeting, the company leaders criticized the single roll call and started a campaign to educate them on their outlook on life, and the barracks were plastered with big-character posters.

Pan Shiyi bragged and was denounced by his classmates, and since then he has learned to hide himself. Shan Weijian did the opposite and decided to curry favor with "power":

Broaden your popularity.

Since then, Shan Weijian has squeezed out an hour of his spare time to "contact the masses" every day of studying, going door to door, and chatting with men.

The most eye-catching thing in the company is the ball game, as long as the weather is good after work, there will be a group of people playing basketball or volleyball, both boys and girls come to watch, playing well like stars.

Shan Weijian can't play, but he finds that volleyball has no professional referees, and there are often arguments.

Shan Weijian wrote a letter back to Beijing, asking his father to send a volleyball rules book. After Shan Weijian studied it, he memorized that one day after the start of volleyball needed a referee, Shan Weijian volunteered, the referee was meticulous, the whistle was simply loud, and the gestures were professional.

Even men and women knew him and had a good impression.

In the summer of 1975, the company again elected college students among the masses, and although the instructor did not like him, he was placed among the alternate candidates because he received the second highest number of votes in the company. Many of the people who voted for him were girls. As a result, he got a place to return to Beijing to study at the University of International Business and Economics.

The experience of "making friends" changed almost his life. After Shan Weijian worked at Wharton, he founded an academic journal, China Economic Review, on which he regularly published articles by President Yi and Lin Yifu.

Wharton also worked with Shanghai to create a senior management training program, with Shan Weijian as the program director. The 50 students in the class are all reserve cadres, and many of them have grown up to become well-known political figures in China.

Friends who are familiar with Shan Weijian said that he was the first generation of Wall Street bigwigs to return to Hong Kong. A bank executive who has worked with PAG described the magic of the slip to me:

He seems to be able to get ahead of the policy release.

In 2002, Shan led Xinqiao's acquisition of Shenzhen Development Bank, the first and only time that foreign investors controlled a national commercial bank in China. At that time, the leader in charge of the banking regulatory commission called in person:

Tell your partners that we are ready to provide liquidity support in the event of an emergency.