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Text: Mo Hanxue
Edited by Mo Hanxue
The content of this article is based on reliable sources of information and has been placed at the end of the article
Preface
If you talk about Xie Zhikun, you may not know many people, but when it comes to Mao Amin, those who are a little older should know that the experience of being on the Spring Festival Gala 10 times has made her name popular all over the country, and Xie Zhikun is Mao Amin's husband.
Zhongzhi Group is the industry of Xie Zhikun, at the peak of the control of trillions of funds, but now it has entered bankruptcy liquidation, 1.2 trillion more than Evergrande, how did such a huge business empire collapse step by step? And how did you lose as many as 150,000 investors?
The formation of a business giant
As early as 1997, when he was still in his hometown in Heilongjiang, he noticed the opportunity in Hainan, when Hainan Province became the largest special economic zone in the mainland due to the spring breeze of reform and opening up, which can be described as the coexistence of opportunities and risks.
Xie saw the opportunity and set up a company called Hainan Yihai Industrial in Hainan, and after experiencing the development of real estate in Hainan, Xie made a lot of money, and he was happy to buy at a low price and then sell at a high price.
So in 2001, Zhongzhi invested 120 million yuan to establish "Zhongrong Trust" with Harbin State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission and five other companies.
In 2002, he met the then singer Mao Amin at a cocktail party, and Mao Amin was attracted by Xie Zhikun's stability, and Xie Zhikun was also moved by Mao Amin's experience and tenacity.
At that time, Mao Amin also stated that he would never tell her husband's occupation and name for the rest of her life, so as not to be disturbed by outsiders, so the two got married and had children after a year together.
In this way, after a few happy years, Zhongzhi Group continued to develop, not only building the Jiaowen Expressway to create a precedent for private enterprises to invest in expressways, but also distributing its own coal mining empire throughout the country, with an annual output of an astonishing 20 million tons.
In 2009, after several mediations, Xie successfully owned two-thirds of the shares of Zhongrong Trust, and deservedly became the right to speak in the enterprise, but he knows that people are afraid of being famous, especially in the financial industry.
Xie Zhikun used his vast network resources to pull the warp and weft machine belonging to the central enterprises, and purchased 37.47% of the shares, although on the surface the central enterprises have the largest share proportion, but the other companies are actually controlled by Xie Zhikun, so in fact, Xie Zhikun is still a well-deserved person.
With the endorsement of the central enterprises, Zhongrong Trust is like a fish in water in the financial industry, in fact, the routine is also very simple, that is, to target some poorly managed listed companies, inject funds into them, acquire and reorganize, and then wait until the high price to sell.
Although this model seems simple, it is extremely difficult to reproduce, because it requires a large amount of capital accumulation, even if Zhongzhi has the golden sign of central enterprises for financing, but to a certain extent, it still cannot meet the great capital needs of Zhongzhi.
Therefore, Xie Zhikun has established four trust companies: Hengtian Wealth, Datang Wealth, Xinhu Wealth and Gaosheng Wealth, all of which have hundreds of billions of funds under their names, and these funds carry investors' trust in Zhongzhi.
As a central enterprise signboard, Zhongrong Trust has an innate advantage in terms of capital attraction, coupled with Mao Amin's guidance in the entertainment industry, the high rate of return has also attracted a number of stars, such as Huang Xiaoming and Wang Feng on the Internet, and Yu Dong and Chen Kaige can also be seen in Xie Zhikun's obituary.
According to the company's financial report in 2016, the assets managed by Zhongrong Trust are as high as more than 850 billion, plus the previous four wealth trusts, the management scale of "Zhongzhi System" has reached an astonishing 1.2 trillion, and it is directly or indirectly holding more than 150 enterprises.
The fall of a business empire
There will be a period of smooth life, but it is rare that it will be smooth sailing from beginning to end, and Zhongzhi is also facing such a situation.
Previously, Zhongzhi's profit model was to obtain control of listed companies that were going bankrupt due to poor management, and then inject funds through Zhongrong Trust and several other wealth companies.
In this way, the listed company on the verge of bankruptcy presents a thriving situation, so that the stock price of the original company rises, and then leaves the market at a high level or is reborn through backdoor.
However, in 2019, the supervision of the capital market has changed, and the supervision was a tacit attitude towards Zhongzhi's approach, but now it stipulates that if there is a problem with the assets of the original company, the second shareholder will automatically obtain control of the company.
This provision is tantamount to cutting off Zhongzhi's retreat, and the injection of a large amount of capital will make Zhongzhi the second or even the first controlling person, but they do not want to hold these companies on the verge of bankruptcy for a long time, but just want to cash out at a high level.
But this regulation forced Zhongzhi to hold these companies for a long time, which means that a large amount of capital is locked up, making itself lose its flexibility.
The essence of the planting system is to attract investors to invest through high rates of return, and then take investors' money to speculate in stocks, but due to the changes in capital regulation and the continuous thunderstorm of the capital market, the high returns to investors can not be realized, at this time, it means the collapse of this model.
In the early years, China's real estate market showed a thriving scene, and Zhongzhi also made a large proportion of investment in real estate, including 15 real estate companies such as Evergrande and Sunshine City, but with the thunderstorm of real estate, Zhongzhi also lost a lot of money.
Coincidentally, in recent years, not only the real estate downturn, but also the stock market has faced this situation, facing the real estate thunderstorm, the stock market funds are trapped, and the high returns promised by investors cannot be achieved at all.
Faced with this situation, Xie had to use his previous connections to refocus on the industrial side, so that Zhongzhi temporarily got a respite, but accidents always came when he didn't know it.
When the plant system was gradually improving, its speaker, Xie Zhikun, suffered a heart attack in 2021 and lost his precious life at the age of 61.
When Xie was alive, he could still maintain the situation with his own influence, but with the death of the financial tycoon, the Zhongzhi system also came to the verge of its collapse, and internal contradictions erupted intensively, causing the group to fall apart.
The subsequent letter of apology issued by Zhongzhi also mentioned that because the company was highly dependent on Xie Zhikun's decision-making, his sudden death caused the company to face a state of failure.
The company can only rely on demolishing the east wall to make up for the west wall and borrowing to continue to maintain the debt, but when the time comes to June 2022, a piece of news broke the original tranquility, and the Zhongzhi Department announced the closure of investors' rights and interests in the platform to redeem funds.
One stone stirred up a thousand waves, which added a great crisis to the crumbling Zhongzhi, and the cessation of payment meant that investors' money could not be guaranteed, just when the majority of investors dreamed that their trusted Zhongzhi could survive the difficulties, a letter of apology in November 2023 broke everyone's illusions.
The apology letter mainly conveys two aspects of information, the first is that the current Zhongzhi Group is facing insolvency, liquidity drying up, the second is to apologize to the majority of investors, and will actively protect the rights and interests of investors in the future.
Finally, on January 5, 2024, the Beijing court ruled to accept the bankruptcy liquidation application of Zhongzhi Enterprise, and the business giant, which once managed trillions of assets, collapsed with a bang.
According to relevant information, the total output value of Zhongzhi Group reached an astonishing 3.6 trillion yuan, which was 1.2 trillion yuan higher than Evergrande's 2.4 trillion yuan.
Behind this string of cold figures, is the sweat of tens of thousands of investors, according to statistics, in the Zhongzhi Group, a single investment of more than 3 million has 150,000 people, the largest single investment has reached 5 billion.
A smooth history of making a fortune all the way
Looking back on the history of Xie Zhikun's fortune, it can be said that it is smooth, if he has been developing industry in his hometown and staying away from finance, there may be a different outcome.
After graduating from university, Xie returned to his hometown of Yichun City, Heilongjiang Province, and became an ordinary printer.
Because my father died early when I was a child, my mother worked hard to bring up 6 brothers and sisters, and this job was close to home, and I could take care of my elderly mother.
However, the printing house was on the verge of closure due to poor management, and because Xie Zhikun was more industrious and capable, and his brain was more bright, he appointed him as the director of the printing house, and let him contract the right to operate the printing house, and under his leadership, the trend of the factory really had a good change.
After the factory is on the right track, he is looking for other businesses to make himself richer, Yichun has the "Chinese forest capital", the most famous is the red pine of Xiaoxinganling.
Due to the lack of supervision at that time, many people made a living by stealing and selling Korean pine, and Xie Zhikun was relatively wealthy because of the profit of the printing factory, so he collected the trees cut down by local residents for reprocessing, and obtained more profits by extending the industrial chain, so he obtained the first pot of gold in his life.
Later, he opened a garment factory and a cement factory in the local area, both of which involved all aspects of people's lives, because he understood that only by catering to everyone's needs could he continue to make profits.
After accumulating a certain amount of capital, he also acquired some local state-owned enterprises that were not well managed for acquisition and reorganization, and in this way, Xie Zhikun transformed from a small clerk in a printing factory into a successful person integrating garment factories, cement factories, timber factories and state-owned enterprises.
If we follow this timeline, China may lack a financial predator and one more successful small boss, but life is not repeated, what we can do is to continue to learn from our predecessors and be vigilant about ourselves.
brief summary
Behind the collapse of the giant crocodile is the loss of countless investors, which also warns us that investors must understand the high risks while facing high returns.
Information sources:
Beijing News - Mao Amin's husband, the founder of the trillion-dollar mysterious empire's "past"
Zhongzhi Group issued an open letter! Apologize to investors: debts exceed 420 billion, serious insolvency
Announced! Zhongzhi Group applied for bankruptcy liquidation, and the court has accepted it!