Last December, Infiniti terminated Wang Lihong's contract the day after announcing that Wang Lihong had become the spokesperson for its brand after complaining about the chaos of his private life. To this end, we also take stock of the negative impact of The Spokesperson for Infiniti's scandals in recent years.
This includes Wu Xiubo, but in fact, Wu Xiubo's most well-known car endorsement is kia K5, and Wu Xiubo's last appearance in the public eye was also because he sent his "little three" to prison.
Recently, just like Wu Xiubo abandoned the "little three", Dongfeng also chose to leave in the face of Kia's stagnant performance in China and quit the joint venture company Dongfeng Yueda Kia.
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Dongfeng took 297 million yuan and ran away
In fact, we are not surprised that Dongfeng withdrew from Dongfeng Yueda Kia. As early as August 2021, it was already reported that the shareholders of Dongfeng Yueda Kia had signed a memorandum of understanding for Dongfeng's withdrawal of shares.
Here we need to interject that Dongfeng Yueda Kia is a rare tripartite joint venture car enterprise in China, Dongfeng Motor and Yueda Investment each hold 25% of the shares, and Kia holds 50% of the shares, of which the actual controller of Yueda Investment's parent company, Yueda Group, is the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of Yancheng City.
In this equity structure adjustment, Dongfeng's appeal is to withdraw shares, and Kia's appeal is to expand its shareholding.
In November 2021, the Shanghai United Equity Exchange published the equity transfer information of Dongfeng Yueda Kia Automobile Co., Ltd.: Dongfeng Motor Co., Ltd. transferred all of its equity in Dongfeng Yueda Kia to Yueda Automobile Group for 297 million yuan.
As you can know from the name, Yueda Automobile here and the previous Yueda Investment are subsidiaries of Yueda Group, that is to say, after the withdrawal of Dongfeng Motor, the equity ratio of Yueda Group and Kia in the joint venture company is 50:50.
As for whether Kia will take advantage of the fact that this year will open the restrictions on the proportion of foreign investment in joint venture car companies and increase the proportion of joint ventures in new companies, Yueda Kia said it will be announced in April this year.
So how bad are the sales of Dongfeng Yueda Kia? After all, the sales of Dongfeng Peugeot and Dongfeng Citroen are not very good, and Dongfeng still has not abandoned them.
The actual situation is that the combined sales of the two brands of Dongfeng Peugeot and Dongfeng Citroen in 2021 have just exceeded 100,000, while the sales volume of Dongfeng Yueda Kia in the first 11 months of 2021 has exceeded 120,000. Although Dongfeng Yueda Kia's sales were higher, Dongfeng still chose to run.
This is because Dongfeng's run is different from Renault's withdrawal from Dongfeng Renault in 2020, and in Dongfeng Yueda Kia, Dongfeng is not involved in the actual operation. Taking money to run away and stop loss in time is the best choice for Dongfeng.
However, recalling the initial stage of the joint venture of Dongfeng Yueda Kia, the battle for the joint venture between Yueda Group and Dongfeng Motor, the active withdrawal of Dongfeng this time is regrettable.
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"Third Party" East Wind
Although Dongfeng Yueda Kia was founded in 2001, the cooperation time between Yueda and Kia came earlier. As early as 1996, Yueda Group, a state-owned enterprise in Yancheng, has begun to cooperate with South Korea's Kia to produce Yueda brand Pratt.
The success of Pratt led the two to further establish Yueda Kia Automobile Co., Ltd., but at this time Yueda did not have passenger car production qualifications, so they had to introduce a car company with passenger car qualifications for the joint venture company, and this car company was Dongfeng.
After the introduction of Dongfeng, the shares of the joint venture companies Zhongdong, Yueda and Kiafang are 25%, 25% and 50% respectively. The 25% stake in Zhongdong was acquired with only 40 million yuan in cash and passenger car production qualifications, which Kia and Yueda were quite dissatisfied with.
As the saying goes, "one monk carries water to drink, two monks carry water to drink, and three monks have no water to drink", the struggle between Dongfeng and Yueda for control of the company has always been the main theme of Dongfeng Yueda Kia.
In 2005, the competition between the two sides reached its peak. Yueda and Kia plan to buy back 25% of Dongfeng's shares for 200 million yuan, or convert it into a 10-year preferred stock that only pays dividends and does not participate in management, but Dongfeng does not back down, and even said the famous "never quit".
Dongfeng has also been hoping to increase investment and increase the shareholding of the joint venture company, which not only Yueda does not agree with, but even South Koreans do not agree.
Unexpectedly, 15 years later, the Dongfeng that once said that it would never quit and invested additionally was the first to leave, just like love.
3
Can Panda Kia still rejuvenate the second spring?
In 2016, Dongfeng Yueda Kia sold 650,000 new cars in China, and then fell into recession, and by the first 11 months of 2021, Kia only sold 122,400 new plans in China. Financially, it is also not optimistic, with a net loss of 4.75 billion yuan for the whole year of 2020 and a loss of 2.6 billion yuan in the first three quarters of 2021.
But does that prove kia can't do it?
Although Kia's sales in China in 2021 have not yet been announced, global sales have been announced, Kia has sold 2.77 million vehicles worldwide, and Hyundai has even reached 3.89 million. It can be seen that although Hyundai Kia is mired in China, its sales in the global market are very good.
That is to say, there is no problem with Kia's technology, the problem lies in the introduction and sales strategy of the product, and these have always been the responsibility of Kia in the past Dongfeng Yueda Kia. It was not until 2019 that the joint venture car company, which has been established for nearly 20 years, welcomed the first Chinese general manager, Li Feng.
However, the first Chinese general manager of Dongfeng Yueda Kia has left last year, and since 2015, Dongfeng Yueda Kia has changed its general manager almost every year, and the turbulent personnel replacement is also reflecting the chaos of corporate management.
If Yueda Kia can determine a correct sales strategy in the next step and introduce overseas models at the same time, it is not impossible to rejuvenate the second spring.