"Some people's main wealth comes from China, but when they are making a lot of money, they choose to change their nationality and bring their money to other countries. In fact, the reasons why Chinese rich people naturalized in Singapore are not the same, some are based on personal reasons, some are for the development of the company, and some are interested in singapore's welfare...
Text | Financial Gossip Female Author: Shuye
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By 2030, will Singapore become the asia-Pacific millionaire capital?
A recent report released by HSBC has aroused a lot of heated discussion. In fact, this is not surprising, just look at the Chinese rich who are keen to immigrate to Singapore.
In recent years, the enthusiasm of Singaporean immigrants by China's richest people can be seen from the rapid change of Singapore's richest man.
Haidilao's founder Daniel Zhang, Li Xiaodong, head of Donghai Group, and Li Xiting, the boss of Mindray Medical, have all become the richest people in Singapore after immigrating, and they are from Jianyang, Sichuan, Tianjin and Suzhou, Anhui.
Not long ago, the "Queen of Alipay" Peng Lei was exposed again, immigrated to Singapore with huge assets, and bought a large mansion of 300 million yuan, which was interpreted by the local media as: "Peng Lei may impact the status of Singapore's richest man."
About half of the top ten richest people in Singapore's latest list are from Chinese mainland.
Domestic money and foreign flowers, Chinese rich people flock to Immigrate to Singapore, what is the "hidden feeling" behind this? Let's expand on that.
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In 2019, a Chinese immigrant became the richest man in Singapore, replacing the Far East institution boss who had been the richest man in the past 10 consecutive years, and this person was Daniel Zhang, the founder of Haidilao.
This year, Daniel Zhang 49 years old, and he became the new richest man in Singapore with a net worth of US$13.8 billion (about 98.6 billion yuan) on the Forbes Singapore Rich List.
The list shocked many people, after all, in the hearts of netizens, Haidilao is a local brand, Daniel Zhang is also an authentic Sichuanese.
To be precise, Daniel Zhang is a native of Jianyang, Sichuan, who entered a technical school after graduating from middle school and later entered the Sichuan Tractor Factory. For the average person, it may be in the factory for the rest of your life.
But Daniel Zhang is not an ordinary person, he has tossed several businesses in the 6 years of the tractor factory. Although the spirit is commendable, it all ends in failure.
But Daniel Zhang did not believe in evil, he rented a façade and made a Sichuan hot pot that he was better at. This time, with his unique hot pot base and warm service, he finally killed a bloody road. In the following 26 years, after continuous expansion, Haidilao's stores around the world exceeded thousands.
In 2012, Daniel Zhang led Haidilao overseas, the first store was located in Singapore, and since then, it has been out of control, opening more than a dozen stores. In 2017, there were media reports that Daniel Zhang couple also bought a mansion in Singapore for nearly 140 million yuan.
▲Haidilao is listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange Source: Visual China
In 2018, Haidilao landed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The prospectus discloses that the nationality of the Daniel Zhang couple who hold 68.6% of haidilao shares is Singapore. As Haidilao's stock price soared, Daniel Zhang also successfully became the richest man in Singapore.
As Singapore's richest man, the Daniel Zhang family's wealth was US$13.8 billion in 2019, US$19 billion in 2020, and more than US$20 billion at its peak.
In 2020, the Daniel Zhang of the richest man in a row has expanded, and after the outbreak of the epidemic, he did not shrink his business, but instead expanded his stores against the market, but this "bad chess" did not make Haidilao's performance increase significantly, but eroded profits.
At this time, another Chinese immigrant "took advantage of the void" and knocked on the door of Singapore's richest man. This man's name is Li Xiaodong, you may not have heard his name, but his circle of friends is full of Chinese gangsters, his investor is Ma Huateng, and the nobleman is Chen Ou of Jumei Premium.
▲Li Xiaodong, founder of Donghai Group Source: Network
With their support, Li Xiaodong holds the Southeast Asian agency of Tencent Games in his left hand and the Southeast Asian versions of "Taobao" and "Alipay" in his right hand, and is in the Southeast Asian Internet circle.
Born in 1978, Li Xiaodong, originally a native of Tianjin, graduated from the engineering department of Shanghai Jiao Tong University and joined Motorola to become the manager of the human resources department.
In the eyes of people at that time, it was a promising future to be able to enter a foreign company to work. But not long after, Li Xiaodong got tired, he chose to go to Stanford University in the United States to study for an MBA, and after reading it, he came to Singapore to start a business.
In Singapore, Li Xiaodong met his nobleman, Chen Ou, the founder of Jumei Premium. At that time, Chen Ou created the game battle platform GG Game. At the invitation of Chen Ou, Li Xiaodong also joined the entrepreneurial team, accounting for 30% of the shares.
Later, Chen Ou went to the United States for further study, and Li Xiaodong took 35% of the shares in Chen Ou's hands, became the company's leader, and renamed the company Garena, mainly engaged in game agency operations.
In May 2010, Garena received investment from Tencent and received the exclusive southeast Asian agency rights for the blockbuster game League of Legends. With Tencent's "god assist", Li Xiaodong quickly won the southeast Asian game market.
But Li Xiaodong was not satisfied, and he founded the e-commerce platform Shopee in 2015. As for the reason, Li Xiaodong said, because "my daughter misses China's Taobao." Miss Taobao can start a company, and Taobao in Southeast Asia to fight, money is really willful.
After Li Xiaodong established Shopee, he frantically burned money in the Southeast Asian e-commerce market. For merchants, Li Xiaodong lowered the commission price to attract merchants to settle in. For consumers, Li Xiaodong gave a large number of subsidies and free shipping. In addition, Li Xiaodong also invited international stars such as Blackpink and C Luo to speak for Shopee.
▲Blackpink endorses Shopee
This method is simple and crude but effective, shopee in less than three years, beat Ali Holdings Lazada, sitting on the throne of Southeast Asia's first e-commerce giant. The chairman of Lazada is Peng Lei, the "Queen of Alipay" who has just been bombed to immigrate to Singapore.
At that time, after Li Xiaodong made the Southeast Asian version of "Taobao", he also developed the Southeast Asian version of "Alipay", single-handedly created the financial services SeaMoney business, and won a large number of users. At this point, the Donghai Group established by Li Xiaodong covers the three most profitable businesses of games, e-commerce and digital payment, and is known as "Southeast Asia Little Tencent".
In October 2017, Donghai Group was successfully listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Less than 3 years after its listing, the market value of Donghai Group has increased by nearly 30 times.
In August 2021, as the share price of Donghai Group exceeded US$338, Li Xiaodong became the new richest man in Singapore with a net worth of US$21.1 billion, and photographed the "qianlang" Daniel Zhang on the beach.
But Li Xiaodong's richest seat was not yet hot, and the hidden dangers buried in the depths of the concentrated outbreak caught him off guard... The change came unexpectedly.
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In the early stage, the ambitious burning money was expanded, and the capital hole in the later period could not be plugged. As Shopee's losses expanded, Li Xiaodong could only brake urgently, and he also made a bad move: layoffs to save his life.
In June 2022, Shopee sent an internal letter announcing layoffs, including Shopee's takeaway and payment businesses, as well as e-commerce businesses in Mexico, Argentina and Chile. Recently, the layoffs have intensified, Li Xiaodong does not talk about martial arts, and directly "pigeons" new employees who have received offers.
"People in Singapore, just got off the plane, with a wife, with a dog, received a phone call, lost their jobs on the spot", Shopee has become the "most tragic layoff sample" of Internet manufacturers circulating on the Internet.
Such a corruption of his own reputation, Li Xiaodong is also because he can't survive anymore. On August 16, Donghai Group announced its results, with a net loss of US$930 million (about 6.3 billion yuan) in the second quarter, double the loss in the same period last year.
After the results were announced, Donghai's stock price in the US stock market fell nearly 14% on the day, closing at $77.43 per share. In fact, since November 2021, the stock price of Donghai Group has fallen all the way, and the current stock price is only 20% of the peak.
Li Xiaodong's wealth also shrank sharply, slipping from the first in Singapore to the sixth, and this is only a year later. Tied for 6th place is the former richest man he once left behind Daniel Zhang.
Today, Daniel Zhang tasted the bitter fruit of the original "bad trick". From 2020 onwards, Daniel Zhang fell to the altar, its wealth evaporated by hundreds of billions of yuan, and Haidilao also fell into a wave of losses and closures.
Daniel Zhang intestines are remorseful, he admitted in mid-2021: "My judgment of the trend was wrong, last June I further made plans to expand the store, and now it seems that it is indeed blind confidence." ”
In the first half of 2021, Haidilao's net profit was about 96.5 million yuan, leaving only a small profit; By the first half of this year, Haidilao directly expected a net loss of more than 200 million yuan. And all this, in Haidilao's view, the repeated "pot" of the epidemic cannot be shaken off.
So, what is the hottest business during the pandemic? Medical supplies related industries, of course. Therefore, Li Xiting, who made a ventilator, defeated Li Xiaodong, a Daniel Zhang who sold hot pot and engaged in e-commerce, and became the new richest man.
Lee Xi Ting is the chairman of Mindray Medical, and on the 2022 Forbes Billionaire List, he topped Singapore's richest man with a value of US$17.6 billion, becoming the "brightest boy" on the rich list.
▲Image source: Sina Finance
Li Xiting is also a Chinese immigrant, he was born in 1951 in Suzhou, Anhui Province, joined the army for 4 years as an engineer at the age of 18, after retiring from the army, he seized the opportunity of the college entrance examination, was admitted to the Department of Physics of the University of Science and Technology of China, majoring in cryogenic physics, and after graduation, he worked in the Wuhan Institute of Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Shenzhen Anke.
In 1991, Li Xiting founded Mindray Medical in Shenzhen. Mindray Medical initially did import agents, without the support of core technology, can only rely on manufacturers to make meager profits, which is obviously not what Li Xiting wants.
In order to make a name for himself, Li Xiting invested a lot of painstaking efforts and money in research. The following year, Mindray Medical developed China's first blood oxygen saturation monitor, and in 1993, it developed China's first multi-parameter monitor, crossing the threshold of technical products. At the same time, Li Xiting constantly explores the law of the market, through price advantages, the launch of customized services, etc., so that Mindray Medical won the Chinese market.
Around 2000, Li Xiting led Mindray Medical to enter the Western European market with the strategy of high quality and low price, and began to "attack the city" overseas. Six years later, Mindray Medical successfully landed on the New York Stock Exchange, raising about US$270 million, becoming the first overseas listed company of medical equipment enterprises in China.
In the ten years of listing in the United States, Mindray Medical has maintained an average revenue growth rate of more than 20%, but the price-earnings ratio has fluctuated and declined, and the value has been seriously underestimated, and Li Xiting is both lost and unwilling. In 2016, Lee completed privatization for $3.3 billion, and Mindray Medical was delisted from the U.S. stock market.
After two years of dormancy, Mindray Medical broke out in the A-share market. In October 2018, Mindray Medical successfully landed on the A-share CHINext board, raising 5.934 billion yuan, which was the largest IPO in the history of the ChiNext board. Three days later, Mindray Medical's total market value exceeded 100 billion yuan, five times more than when the US stock market was delisted.
▲Li Xiting Source: Visual China
Li Xiting said that 2018 opened the "golden decade" of the domestic medical device industry. And This judgment of Li Xiting is being fulfilled in himself.
In 2018, Li Xiting appeared on the global billionaire list for the first time. In the next two years, catalyzed by the epidemic, Mindray Medical's performance and stock price flew together, and Li Xiting's ranking on the rich list quickly jumped.
In August 2021, 70-year-old Lee Xiting topped the 2021 Forbes Singapore Rich List with a net worth of US$23 billion. In April this year, Li Xiting continued to be the richest man in Singapore with a net worth of US$17.6 billion (about 118.7 billion yuan) in the 2022 Forbes Global Billionaire List.
Since Daniel Zhang became the richest man in Singapore in 2019, the richest man has changed one stubble after another, and what has not changed is that they are all Chinese immigrants. Next, who is going to replace Lee Siding?
Recently, the Singapore media locked in a new target: "The Queen of Alipay" Peng Lei.
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Another rich man in China, or will he become the richest man in Singapore?
Recently, the "Queen of Alipay" Peng Lei was exposed, and her husband immigrated to Singapore with huge assets, and purchased a set of large flats worth 300 million yuan in the local area, which attracted heated discussion in the Singapore media:
Singapore's richest man may change hands!
In fact, this statement is exaggerated. On the 2022 Hurun Global Rich List, Peng Lei's wealth is 22.5 billion yuan, which is still a certain distance from the wealth of Singapore's richest man of hundreds of billions of yuan. Still, she might be able to put it together.
In fact, this rich woman has a lot to offer. Peng Lei is the soul of Alibaba, who was once one of the "Eighteen Arhats". In 1999, Peng Lei joined Alibaba and worked as a human resources for 10 years, single-handedly creating an Ali value system.
▲Peng Lei Source: Visual China
As Ma Yun's right-hand man, Peng Lei was appointed to manage Alipay in 2010, and in 2015, she served as the chairman and CEO of Ant Financial, and as Alipay became the giant of the Internet platform, Peng Lei was also known as the "Queen of Alipay".
In 2018, after Peng Lei stepped down as CEO of Ant Financial, she was once again entrusted with the heavy responsibility of moving to Southeast Asia, responsible for Alibaba's international e-commerce platform Lazada, frequently traveling between China and Singapore. But a few months later, Peng Lei abruptly announced that she was stepping down as CEO and retaining only the chairman position.
Until recently, Peng Lei was exposed to immigrate to Singapore. People suddenly realized that before that, Peng Lei's husband, Sun Tongyu, the initial head of Taobao, had long been a permanent resident of Singapore and bought a 300 million yuan mansion in Singapore.
According to Singapore's Lianhe Zaobao, this luxury penthouse, equipped with a sky garden, a dedicated elevator and a swimming pool, set a record for the most expensive penthouse in Singapore at that time.
In addition to Peng Lei and his wife, Ye Gang, chief operating officer of Donghai Group, Zhang Xin, wife of SOHO founder Pan Shiyi, Sun Hongbin, chairman of Sunac, Shi Zhengrong, a photovoltaic tycoon, Cai Chongxin, vice chairman of Alibaba, and Zhao Changpeng, a big man in the currency circle, have all been bombed to immigrate to Singapore.
▲Zhao Changpeng Source: Visual China
According to the latest news from Singapore's Lianhe Zaobao, more than 500 Chinese high-net-worth individuals are expected to immigrate to Singapore, and the wealth they may bring to Singapore is estimated to be at least US$2.4 billion (about S$3.321 billion).
For Chinese gangsters to immigrate to Singapore, many netizens do not understand, "Some people's main wealth comes from China, but when they make a lot of money, they choose to change their nationality and bring money to other countries. ”
In addition, some netizens expressed admiration: some rich people are willing to pay money while making the people of China willing to pay money, while being the richest man in Singapore, they can also be regarded as high-ranking people.
In fact, the reasons why Chinese rich people naturalized in Singapore are not the same, some are based on personal reasons, some are for the development of the company, and some are interested in singapore's welfare...
For the matter of immigrating to Singapore, Li Xiaodong's reason is very romantic — because of love.
At that time, when Li Xiaodong was studying in the United States, he made a Singaporean Chinese girlfriend. The girlfriend came to Stanford with hundreds of thousands of loans to study, and the Singapore company that provided the loan required that the girlfriend return to Singapore to work for at least 6 years while repaying the loan after graduation.
So, after graduating from the Stanford MBA, Li Xiaodong followed his girlfriend to Singapore, initially just a poor student who rented a government hdb flat (HDB), and after stabilizing with his girlfriend, Li Xiaodong immigrated to Singapore to start a business and make a home here.
But this is after all an example, some rich people are still for the development of the company. Daniel Zhang couple incorporated Haidilao shares into the offshore trust as Singaporeans, and eventually held Haidilao shares separately through two BVI companies. This allows Daniel Zhang to isolate the debt risk of family assets in Haidilao's industrial operations.
After immigrating to Singapore, Daniel Zhang said that the migration is to make Haidilao develop better in the global market and have a broader international stage. If Daniel Zhang's claim seems broader, Li Xiting's reason is more specific.
Lee Siting's admission to Singapore nationality may have been forced by external competitive pressures. Li Xiting's business is mainly in China and the United States, and in the first quarter of 2021, Mindray Medical also proposed to increase the proportion of overseas business revenue to 70%.
However, today's US market is not very friendly to Chinese investors, and it is not easy to promote industrial mergers and acquisitions. Li Xiting revealed in an interview with the media: "Due to the changes in the international situation, it may not be easy for Mindray to find a good target merger in the United States. ”
In fact, for most rich people such as Daniel Zhang and Peng Lei, they still want to cover their money bags.
After all, as a "global legal tax haven", Singapore's most attractive attraction to the rich is "saving money". In addition, Singapore is one of the world's leading private banks and wealth management centres, with some of the safest banks in Asia.
Not only china's rich are attracted, but there are also many foreign rich people who have come from across the ocean. For example, financial tycoon Rogers, Facebook co-founder Saverin, Australian mining tycoon Tinkerer, former CEO of New Zealand sovereign group Chandler...
In fact, whether it is for tax avoidance or for the development of enterprises, it is the right of the rich to choose immigration, as long as it can create value and give back to society, there is nothing wrong with it.
It's just that those of us who have been made money by the rich still have a simple idea, "People can pass, but the money please stay in the country."
Resources:
"Li Xiting, a hundred billionaire raised by hospitals", city boundary
"Another rich woman in China immigrates with huge assets and may become the richest man in Singapore!" , Chinese businessman Tao Strategy
"Haidilao Daniel Zhang abdicated, Singapore's richest man replaced, and the post-70s created a Southeast Asian Internet giant", digital secret agent