Today's headlines first article, please do not move, offenders will be investigated.
"Ming Dynasty 1566" is a super wonderful drama, and the dialogue in it is simply emotional. I especially like a sentence said by Emperor Jiajing: "People's hearts are like water, and the people are like smoke." ”
When everything is normal in Wanda Group and Wang Sicong is still posting on Weibo, the 500 million he has on hand may be just some small goals for us. For a billionaire, this amount is as natural as a middle-class child who gives a few thousand dollars to start a small business, and a father who allows his child to pursue hobbies.
But if something happens and Wang Sicong's worth plummets, then the 500 million will become the beginning of spoiling children. Is this change due to the short memory of the Internet age, or is it because human nature is inherently prone to say cool things when others are in trouble?
After a heavy snowfall, the temperature in Beijing plummeted below freezing. In this cold atmosphere, an important signing was successfully completed in Dawanglu.
On December 12, Wanda signed a new investment agreement with investors in Wanda Commercial Management. PAG will join other investors in reinvesting at the end of the investment period in 2021. This means that the 30 billion yuan repurchase crisis of Wanda Commercial Management's listing VAM, which was originally scheduled to expire on December 31, has been lifted.
As part of the new investment agreement, Wang's stake fell from 78.85 percent to about 40 percent, remaining the largest single shareholder, while the total stake by a number of existing and new investors, including PAG, increased from 21.15 percent to about 60 percent.
This means that the crisis of Wanda Group has been resolved, and Wang Jianlin has successfully solved the debt problem by the end of the year. Although the result was not ideal, it was an acceptable result for both sides, and they both made some concessions:
The creditor's concession was not to force Wang Jianlin to repay the money, so as not to force Wanda to collapse, and they might not receive a penny at that time. Wang Jianlin's concession was to transfer 60% of the shares to the creditors at a low price, so that Wanda is no longer Wang Jianlin's final say, but has become a social enterprise with more than 20 major shareholders.
You must know that Wanda has 494 large commercial plazas under its name, and the creditor bought 60% of the shares with 38 billion yuan, which is equivalent to the value of a square is only 128 million yuan - not to mention building a square, it is difficult to build an office building.
So in this transaction, Wang Jianlin suffered a lot of losses. In order to repay the debt, Wanda has sold everything that can be realized and valuable, such as cinemas, hotels, amusement parks, cultural tourism cities and shares, and has simply sold all the belongings.
This is called being willing to gamble and lose, and there is no meaning of arrears. To the surprise of many people, the "white knight" who stepped forward to help solve the siege this time was actually PAG Investment.
If you look at PAG's business and financial resources, it is actually reasonable for them to invest in Wanda.
PAG Investments is one of the largest independent alternative investment management groups in Asia and the only alternative investment firm in the Asia-Pacific region headquartered here. Some have called PAG "Asia's little black stone."
The most recent big deal was PAG's 8.35 billion yuan acquisition of a stake in Cedar Industrial's Qixiang Group, and it took control of the company. PAG's investment in Wanda, especially the 60% stake, is obviously similar.
Moreover, PAG and Wanda are not new friends. More than ten years ago, Dalian Wanda's first investors included PAG. In 2009, when Wanda led the war, CICC was the leader, CCB International was the lead investor, and among the other co-investors, there was a company called Beijing Dazhong Taiping, which was actually an investment company co-founded by Taihailian, the RMB fund management platform of PAG, and Zhang Dazhong, the founder of Dazhong Electric Appliances.
Shan Weijian and Wang Jianlin also have a deep relationship, and the two also have a mutual good friend - Ma Yun.
PAG's total investment in Zhuhai Wanda is US$2.8 billion, almost the largest private equity investment in a Chinese company in recent years. It can also be seen from this that PAG is full of confidence in the future of Wanda and China's commercial management market.
Not long ago, Wanda had plans to hand over control of Wanda Films to Chinese Ruyi, and there were rumors in the market that Wanda was considering selling some ownership of Wanda Plaza.
Waves of "white knights" allowed Wang Jianlin and Wanda to find a little respite. For Wanda, Wanda movies are a face-saving project, while Wanda Commercial Management is the substance. But in order to maintain their position in the business world, face and substance are now less important. It's all about being alive.
Wang Jianlin, a "madman" who once said that "I wanted to retire after 100 million yuan, but I didn't expect this wish to come true soon", has experienced a long wait, financing problems, and a debt crisis, and seems to have no strength to be so arrogant anymore.
In the past few years, Lao Wang has been running around in order to re-list Wanda Commercial Management. But going public is not as easy as making 100 million. For this reason, Lao Wang almost put all the hole cards on the table, but still did not wait for the good news of the listing.
Especially after entering the middle of 2023, the situation of not being listed for a long time has made his situation more and more difficult. First, on the eve of his fourth Hong Kong IPO, his stake was frozen for about 1.979 billion yuan, and then on November 30, he reached the listing deadline stipulated in the $1.3 billion loan contract.
On December 4, Wanda's two companies were again frozen more than 200 million shares. As of press time, Wanda officials have not responded to the equity freeze.
Time is pressing, and with only 15 days to go, Wanda Commercial Management's fourth prospectus is about to expire. If it fails to go public, Wanda may be required to repay the $1.3 billion loan early, and will also need to come up with more than $30 billion as compensation to investors as equity buybacks.
According to the statistics of the rich list, Wang Jianlin's net worth in 2023 will only be 47 billion yuan, compared with 220 billion yuan at the most glorious time, it has shrunk by nearly 5 times. This year is the third year that Wanda has hit the Hong Kong stock IPO.
In 2021, after five years of hopeless waiting in line for A-shares, Wanda abandoned its A-share IPO and went public in Hong Kong instead. To this day, they have set a record for the slowest listing of a private enterprise in Hong Kong.
Wang Jianlin didn't expect it to be so difficult to go public. According to the VAM agreements previously signed with 22 institutional investors, Wang Jianlin will need to pay about 30 billion yuan in equity buybacks to these investors if he cannot go public by the end of the year.
With less than a month to go until the expiration of the VAM in 2024, every second that passes diminish Wanda Commercial's hopes of completing the agreement.
It is often said that many friends have many roads, and this sentence is particularly applicable to Wang Jianlin, who has been up and down in the business world for many years. In 2017, Wanda was suddenly investigated for financing channels, and a thrilling "double kill of stocks and bonds" occurred in the capital market.
Since then, Wanda's financing channels have been blocked, and a huge debt of more than 400 billion yuan has been pressed on Wang Jianlin's head, and the market has spread the news that Wanda may collapse.
At the critical moment, in order to survive, Wang Jianlin resolutely decided to put Wanda's cultural tourism projects and hotels on the shelves in exchange for much-needed cash flow. A total of 13 cultural tourism projects and 77 hotels were sold to Sunac and R&F for 63 billion yuan. It is said that in this deal, Lao Wang lost at least 500 small targets.
However, Sunac's Sun Hongbin, R&F's Li Silian and Zhang Zhang are regarded as Lao Wang's "white knights", why is this?
First of all, the amount of money involved in this transaction is very rare, and it can basically be classified as the "deal of the century" in history. Moreover, it is not easy for Sun Hongbin, Li Silian and others to come up with such a huge amount of cash. There are many high-quality investment targets in the market, and they do not necessarily have to buy the assets of the Lao Wang family.
Secondly, at that time, Wang Jianlin fell into some unnecessary troubles, and the previously smooth financing channels were suddenly cut off, and those who could pay to help Lao Wang at this time had to take a certain risk. Therefore, although Wang Jianlin is in a difficult situation, this does not affect the role of Sun Hongbin and others to become "white knights".
Moreover, in the new agreement signed with the PAG, Shan Weicheng became the key figure in "letting go of the old king". In 2021, his PAG became one of Wanda Commercial Management's investors, contributing a total of 38 billion yuan. Moreover, he signed the famous VAM agreement with Lao Wang, stipulating that if Wanda cannot be listed by the end of 2023, Lao Wang will redeem the shares and pay interest at an annual interest rate of 8%.
Now it seems that Wanda's listing plan may be in vain, and if investors insist on Lao Wang redeeming his shares, Lao Wang may really be in trouble.
But at the critical moment, Shan Weijian's PAG chose to continue to invest in Wanda, which solved the biggest problem for Lao Wang, and also made Lao Wang, who was as thin as wood recently, finally relieved.
It's strange to say, I don't know who Lao Wang offended.
Looking at the predicament of Wang Jianlin and Wanda, hidden dangers were actually buried as early as 2014. Nine years ago, Wanda was listed in Hong Kong, setting the largest IPO on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange at that time. But the problem is that Hong Kong investors did not agree with Wanda's business model and valuation, and it broke on the day of listing, and Wanda's share price in Hong Kong has been depressed since then, and even fell below its net worth for a time.
Faced with this situation, Wang Jianlin, who has strong self-esteem, could not bear it, so he angrily delisted from Hong Kong in 2016, intending to switch to A-shares again. However, Lao Wang may not have expected that the road to abandon Hong Kong and return to A would be so tortuous, and the difficulties would be far greater than expected.
In order to successfully delist from Hong Kong, Wang Jianlin spent 34.4 billion Hong Kong dollars, but at the same time, he also signed a VAM agreement with shareholders: if Wanda fails to successfully list on A-shares two years after delisting in Hong Kong, it will not only need to buy back all the shares, but also have to pay interest. However, as we all know later, Wanda failed to hit A-shares, and finally withdrew its application in 2021 and re-set off for listing in Hong Kong.
During this time, in order to fulfill the promise made when it was delisted from Hong Kong, Wanda had to borrow the new to repay the old one, and signed a new VAM agreement again, promising to achieve listing by the end of October 2023 to reduce the financial pressure.
The deadline for the VAM was postponed to December, but Wanda is still facing huge debt pressure due to the accumulation of domestic and foreign debt, high interest rates and rolling interest rates.