Recently, Sima Nan turned his gun around Pan Shiyi, and there were two points of force: First, Pan Shiyi transferred assets and exchanged a large number of fixed assets in China for cash, leaving only worthless water vapor tiles; second, he alluded to the fact that there were illegal and criminal acts in foreign exchange when transferring money.
I have to say that Sima Nan's thinking is very clear, just like when he focused on Lenovo and Liu Chuanzhi, he started with business and slowly expanded to illegal crimes such as the loss of state-owned assets. This trick was very good, and it immediately mobilized the emotions of the onlookers, and supporters flocked to it.
Of course, Sima Nan has a certain truth this time, and Pan Shiyi, the founder of SOHO, did not only run away from the monk, but also took the temple away by the way. What's even more awesome is that Lao Pan has already built a new temple abroad.
SOHO China was one of the first real estate developers in China, and when Evergrande, Sunac and Country Garden first developed, SOHO China was already a leader in commercial real estate in China, with a peak between 2010 and 2013 before starting to decline. The reason for this is not only that the development speed of commercial real estate lags behind that of residential buildings, but also related to Pan Shiyi's initiative to reduce the scale.
In 2014, Pan Shiyi sold his first real estate project in China, selling two commercial real estate projects in Shanghai for 5.23 billion yuan in February of that year, SOHO Jing'an Plaza and SOHO Hailun Plaza, and selling 44% of the equity of SOHO in September to cash out 3.05 billion yuan.
From 2015 to 2018, Lao Pan accelerated the cash-out speed, and the remaining shares of Diwang, Hongkou SOHO, SOHO Century Plaza, and Lingkong SOHO on the Bund were all resold to others. The cumulative return of funds exceeded 28.5 billion yuan.
In the third quarter of 2019, SOHO China sold 11 more of its projects in one go.
How did Pan Shiyi dispose of SOHO China's cash, which left SOHO China with a lot of cash by selling off a large number of projects? The answer is that he is still investing.
As early as 2011, Pan Shiyi bought the theater building next to the Manhattan Plaza for $700 million with cash dividends received from SOHO China, and in 2012, he spent $700 million to acquire a 49% stake in Manhattan Park Avenue Plaza, and a year later, he bought a 40% stake in the General Building for $1.4 billion.
Investing money to buy fixed assets is not enough, and Pan Shiyi began to "donate to the school" in order to integrate into the American high society. You should still remember that not long ago, Lei Jun, the founder of the Xiaomi Group, donated 1.3 billion yuan to his alma mater, Wuhan University, in his personal name? Pan Shiyi also donated money, but the donation was made to famous foreign universities, and he donated $15 million to Harvard and Yale, and set up a foundation at Harvard with $100 million.
Lao Pan's son Xiao Pan relied on his father's "money ability" to successfully enter Harvard University, the world's top university.
In addition, in 2021, Pan Shiyi almost completely took away all the temples in the country.
SOHO China announced a major asset restructuring that the Pan Shiyi family plans to sell nearly 55% of its shares and cash out HK$14.28 billion, and after the completion of the transaction, the old Pan family will change from controlling shareholders to minority shareholders holding only 9% of the shares.
"Unfortunately", the acquisition ultimately fell through due to the failure to obtain approval from the mainland's antitrust authorities, and Pan Shiyi was unable to completely withdraw from the Chinese market.
Buying and selling freely, no one can find fault with Pan Shiyi in this. However, the mainland still exercises control over capital projects, so how did Pan Shiyi remit some of the funds after selling his assets out of the country? Sima Nan questioned this, and even directly defined it as an act of "breaking the law and committing crimes."
At the same time, whether Pan Shiyi has the final say or not is not Sima Nan's final say, nor is it my final say, but the conclusion of the judicial organ shall prevail. Therefore, we must not directly deduct the hat, the only thing that can be determined at the moment is that SOHO China has not left "unfinished buildings".
As mentioned above, SOHO China was at its best between 2010 and 2013, and in 2014 it began to "shrink its volume", selling assets and significantly reducing development investment, which can be seen in the scale of corporate assets.
At the end of June 2014, SOHO China's total assets reached an all-time high of RMB81.41 billion, up from RMB68.92 billion in the middle of this year.
Some friends may say that this is nothing, from 81.4 billion to 68.9 billion yuan. You must know that 2014 was ten years ago, and the housing prices at that time were far less high than they are now, even if the increase in commercial real estate was not as high as that of residential buildings, but the commercial real estate in first-tier cities rose by 60% or 70%.
In other words, the 81.4 billion yuan in assets (mainly commercial real estate) in 2014 will have to be more than 100 billion yuan now.
From 2014 to 2020 is the golden age of China's property market, the birth of a large number of giant real estate companies, they rely on leverage to make their scale expand rapidly in a short period of time, the vast majority of developers have an asset-liability ratio of more than 80%, some of which are more than 90%, that is, the wealth belonging to the company's shareholders is less than 10% of the total assets, and the rest are all debts owed to others.
SOHO China's leverage is not high, with levels below 50% in recent years. How low is this leverage? Even lower than Huawei.
Regardless of whether it is subjective or objective, SOHO China did not increase leverage frantically, but used a high-debt and high-turnover approach to accumulate high debt, and eventually left a mess due to the change of real estate credit policy. To be honest, for ordinary people, how Pan Shiyi's money came from, whether it was transferred abroad or not is not the most concerned thing, or there is no direct interest, and whether the project built is "unfinished" is closely related to the buyer.
From this point of view, Lao Pan Zai is shrewd, and the negative impact on society is obviously much smaller than that of Xu Jiayin.
On the other hand, should Mr. Sima Nan, who is closely concerned about Pan Shiyi's foreign exchange issue, explain to everyone what is going on with the small house that was originally not recognized and was later dug up by netizens to prove the evidence of the US real estate tax bill.
At that time, the foreign exchange control was much stricter than it is now, how did the money from investing in a small house in the United States be transferred out? Or did Mr. Sima Nan or his family make money in the United States very early, and the funds did not enter the country at all?
I don't know when Mr. Yu Li, a resident of Beijing's Dongcheng District and a well-known influencer, will give his supporters a reasonable explanation.