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Top 10 domestic business news in 2023
01
2023.01.06
The tide of price cuts by car companies
Tesla China announced price cuts for all domestic models, ranging from 20,000 yuan to 48,000 yuan, setting the lowest price in history, and shortening the delivery cycle by 1 to 4 weeks. New energy vehicle companies such as Xiaopeng, BYD, Zeekr, and even NIO, which once insisted on not reducing prices, have followed up one after another, and have launched various preferential subsidies or direct price reductions. Fuel vehicles, which have been greatly impacted by new energy vehicles, are the main force in the price reduction wave, and even local governments have personally "come down" to provide subsidies. The economic uncertainty has led to lower-than-expected consumption momentum in the entire market, coupled with sales pressure from top brands and the withdrawal of the purchase tax halving policy, which are all important triggers for the price war.
02
2023.03.06
E-commerce price wars
JD.com launched the "10 billion subsidy", covering all categories of goods, including 3C home appliances, maternal and infant toys, medical health, fresh food, etc., JD.com called it the largest promotional activity in history. More and more e-commerce companies are joining the daily subsidy track. In April, Taobao launched the "99 Special Sale Channel", and in August, Kuaishou E-commerce launched the core brand subsidy channel "Big Brands and Big Supplements". At the same time, Pinduoduo, the initiator of the "10 billion subsidy" war, invested another 1 billion yuan to subsidize digital home appliances. In 2023, price competition between e-commerce platforms will intensify. On this year's Double 11, the number of products that JD.com participated in the subsidy of 10 billion yuan was twice that of June 18, and Tmall Double 11 also set the lowest price on the whole network as the team's core performance indicator. Against the backdrop of sluggish growth, e-commerce giants are competing for consumers and merchants with low prices and subsidies.
3
2023.03.28
Alibaba launched the "1+6+N" organizational reform
"1+6+N", that is, the establishment of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, Taobao Tmall Business, Local Life, Cainiao, International Digital Commerce, Dawen Entertainment six business groups and a number of business companies under the Alibaba Group, they implement the CEO responsibility system under the leadership of their respective boards of directors, and will have the possibility of independent financing and listing, while Alibaba fully implements the management of holding companies. On September 10, Daniel Zhang stepped down as chairman and CEO of Alibaba Holding Group and became the chairman and CEO of Cloud Intelligence Group. Half a month later, Alibaba announced that it planned to spin off Cainiao Smart Logistics Network Co., Ltd. to be listed in Hong Kong, and Cainiao will become the first listed company after the organizational change. However, on November 16, the "1+6+N" spin-off plan changed: the complete spin-off of Cloud Intelligence Group will no longer be promoted, and the IPO of Hema Fresh will also be suspended.
04
2023.06.05
Luckin became the first coffee brand in China to exceed 10,000 stores
The 10,000th store of Luckin Coffee opened on Zhongshan Road in Xiamen, making it the first coffee chain in China to have more than 10,000 stores. Previously, the only restaurant brands in China that reached the scale of 10,000 store chains were Wallace, Zhengxin Chicken Steak, Juewei Duck Neck and Honey Snow Bingcheng. Since 2021, Luckin has broken through the sinking market through "self-operated + joint operation" and expanded rapidly. As of the end of the third quarter, the total number of Luckin Coffee stores reached 13,273, including 8,807 self-operated stores and 4,466 associated stores, and it is expected that its store size will reach 15,000 by the end of the year. By continuously manufacturing "explosive products", Luckin has also achieved the same frequency growth in the number of stores, revenue and profits.
05
2023.06.06
Sequoia Capital spun off its China business
VC giant Sequoia Capital announced that it will completely split Sequoia's local funds in the United States and Europe, China, and India/Southeast Asia into three companies, each operating independently and conducting business under different brands, and the split plan will be completed by the end of March 2024. Sequoia said the decision was made because "running a fragmented global investment business has become increasingly complex," so the split may be in response to cross-border capital regulation. Sequoia, which entered China in 2005 and has invested in Alibaba, Meituan, ByteDance, etc., can also implement the "localization" strategy more thoroughly.
06
2023.07.07
Ant Group and its subsidiaries were fined 7.123 billion yuan
Ant Group and its subsidiaries were fined 7.123 billion yuan, the largest fine in the history of domestic financial regulation. Ant Technology Group Co., Ltd.'s main violations of laws and regulations were judged to be infringing on the legitimate rights and interests of consumers and participating in the business activities of banking and insurance institutions in violation of regulations. In addition, according to the administrative penalty decision of the Zhejiang Supervision Bureau of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, Ant's fund sales violated the relevant regulations on the access, publicity, and file management of consignment fund products, as well as the relevant regulations on the personnel management and internal control of fund distribution agencies. Ant's rectification process is also a process of slow reflection by the industry, regulatory repair policies, re-division of labor in the industry, and platform integration and reshuffle.
07
2023.07.26
Volkswagen invested $700 million in Xpeng Motors
By increasing its capital to Xpeng Motors, Volkswagen has become the third largest shareholder within Xpeng after founder He Xiaopeng and Alibaba with a 4.99% stake ratio. The two companies also expect to jointly launch two Volkswagen electric models for the Chinese mid-size car market in 2026. A month later, Xpeng announced the acquisition of Didi's smart electric vehicle business for about 5.4 billion yuan, and Didi became its strategic shareholder. In the face of fierce competition in the automobile industry, car companies have sought to warm up. On October 26, Stellantis Group, the world's fourth largest automobile company, also announced that it would acquire 20% of the shares of Leapmotor for 1.5 billion euros, so Stellantis will become the largest shareholder of Leapmotor, and the two sides will also establish a joint venture called "Leapmotor International" with a ratio of 51:49, controlled by Stellantis, facing the global market.
08
2023.08.25
A series of policies to stabilize the property market have been implemented
On August 25, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the People's Bank of China and the State Administration of Financial Supervision jointly issued relevant notices to promote the implementation of the policy measure of "recognising a house without subscribing to a loan" for loans for the purchase of the first home. Subsequently, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Beijing, the four major first-tier cities, successively announced the implementation of "recognising housing without recognising loans", and so far, more than 65 cities have issued documents to loosen the policy of recognising housing and loans. On August 31, the relevant authorities issued another notice to no longer distinguish between "restricted purchase" cities and "non-restricted purchase" cities, and lowered the interest rate and down payment of commercial personal housing loans for first and second homes. On September 7, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the Agricultural Bank of China, the Bank of China, and the China Construction Bank successively issued announcements on the reduction of interest rates on the first housing loans. After the package of policies to stabilize the property market was implemented one after another, the number of houses and transactions in many places rebounded.
09
2023.08.27
Evergrande and Country Garden crisis
The disorderly expansion has once again highlighted the fragility of China's real estate market. Looking at the real estate industry in the first half of 2023, China Evergrande Group had a total debt of 2.4 trillion yuan and a net loss of 39.25 billion yuan, while another real estate giant, Country Garden, lost 51.461 billion yuan in the first half of the year. In addition, the China Securities Regulatory Commission's investigation of Evergrande Real Estate, the residential surveillance of Evergrande Chairman Xu Jiayin, and the compulsory measures taken by several senior executives of Evergrande Fortune have also led to the obstruction of Evergrande's overseas debt restructuring plan of more than $19 billion. On October 10, Country Garden also announced the start of overseas debt restructuring, involving a principal of about 9.3 billion US dollars.
10
2023.11.13
The Chinese film market has recovered rapidly
The Chinese film market, which has been suppressed for 3 years, will finally explode in 2023, successively ushering in the Spring Festival stalls, which are the second highest box office in Chinese film history and the fastest annual box office to break 10 billion yuan, the third in the historical box office May Day, the second in the historical box office Dragon Boat Festival and the fourth in the historical box office. The summer file not only refreshed the historical box office record of the schedule, but also set a record for the number of moviegoers in the summer file and a record of breaking 100 million in a single day in the Chinese film history. In the end, the annual box office of Chinese films exceeded 50 billion yuan on November 13, and it is expected to exceed 55 billion yuan for the whole year, returning to the level of 2017. More than 80% of domestic films account for the mainstream, and small and medium-budget films with diverse themes have become the mainstream, which is also a new change in the Chinese film market after the epidemic.
Top 10 International Business News of 2022
01
2023.03.10
Silicon Valley Bank goes bankrupt
Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) announced its closure, making it the largest bank in the United States to announce failure since the 2008 financial crisis. Against the backdrop of the Federal Reserve's successive interest rate hikes, Silicon Valley Bank sold $21 billion in bonds, triggering strong market fears, which then caused a run and eventually collapsed, and the stock prices of many banks plummeted. SVB's depositors are mainly tech starters and venture capital-backed companies. The U.S. government then provided deposit guarantees to Silicon Valley Bank and others. On March 26, First Citizens Bank AG acquired Silicon Valley Bank. However, the crisis in the U.S. banking sector is not over, First Republic Bank was delisted by the New York Stock Exchange in early May due to the loss of more than $100 billion in deposits in the first quarter, which triggered a circuit breaker for many bank stocks.
02
2023.03.15
The arms race of the big models
The craze for catching up with ChatGPT has begun. In February, Google and Meta successively launched large-scale model products, and companies such as IBM, Samsung, and Apple followed suit. In China, companies such as BAT, Huawei, and SenseTime, as well as countless entrepreneurs, have also poured into this track. Meanwhile, OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, released the more powerful GPT-4 on March 15. And Microsoft, OpenAI's largest investor, is working hard to promote its commercialization process. But on Nov. 17, OpenAI abruptly announced that CEO Sam Altman would step down and leave the board — five days before OpenAI was pressured to reinstate his position. Altman has been actively maintaining OpenAI's competitive edge, which has raised concerns about AI security within the company. The field of AI has entered a state of escalation of the arms race, and OpenAI is inevitably caught in it.
3
2023.03.19
UBS acquired Credit Suisse for approximately $3.25 billion
Driven by the Swiss National Bank, UBS announced the acquisition of Credit Suisse for a total consideration of about $3.25 billion, which was about 40% of Credit Suisse's market value at the time. In March, Credit Suisse acknowledged that there were "significant deficiencies" in the effectiveness of internal controls, and its largest shareholder, the Saudi National Bank, said it would not provide more assistance. In 2022, UBS generated a net profit of $7.6 billion, while Credit Suisse posted a net loss of $7.9 billion. If Credit Suisse fails, it will bring cascading risks to other banks and international financial markets. On June 12, the two companies completed the merger, ending Credit Suisse's 167-year history as a separate entity, as part of which Credit Suisse began cutting about 80% of its Hong Kong investment bank staff in the second week of August, and expects its global workforce to be reduced by about one-third after the merger.
04
2023.03.23
TikTok has been banned in many parts of the United States
TikTok CEO Zhou Shouzi was questioned at a U.S. congressional hearing. Previously, the White House asked local governments to ban TikTok "in order to ensure the security of American data", and as of mid-March, the United States, Canada, the three major institutions of the European Union, Belgium and the United Kingdom have issued similar statements. On May 18, Montana became the first state in the United States to officially announce a TikTok ban, which is expected to take effect as early as January 1 next year. At the same time, TikTok is also restructuring its e-commerce division in the United Kingdom and the United States. But on October 4, TikTok shut down its e-commerce business because Indonesia banned social platforms such as TikTok from trading goods or using user data for e-commerce purposes. Data privacy, global regulation, and the politics behind it have been pinching TikTok.
05
2023.04.18
India's mobile phone industry is changing
Not only did Apple retail stores make their debut in India, but they also opened two stores in a row just three days apart. Previously, Apple has transferred the industrial chain of some product components such as iPhones to India. In fiscal 2022, Apple assembled more than $7 billion worth of iPhones in India, accounting for 7% of production, compared with just 1% two years ago. The Indian market is accelerating to overtake China as the world's fastest-growing market for smartphone production. At the same time, the Indian government has also stepped up supervision of Chinese mobile phone manufacturers, first Xiaomi has 4.8 billion yuan of assets frozen, and in October, India's financial law enforcement department arrested four Vivo executives working in India on suspicion of money laundering. The Indian government is also considering requiring Chinese handset makers to employ Indians as senior executives, designating Indian co-manufacturers, and requiring them to work with local distributors.
06
2023.05.2
Wave of strikes in the United States
On May 2, tens of thousands of Hollywood film and television screenwriters began a large-scale strike over issues such as salary and the use of artificial intelligence. More than two months later, the Screen Actors Guild also joined. The two strikes lasted 148 and 118 days, respectively, and led to the postponement or suspension of production of several film and television productions. In mid-September, the United Auto Workers (AIW) went on strike for about 50,000 people over a six-week strike over labor disputes with three automakers, GM, Ford, and Stellantis, and the two sides finally reached an agreement on a 25% wage increase over the next four years. In addition, in October, more than 75,000 health care workers from the union union of Caesars Healthcare, the largest private medical institution in the United States, also went on strike over pay and working conditions. Behind the frequent strikes are high inflation, labor shortages and unequal distribution.
07
2023.06.06
Apple unveils its first headset
Apple unveiled its first headset, the Vision Pro, which features three ways to interact with eyes, gestures and voice, allowing users to browse virtual views projected into their surroundings. Apple has developed a new operating system for the headset, connects to all iOS apps, is building an ecosystem of third-party apps, and has set up a dedicated division for the first time. For Apple, the Vision Pro is not just a product, but a next-generation hardware platform. When Huawei returned to the mobile phone market with the Mate 60 series, and the limelight has overshadowed the trend of the ininnovative iPhone, Apple really needs to make some breakthroughs in hardware.
08
2023.09.15
ARM went public, and Nvidia was worth more than one trillion dollars
ARM, a subsidiary of SoftBank, was listed on the NASDAQ with a market capitalization of $67.9 billion on the first day, making it the largest IPO in the U.S. stock market this year. Apple, Nvidia, Google, Intel and others all want to be investors. ARM has a monopoly on chip design. Its first earnings report after listing showed that although the quarterly results exceeded Wall Street's expectations, the company's outlook for the next fiscal quarter fell short of expectations due to the uncertainty brought by the current political and economic environment to its licensing business. In October, ARM also fell below the issue price for the first time. And Nvidia, the chip giant that gave up buying it, rose all the way to its stock price with the AI boom, becoming the seventh company in the United States to unlock a trillion-dollar market value at the end of May.
09
2023.10.13
Microsoft completes the acquisition of Blizzard
After 21 months, Microsoft finally completed the company's largest deal in nearly 50 years and the largest game acquisition in history, with a deal valued at $68.7 billion. In the meantime, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority and the US Federal Trade Commission have rejected the deal on the grounds that it would harm competition in the cloud gaming market. To that end, Microsoft signed a 10-year Activision Blizzard game licensing agreement with game developers such as Sony and Nintendo in order to push for the acquisition. Microsoft's more transparent and cooperative stance toward regulators has also provided lessons for other companies. It is reported that in response to Microsoft's acquisition, Sony plans to acquire the Japanese game company Bandai Namco.
10
2023.11.06
WeWork formally filed for bankruptcy protection
WeWork, a U.S. coworking company, filed for bankruptcy protection in New Jersey under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. More than 400 other corporate entities affiliated with WeWork have also filed for bankruptcy, including a number of independent subsidiaries that WeWork has set up to operate its properties around the world. WeWork China said through its official Weibo that at the end of 2020, WeWork China had been separated from WeWork and had independent operation and management capabilities. On Aug. 22, the New York Stock Exchange suspended trading on WeWork's stock as it fell below $1 for 30 consecutive trading days. Founded in 2010, WeWork is a star company in co-working, with a valuation of $47 billion in 2019.
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