Wang Jianlin's annual meeting was stopped
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Edit | Jiang Jiang
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On January 14, Wanda Group's 2023 Annual Meeting was held at the Wanda Vista Beijing Hotel, which is connected to the headquarters. It was a low-key, almost media-wide annual meeting, with only one message on the Wanda Group's official website, as is customary.
The chairman's annual work summary is a necessary part of Wanda's annual meeting. No matter when and where the annual meeting is held, the on-site layout of the summary and commendation meeting is exactly the same: a blue background, flaming red flowers and candles, and Wang Jianlin sitting in the center, wearing a black suit and a crimson tie.
Wanda Group's 2023 Annual Meeting/Source: Wanda Official WeChat
There was no indication that Wanda held a gala. The Wanda Annual Meeting, or Wanda Spring Festival Gala, was once an important part of Wanda's annual meeting. Since the establishment of Wanda Group in 1988, Wanda has had its own Spring Festival Gala, and Chairman Wang Jianlin's solo singing was once a reserved program at the annual meeting.
According to the WeChat public account of Wanda Holding Group, last year, Wanda Group's Spring Festival Gala was held online - from Chinese New Year's Eve in 2023 to the sixth day of the new year, a song and dance video was released every day.
Wanda Group's 2023 online Spring Festival Gala program list
It has been many years since Wang Jianlin has been heard singing at the annual meeting.
01
Wanda Spring Festival Gala
"Wanda's annual meeting is compared with the two sessions and the evening party is compared with the CCTV Spring Festival Gala. The director of the Wanda Spring Festival Gala invited the deputy director level of CCTV and the chief director level of the Spring Festival Gala of local stations......"
This is the description of media person Xu Tan in the book "Innovation". It is the usual agenda of Wanda's annual meeting to find a tourist resort, visit the local Wanda City, and then nearly 1,000 supervisors above the general manager sit at the venue in fixed clothes to listen to the chairman's annual report.
The annual meeting used to be the highlight of Wanda's annual event, in addition to the annual report, the most anticipated is the Wanda Spring Festival Gala.
The Wanda Spring Festival Gala usually takes a year to prepare. According to Wanda's official introduction, from March to May every year, the program team of Wanda's annual meeting begins the creative and brainstorming work of the year's Spring Festival Gala; in July, the whole group collects ideas for the annual meeting, and all units sign up for the program plan; in September, the program list reviewed by the group headquarters and the director team for many times is determined, and the program rehearsal for more than 3 months begins.
The 2018 annual meeting of Wanda's 30th anniversary was launched in early 2018. The reason for such a long time is that every link is required to be executed precisely: there are more than 20 programs in the Spring Festival Gala, and each program has to go through nearly 100 review nodes; the badges of the participants record the accommodation and process information, which can be used to identify themselves during the security check; in 13 minutes and 28 seconds, the venue can be transformed from a large conference hall into a banquet hall with 56 tables.
"If you've ever done something like an annual meeting at Wanda, it's not difficult for you to do anything. "The style of Wanda's annual meeting is a microcosm of Wanda's working method, and the same "modular management" that Wanda is proud of is adopted by the business units: the annual meeting is divided into about 272 modules, each with its own clear work content, work standards, start and completion dates. If it is not completed on time, it will be red light in the system.
With mechanically sophisticated execution, it means that no one cannot be replaced. Whoever is in charge of the Annual Meeting can follow the module worksheet.
Wanda Group's 2018 Annual Meeting prepares a modular worksheet
The person who made Wanda's annual meeting vivid was Wang Jianlin.
Listening to the boss sing is a rare relaxing time of the year. Lao Wang loves to sing, everyone knows it, Wang Jianlin sings Cui Jian's songs with the shadow of Cui Jian, sings Wu Bai's songs with the taste of Wu Bai, and people call him "the singer who was delayed by the richest man".
In the 2016 Forbes China Rich List, Wang Jianlin topped the richest man in China for the third time. At the beginning of that year, Wanda's annual meeting was held in Wanda International Resort in Xishuangbanna, and Wang Jianlin sang four songs in one breath at the annual meeting: "Fake Monk", "Unrequited Love of a Flower", "The Shadow of the Fence Wall" and "My Roots in the Grassland".
On the stage, Wang Jianlin was like a real singer, and during the four-minute singing of "Fake Monk", three employees ran up to the stage to deliver flowers and take photos with him.
At that time, Wanda was still an international company, and the background screen of the annual meeting flashed "Wanda group spring festival gala" from time to time. Executives in suits and leather shoes held up their mobile phones to record the video, and when Wang Jianlin sang, "If you are already in love with me, please kiss me on the mouth", the audience erupted in cheers.
Wang Jianlin's singing video will be spread on the Internet as soon as possible. At the beginning, the matter of "the richest man singing" made netizens and domestic and foreign media feel a little novel, and professional singers Gong Linna and Zhang Liangying stood up to praise Lao Wang and affirm his singing voice.
Singer Gong Linna praised Wang Jianlin on Weibo
Rock, Pop, Folk Songs...... Wang Jianlin can sing anything. In 2017, Wanda's annual meeting was held in Hefei, and Wang Jianlin followed the customs of the countryside and sang Huangmei Opera "Husband and Wife Return Home" with a female singer in Anhui.
But the year after that, at the annual meeting of Wanda's 30th anniversary, Wang Jianlin did not sing again. Some people say that Lao Wang is unhappy, and in the past year, Wanda was investigated by the China Banking Regulatory Commission for debt risks, and urgently sold 13 cultural tourism projects and 77 hotels.
There was an additional program at the annual meeting that year, "Singing the Motherland". In the icy Harbin, Wang Jianlin cried, saying: "Wanda will always be a model of China's private enterprises."
02
The year of "cutting meat".
Starting from 2021, Wanda's annual meeting will no longer "tour" around the country, but will return to its headquarters in Beijing. Wang Jianlin's annual report speech is still circulating, but there is no longer an image of the Wanda Spring Festival Gala on the rivers and lakes.
The video update of the annual meeting on Wanda's official website is stuck in 2017
This year, it is likely that it will be difficult to hear Lao Wang showing his singing voice.
2023 will be a year of "cutting meat" for Wang Jianlin, who lost absolute control of Wanda Films and Zhuhai Wanda Commercial Management, and sold nearly 10 Wanda Plazas.
Because of re-embarking on the road of "selling, selling, selling", Wang Jianlin is getting farther and farther away from the position of the richest man in the past. On the 2023 Hurun Report, Wang Jianlin's family wealth totals 47 billion yuan, ranking 89th, becoming the richest person whose wealth shrank the most last year.
Wang Jianlin, who briefly returned to the richest man in real estate in 2022, was once considered the "return of the king". However, Wanda really wants to "cross the mountain of ten thousand mountains", and always needs to untie the shackles of the VAM agreement.
Zhuhai Wanda Commercial Management, which has a light commercial operation model, is the sector most likely to be listed by Wanda in the context of the tightening of IPOs of real estate companies, and it also carries Wang Jianlin's last ambition. In 2021, Zhuhai Wanda Commercial Management received an investment of 38 billion yuan, and at the same time signed a VAM agreement with investors composed of 22 institutions: Zhuhai Wanda Commercial Management must be listed by the end of 2023, otherwise Wanda will have to pay 30 billion yuan for equity repurchase.
Zhuhai Wanda Commercial Management has hit the IPO four times in two years. However, on December 28, 2023, the Hong Kong Stock Exchange showed that the prospectus of Zhuhai Wanda Commercial Management was invalid again.
On November 10, 2023, according to the documents of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, the prospectus submitted by Zhuhai Wanda Commercial Management Group Co., Ltd
According to interface reports, in the last few days, Wanda is still negotiating with investors, hoping to pay 30 billion yuan of equity repurchase money and interest in installments over four years, but it has been rejected by investors led by Pacific Alliance (PAG).
As of the end of November 2023, Wanda Commercial Management has repaid about 18 billion yuan of debt, and it is expected that in 2024, Wanda Commercial Management will need to repay 4.8 billion yuan of domestic debt and 400 million US dollars of foreign debt. Wanda, which has not yet come out of high debt, can hardly afford the failure of the VAM agreement.
After making the maximum concessions, Wanda finally lifted the crisis of the VAM, with the result that Dalian Wanda Commercial Management's stake in Zhuhai Wanda Commercial Management fell from more than 78% to 40%, and investor ownership increased from 21.17% to 60%.
Shortly before that, Wanda Film changed hands to China Ruyi, and Wang Jianlin was no longer the actual controller of Wanda Film, and only controlled 10.9% of Wanda Film's shares.
In an environment of high debt and poor financing, companies can only rely on selling assets to regain blood. In the process, Wang Jianlin gradually "lost" Wanda.
Since last year, Wanda has sold a total of 10 Wanda Plazas, Wang Jianlin once hoped to earn 100 billion yuan in annual rent through Wanda Plazas across the country, and said that "Wanda Commercial is Wanda's core enterprise" and "everything can be lost, this cannot be lost". Selling off the most important assets, it can be seen that Wanda has reached the point of last resort.
But as long as the enterprise still has the ability to make blood, there is still hope. In the first half of last year, Zhuhai Wanda Commercial Management's rental income and revenue reached 23.11 billion yuan and 25.452 billion yuan respectively, and it is still the leader of domestic commercial real estate.
Rental income and operating income of TOP5 real estate enterprises in the first half of 2023 / Salt Finance and Economics
Compared with many real estate companies with thunderous debts, Wanda, which took the lead in transforming to asset-light, is still persistent.
Although it is becoming more and more rare, the "fun" of entrepreneurs at the annual meeting has always been talked about, and there are still many people who are still waiting for Lao Wang to come back and sing.
Under a video of Wang Jianlin singing rock at the annual meeting, a netizen said: "I didn't expect that there would be another day, eating peanuts and drinking beer, listening to the richest man sing to me." ”
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