Special Fellow of glacier thought bank | Zhang Mingyang
In 2017, the 59-year-old Xu Jiayin looked down on his Evergrande Empire with great ambition.
This year, Xu Jiayin's net worth swelled by 200 billion yuan, surpassing Ma Huateng and Ma Yun, and topped China's richest man for the first time with 290 billion yuan.
▲Xu Jiayin (Photo/Visual China)
Evergrande Group's net profit reached a new high of 17 billion yuan since its listing, an increase of 110% over the previous year.
Guangzhou Evergrande won the Chinese Super League 7 consecutive championships, creating a great cause unprecedented in the history of Chinese football.
Ren Zeping joined Evergrande with a high salary of 15 million yuan, and did a solid job in the personnel of Evergrande's local tycoons.
……
Also in 2017, the 63-year-old Wang Jianlin hero lost his way, had no way to "foot", and fell into the darkest moment with Wanda Group, just like Xu Jiayin in these days.
In June 2017, Wanda suddenly encountered a regulatory storm of overseas investment, and market rumors that banks stopped lending to Wanda led to a "double kill of stocks and debts".
Wang Jianlin, who was also named "the richest Chinese in the world" by Forbes the year before, and laughed about "a small goal of one hundred million", looked unable to resist, and the Wanda Empire, which has more than 200 Wanda Plazas, more than a dozen Wanda Cities, 80 five-star hotels, and 1,300 theaters around the world, has never been so close to falling apart.
▲On July 19, 2017, Sunac, Wanda and R&F held a strategic cooperation signing ceremony in Beijing (Photo/Network)
A month later, on the afternoon of July 19, 2017, Wang Jianlin and Sun Hongbin, chairman of Sunac, and Li Silian, chairman of R&F, formed a big picture:
Sunac acquired 91% of Wanda's 13 cultural tourism projects for 43.844 billion yuan, and R&F acquired all of Wanda's 77 city hotels for 19.906 billion yuan.
Behind the chatter and laughter at the signing site is the rumor that Wang Jianlin "dropped the cup on the spot" in the conference room.
A few months later, Tencent, Suning, JD.com, Sunac and Wanda signed a strategic investment agreement in Beijing to buy a 34 billion yuan stake in Wanda Commercial, followed by Alibaba's 4.68 billion yuan to become the second shareholder of Wanda Film.
At the 2017 Wanda Annual Meeting, Wang Jianlin sighed and recalled: "2017 was an unforgettable year in the history of Wanda Group, wanda experienced turmoil and endured hardships."
When the melody of "Singing the Motherland" fluttered in the venue, Wang Jianlin shed tears on the spot.
At this point, Wang Jianlin and the Wanda Empire turned the tide of danger, passed the economic threshold, and seemed to have passed the more difficult political hurdle with a positive posture of selling overseas assets.
▲On April 28, 2018, Wanda Qingdao Oriental Film Capital opened, and Wang Jianlin (middle), Gou Taiming (left) and Sun Hongbin (right) attended the opening ceremony (Photo/Visual China)
In the past few days, Wang Jianlin has seen Xu Jiayin and Evergrande struggling and unbearable, and may think of Wanda's 2017 for the rest of his life countless times.
Wang Jianlin may even lament his luck that he "will be wrong and wrong". If it were not for the unexpected overseas investment supervision storm, which forced him to break his arm to survive, recover the cash flow one step ahead of others and reduce the leverage ratio, and continue to run wildly on the road of heavy assets, today's Wanda can be better than Evergrande in the face of the "three red lines" style of industry supervision.
What's more, since the epidemic at the beginning of last year, hotels and cultural tourism projects are the hardest hit areas that swallow up cash flow, if it were not for Wang Jianlin being forced to sell in the wrong place, coupled with another "epidemic concept stock" Wanda Cinema, Wanda's liquidity is bound to suffer no less than Evergrande's life and death test.
In this sense, Wanda certainly has to surrender to Wang Jianlin's decisiveness and determination in 2017, and it must also "thank" the regulatory storm launched early and "help" Wanda clear mines in advance, just as the so-called impermanence of the heavenly path depends on each other.
And Xu Jiayin, perhaps privately, will also use Wang Jianlin's 2017 as a shot in the arm, hoping that he can also copy Lao Wang's Guan Shan Fei crossing the rivers and lakes to save the emergency.
Yes, Xu Jiayin is also in the process of surviving with a broken arm, and his determination and willingness may not be less than that of Wang Jianlin, but Xu Jiayin's 2021 is destined to be difficult to reproduce Wang Jianlin's 2017.
An extensive explanation for this is that time is also the case.
In 2017, Trump has not yet begun to fight a trade war with China, whether from the economic trend, market environment, or real estate supervision, 2021 is much more severe than 2017, and the cold wind of 2017 even looks as pleasant as a warm spring.
But the most obvious change is that in 2021, Xu Jiayin has not been able to find Wang Jianlin's generous and golden circle of friends in 2017.
Imagine that in 2017, Wang Jianlin found a chi aid group with Ma Yun, Ma Huateng, Liu Qiangdong, Zhang Jindong, Sun Hongbin, Li Silian, these top commercial streams, Wang Jianlin "in distress", it took less than a month to get Sun Hongbin's Sun Chuang and Li Silian's richness, and the idle money in the hands of the big guys was even more than enough to explain the commercial phenomenon with the righteousness of the empty head.
This cannot be explained by Wang Jianlin's personal connections. After all, it was also in 2017 that Xu Jiayin also triumphantly got 130 billion yuan of war investment, and Zhang Jindong's Suning family alone threw 20 billion yuan, for which the media's joke explanation at the time was: Xu Jiayin and Zhang Jindong drank a glass of wine, and this glass of wine was worth 20 billion.
And in 2021? The real estate and Internet giants that were active in previous years have their own huge troubles.
Ma Yun and Ma Huateng have encountered the Internet regulatory storm and the private anti-capital trend, and they still have time to take care of themselves, and where do they dare to provoke a role like Xu Jiayin, who is on the cusp of the storm, otherwise I am afraid that it will be difficult to escape the attack of capital.
Sun Hongbin, Li Silian and Xu Jiayin have the same disease, Sunac's total liabilities are nearly one trillion yuan, and the net profit in the first half of this year is not enough to repay the interest. R&F is infinitely close to Evergrande's crisis, recently suffered a double kill of equity and debt, Fitch has just lowered its rating outlook from "stable" to "negative".
Ironically, the loss of the hotel project taken over from Wanda that year has reached nearly 3.5 billion, almost becoming the biggest hot potato that has dragged down R&F.
Zhang Jindong is even more depressed than Xu Jiayin, Suning's debt is as high as 150 billion, and it is almost bankrupt in the first half of this year, and even Zhang Jindong himself stepped down as the chairman of Suning.
In retrospect, one of Suning's predicaments was due to the 20 billion yuan invested in Xu Jiayin in 2017, which has not yet landed, directly dragging suning down.
Who else can Xu Jiayin count on?
Perhaps, Xu Jiayin's only hope is the so-called "too big to fail", betting that the government will throw rat traps and betting that the government will come to the rescue.
In Chinese logic, this hope may be fulfilled, but the price Xu Jiayin will have to pay for it is most likely to be out.
This is like the words that Xu Jiayin put out in the past few days, "I can have nothing, but the investors of Evergrande Wealth cannot have nothing", if the outing is understood as nothing, then Xu Jiayin is likely to be a slur.
I sincerely hope that's not the way it ends.
▲In June 2018, Evergrande Group announced its entry into the automobile industry (Photo/ Evergrande Group official website)
As far as Evergrande's dilemma is concerned, in addition to changes in the regulatory environment, many people blame Evergrande's overly aggressive diversification over the years.
From a retail price of 4 yuan to Evergrande Ice Spring, which only sells 1 yuan a bottle, 800 million US dollars invested in Jia Yueting's car... With so many failure cases, in contrast, it seems that the most successful is Guangzhou Evergrande, but behind the 8 Chinese Super League champions, Evergrande has a net investment of more than 10 billion yuan.
And in these years, the enthusiasm for diversification and football is not only Evergrande, it can even be said that those capital giants who have invested heavily in football are mostly experiencing their own life and death tests in 2021. Henan Jianye, Huaxia Happiness, Suning, R&F...
Is it the Chinese Super League is toxic, the gold dollar football is poisonous, the diversification is poisonous, or the political and business orientation is absurd at the beginning of the board, grass, snake, gray line, and fallacious?