Wanda IPO: Wang Jianlin to top China’s rich list? As China’s largest commercial property developer, Dalian #Wanda Commercial goes public in Hong Kong, wealth race between #WangJianlin and #JackMa starts to go viral again. Wanda’s #IPO listing in Hong Kong has given Wang Jianlin, the biggest stakeholder of the company, a chance to overtake Jack Ma and return to the top spot on China’s rich list. Based on trading price of 48 HK dollars a share on Wednesday, Wang’s majority stake in the company is worth 15 billion U.S. dollars. According to Forbes, the wealth of the real estate tycoon is estimated to be 19 bln U.S. dollars combining his other assets, including a stake in U.S. movie theatre chain AMC and China’s domestic entertainment industry, which has moved him up to the second richest man on the Chinese mainland from the fourth in an October ranking. The race between the Internet mogul and property tycoon began at the start of this year. Wang and Ma, once in different industries, have been seeing opportunities to consolidate strengths in each other’s domain. In March, Alibaba group invested nearly 700 million U.S. dollars in Chinese department store operator, Intime. The cooperation will allow shoppers to purchase items in-store with the Alipay app and gain membership benefits. In contrast, in August, Wang joined forces with tech giants Tencent and Baidu to set up an e-commerce platform. It is aimed at combining Baidu’s search strengths and Tencent’s popular WeChat social messaging network with Wanda’s shopping malls, hotels and holiday resorts. Some analysts have pointed out, that synergy between online and offline businesses are just the beginning in the e-commerce market. Wang previously told reporters that being the richest man in China is never his goal. Instead, Wanda is simply focused on his global ambitions, and his new strategies to push into global entertainment, tourism, e-commerce, and finance industries. Wanda is now in the thick of constructing theme parks on the Mainland, competing directly with Western bigwigs such as Disney and Six Flags. Wang also has plans of taking his Wanda company into the world’s 10 largest cities in 10 years, including London and Madrid.
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 07:50:00 +0000
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