TOP TALK: Wang Jianlin Founder & Chairman of Dalian Wanda Group

“Never start a business just to make money. Start a business to make difference”. This is a quote that best applies to the “Wealthiest person in China” – Wang Jianlin! Born on the 24th of October 1954 – Wang is a Chinese businessman and philanthropist, and the chairman of the Dalian Wanda Group (The largest real estate developer in China and the world’s largest movie theater operator). 

Born on the 24th of October 1954 – Wang is a Chinese businessman and philanthropist, and the chairman of the Dalian Wanda Group (The largest real estate developer in China and the world’s largest movie theater operator). Wang Sicong is currently a board member of the Wanda Group and a venture capitalist in China through his Beijing-based private equity fund, Prometheus Capital.

Wang Jianlin owns houses in three cities of China (Beijing, Chengdu, and Dalian), a 10-bedroom, eight-bathroom mansion in south-west London, etc… Therefore, Wang left the job in 1988, moved to his mother-in-law’s house, and then took a job at a debt-ridden property developer Xigang Residential Development Company of a General Manager, in 1989. Wang Jianlin started the Dalian Wanda Group with borrowed $80,000.

A China-based Fortune 500 company, Wanda Group can be classified into three sections: Commercials properties, Cultural Industry Group, and Financial Group. Wanda Commercial Properties is the world’s largest property company and is the only company in China to possess its own complete commercial real estate value chain that spans commercial planning, hotel design and research, commercial property construction, and commercial management subsidiaries.

Wanda Cultural Industry Group is China’s largest cultural enterprise that held assets worth 90.3 Bn Yuan and annual revenues of 51.2 billion Yuan in 2015. Wanda Financial Group is involved in financing internet businesses, investment, and insurance, and also provides one-stop innovative financial services to retailers and consumers.

Their total overseas investments reach to about more than $15 Bn. Some of these include – US film studio Legend Entertainment, AMC Theatres, Switzerland’s Infront Sports & Media, and World Triathlon Corporation, landmark five-star hotels (London, New York, Los Angeles, and Sydney), One Nine Elms London, Wanda Tower Canada, Jewel Gold Coast, etc.

In September 2013, Wanda Group not only announced their plan to build the world’s largest studio pavilion at Oriental Movie Metropolis that would include a 10,000 square meter studio and an underwater stage, but also flew in celebrities Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Beckinsale, and John Travolta to help launch an $8 billion mini-Hollywood in the coastal city of Qingdao in the same year.

In the same year, he also acquired the landmark “Edificio España” building in Madrid (Spain) along with billion-dollar hotel development projects in London and New York, as well as property projects in India. In December 2014, the group’s property division – Dalian Wanda Commercial Properties, launched on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and made the founder Wang Jianlin worth more than $25 billion, and one of China’s richest men.

They now had billion-dollar investments in properties in Sydney, London, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and was also on his way to becoming the world’s biggest owner of five-star hotels. Together, their stakes in Wang Jianlin’s real estate division were valued somewhere close to $1.1 billion during the time of its IPO, $17.2 million in its cinema subsidiary when it listed separately, and lastly, their holdings in both companies are worth more than $1.5 billion now.

Having said that – there has been no indication of any of the politicians, their relatives, or/and business associates that owned shares in Wanda being involved on the company’s behalf in any of its dealings with the government or have benefited in any other such way. Hence, announcing the first significant investment by a Chinese company, Dalian Wanda Group – China’s top real estate player, plans to invest $10 billion in India in the next decade in the construction of industrial townships and retail properties.

As a matter of fact – the Dalian Wanda Group, has already initiated talks with Indian multiplex owners to acquire assets to enter the Indian market.

correspondent by: