–
–
–
–
Interviewed this morning on CNBC’s Squawk Box about Wanda and its new “asset light strategy”.
My conclusion: “Wanda just underwent the corporate version of emergency bariatric surgery. It’s suddenly become a much slimmed-down company. What Wanda is today, what it will become, we don’t yet know. But, it looking clear Wanda is no longer one of the heavyweights of China’s private sector. “
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
BEIJING — China moved on Friday to curb investment overseas by its companies and conglomerates, issuing its strongest signal yet that it wants to rein in runaway debt that could pose a threat to the country’s slowing economy.
Beijing has stepped up its efforts in recent months to restrict some of its most acquisitive companies from buying overseas assets, worried that a series of purchases by China’s conglomerates around the world has been driven by excessive borrowing.
In the latest move, a statement published by China’s cabinet, the State Council, said the authorities would punish companies for violating foreign investment rules, and establish a blacklist of businesses that did so. The statement was attributed to the National Development and Reform Commission, the commerce ministry, the foreign ministry and the central bank.
The statement pointed to acquisitions in sectors ranging from entertainment and sports clubs to hotels, but it was unclear whether or how the government would block deals.
It reiterated a warning issued in December that restrictions on overseas investments were being imposed because of “irrational†investment trends.
That statement said that the kinds of investments overseas it described were “not in accordance with macro-control policies.†The government wants to “effectively guard against all sorts of risks,†it said. The State Council document said the government nevertheless supported overseas investments in sectors such as oil and gas and in China’s “One Belt, One Road†program, which aims to promote infrastructure projects along the historic Silk Road trading route.
“It’s the loudest yet of wake-up calls that the government holds the keys to the lockbox of the country’s wealth, public and private,†Peter Fuhrman, chairman of China First Capital, an investment bank, said in an emailed response to questions. “Bad M&A is all but criminalized.â€
A surge in overseas acquisitions by Chinese investors in recent years has ignited fears that soaring corporate debt levels could destabilize the country’s economy, the world’s second largest, and further weaken its currency.
Companies like Anbang Insurance Group, Fosun International, the HNA Group and Dalian Wanda Group have capitalized on cheap loans provided by state banks to snap up trophy assets such as the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York and AMC Theaters.
Beijing’s clampdown on overseas investments shows how the interests of private business can collide with those of the Communist Party government. Beijing has made financial stability a priority this year, with the party’s congress scheduled in the fall. Among the party’s top concerns: controlling debt, stemming the flow of capital leaving the country, and China’s opaque “shadow banking†system.
But while the latest statement from the State Council is likely to have an impact on mergers and deals, a lot of Chinese money is already offshore and thus not easily restricted by the government in Beijing, said Alexander Jarvis, chairman of Blackbridge Cross Borders, which has advised Chinese companies on several soccer acquisitions.
“Deals are still going to happen,†Mr. Jarvis said. “There is plenty of Chinese capital overseas in offshore tax havens, in the U.S., across Europe, Hong Kong. I’m not sure they can fully control that capital.â€
In a sign of that deal making, a Chinese businessman, Gao Jisheng, struck a deal to buy an 80 percent stake in Southampton Football Club, a soccer team in the English Premier League, for about $271 million. Mr. Gao obtained the loan from a bank in Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China that is administered under separate laws, Bloomberg reported on Thursday.
Geoffrey Sant, a partner at New York-based law firm Dorsey and Whitney, said it is likely that the latest announcement from Beijing will result in a “temporary pause†in overseas acquisitions.
“I think they are thinking there’s a bit of irrational exuberance in the market right now and they just want to cool that off,†said Mr. Sant, who represents Chinese companies. “It doesn’t make sense to permanently ban some of these areas.â€
The State Council statement comes amid increased scrutiny of China’s “gray rhinos†— threats that are large and obvious but often neglected even so.
In recent months, the government has said it would increase scrutiny of companies’ balance sheets, warning that some of the largest companies could pose a systemic risk to the economy.
Encouraged by the slew of acquisitions made by some of the country’s most powerful tycoons, many smaller Chinese companies started looking overseas, spurred by China’s slowing economic growth to look for new markets.
Many, however, had no experience running the businesses they were targeting. In one such example, Anhui Xinke New Materials, a copper processing company in central China, made a deal to buy Voltage Pictures, an American film financing and production firm, for $350 million. A month later, Anhui Xinke pulled out of the transaction.
In other cases, it was not clear whether many of the big trophy acquisitions were actually good deals.
In 2015, Legendary chalked up a net loss of $540 million, according to a regulatory filing that Wanda Film filed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. Fosun International, meanwhile, paid a premium to buy French resort operator Club Med, which was until then an unprofitable company, eventually agreeing to a $1.1 billion price tag in 2015 after a long takeover battle. The firm made a small profit last year, according to Fosun’s filings. And last year, AC Milan, the Italian soccer club that was acquired by a Chinese consortium for about $870 million, made a net loss of about $88 million.
“I agree with the Chinese government. A lot of these deals are bad,†said Mr. Jarvis.
Companies have already started feeling the pinch of Beijing’s clampdown on overseas investments, which started in earnest in December.
The number of newly announced outbound mergers and acquisitions by Chinese firms fell by 20 percent in the first six months of 2017 compared to the same period in 2016, though it picked up in May and June, according to Rhodium Group, a New York-based research firm.
In March, Dalian Wanda, the Chinese conglomerate that owns AMC Theaters and Legendary Entertainment, was forced to abandon its $1 billion deal to buy Dick Clark Productions, the firm behind the Golden Globes and Miss Universe telecast after Beijing tightened its controls on capital outflows. Months later, Wanda sold a majority stake in 13 theme parks to property firm Sunac China Holdings and handed 77 hotels to R&F Properties, another real estate company based in the southern city of Guangzhou, for $9.5 billion.
–
As published in The New York Times.
The New York Times Interview Transcript
–
–
–
–
– – 
–
–
–
The once-sizzling romance between China and Silicon Valley has cooled rather dramatically. This has some potentially serious consequences for both sides, but especially for China, which desires to invest in and gain access to some of the hottest new ideas from this cradle of innovation. A new strategy is needed.
Until recently, Chinese investment funds and companies were investing hundreds of millions of dollars every year into promising Silicon Valley start-ups, as part of a strategy to forge closer ties between the US high-technology sector and the large Chinese market. But the flow of funds has largely dried up.
There are two main reasons. First, Chinese regulators imposed new restrictions on large overseas investments. Second, the US government began to take a less friendly attitude toward Chinese technology investment in the US, killing several proposed deals and holding up approval on many others.
There is every sign that things in the US are going to get more restrictive rather than less. As someone convinced of mutual benefits from Chinese investment in US technology, it all seems highly counterproductive. The world needs more deep and extensive ties between the Chinese and the US high-technology world, not just in start-up investing but also in university research and scientific conferences, shared research and development (R&D) labs, and partnerships among large companies working in hot fields like semiconductors, robotics, artificial intelligence and clean energy.
What can China do? Rather than sending money out, it can encourage more US high-technology start-ups to relocate to China. There is a huge amount to be gained, both for China’s continuing industrial upgrading and for innovative US technology companies looking to grow into giants.
China has in abundance the most vital ingredients for technology start-up success:Â capital, a market and talented managers and engineers. In many industries, for example advanced manufacturing, robotics and new battery technologies, China often has more to offer technology companies than the US.
China already has lured a lot of Chinese-born scientists and technologists back from Silicon Valley to open start-ups. The next step is to lure some of the best early-stage US technology companies to China. This addresses a big weakness in the US high-technology scene: companies there tend to view the China market as an after-thought. In reality, it is often the market most worth prioritizing.
I’m seeing how well all this can work on the ground. We’re helping a promising US robotics company build its future in China. It is establishing a Chinese company as its main asset and moving some of its core team to China. It expects to add many more staff in China. The breakthrough product it’s now perfecting has a huge potential market in China’s manufacturing industry.
Originally, this company was aiming to find investors in China to help it grow in Ohio. We helped explain why bringing the company to China would make a lot more sense. The company is applying for R&D grants as well as venture capital in China. Within a 100-kilometer radius of its future base in Shenzhen, South China’s Guangdong Province is the largest concentration of potential customers and partners in the world.
We foresee big mutual gains if China can attract many more exciting early-stage technology companies. They will create jobs, pay taxes and invest in local R&D. The benefits to China should be far larger than just buying some shares in a technology company based in Silicon Valley.
The objective isn’t to evade US rules but to bring start-ups early in their growth stage to the market where the demand is greatest. Technology companies do best when they sit close to the biggest concentration of customers.
The Chinese government has already said it wants to make the country more of a magnet for global technology talent. Shenzhen is a great city for US start-ups to grow big.
The steep drop in Chinese investment in Silicon Valley may actually prove a blessing in disguise. It’s smart to keep more of that capital at home to invest in great technology companies in China. Many US technology start-ups will achieve far more, and far more quickly, if they make China their future home.
The author is Chairman and CEO of China First Capital.
http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1061519.shtml
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
BEIJING — The Chinese property developer Sunac China Holdings has turned into one of the country’s biggest white knights, swooping in to help troubled companies with too much debt. The risk: Sunac is amassing its own large pile of debt in the process.
Sunac has more than doubled its debt load in a year to $38 billion. Its deal this week to buy a portfolio of theme parks and hotels from the Dalian Wanda Group, the heavily indebted Chinese conglomerate, will add to the tab. At $9.3 billion, the acquisition is larger than the market value of Sunac.
“The problem for Sunac is twofold,†said Peter Fuhrman, chairman of China First Capital, an investment bank. “They themselves are already rather overleveraged and they are not paying distressed prices.â€
Sunac is offering a much-needed lifeline.
For years, China fueled growth by providing easy credit. Chinese companies borrowed heavily, using the money to fund aggressive expansions.
As the economy now slows, companies are increasingly running into financial trouble, with some having to borrow even more to pay their debts. Policy makers are worried that the country’s Passover level of corporate debt could threaten the broader financial system.
Sunac, China’s seventh-largest property developer in terms of sales, has been able to tap into its financial strength to help companies under pressure. Since 2012, Sunac’s property sales have grown at double-digit rates nearly every year, giving it the firepower to scoop up assets and land plots.
Before the Wanda deal, Sunac in January pumped $2.2 billion into LeEco, a tech firm struggling to pay off its creditors. This May, it paid $1.5 billion for an 80 percent stake in Tianjin Xingyao, a property firm known for leaving its projects uncompleted.
In 2015, Sunac made a play to rescue Kaisa, pledging $1.2 billion to take over the troubled property company; it later pulled out after Kaisa did not meet certain conditions for the deal. That same year, it announced a partnership with the cash-poor Yurun Holding Group, which ran a business empire ranging from sausage making to property and finance.
It is a remarkable turnabout for the company’s founder, Sun Hongbin.
Mr. Sun started his career at the Lenovo Group, where he was promoted to run enterprise development. But he had a falling out with Liu Chuanzhi, the founder of Lenovo, over a business dispute. Related to the dispute, Mr. Sun was sentenced in 1992 to five years in jail for misappropriation of public funds.
After his release in 1994, he met with the founder of Lenovo and apologized, according to the website of The People’s Daily, the ruling Communist Party’s official newspaper. The Lenovo founder eventually lent Mr. Sun about $74,000, which he used to start a predecessor real estate firm to Sunac.
Lenovo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
When Mr. Sun started Sunac in 2003, he focused on the cities of Wuxi and Chongqing and then moved on to China’s most developed cities, among them Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin and Hangzhou, building apartments with names like Beijing Fontainebleau Chateau. Sunac built its residential projects in good locations near city centers and was aggressive in acquiring land plots — with higher debt.
–
“People who have failed are those who have been defeated by themselves,†Mr. Sun told a newspaper, China Business News, in 2013. “But I often tell others: After you fail, you can start again.â€
With the Wanda deal, Sunac is extending its reach into tourism, paying $9.3 billion for 76 hotels and a major chunk of its 13 tourism projects, in the country’s largest property acquisition ever. The purchase will help Sunac diversify its business, which is hurting from government restrictions on home sales as Beijing seeks to cool a frothy property market. It also strengthens the company’s hand in an industry dominated by bigwigs like the China Vanke Group and Country Garden.
“Within the housing industry, the powerhouses are really strong,†said Lu Wenxi, an analyst for Centaline Properties who is based in Shanghai. “If you don’t gobble up the fat ones, it is easy to be eaten up by others. Taking on more projects will prevent you from being eaten.â€
Investors have rewarded Sunac for the deal. Shares of Sunac rose 14 percent in Hong Kong on Tuesday after they resumed trading after the deal announcement.
But the deal will add to an already significant debt load. In 2016, the company’s net gearing ratio — a measure of total debt to shareholders’ equity — rose to 121.5 percent, from to 75.9 percent in 2015. Fitch Ratings recently downgraded the company’s credit rating to BB-, saying Sunac’s acquisitive approach had made its financial profile “more volatile.â€
Wanda is helping finance the acquisition. Sunac, in a statement to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Monday, said Wanda would procure a loan for the company worth about $4.4 billion.
Seller financing is not uncommon, both in China and the West. But Wanda’s role means that Sunac doesn’t have all the money upfront.
“In my experience, I’ve never seen it anywhere,†said Lester Ross, a Beijing-based partner with the law firm WilmerHale, who has advised deals in China for the last 20 years. “No client that I represent would accept a deal like that where you’re responsible for raising the money to pay for somebody else.â€
Sunac did not return multiple calls for comment. The company said in a statement to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Tuesday that the deal with Wanda “will add a large number of prime land reserves and property assets for the company at a reasonable cost.â€
The LeEco deal is also prompting concern.
Sunac invested $2.2 billion in LeEco, buying minority stakes in three of the conglomerate’s more stable businesses, including the smart TV affiliate Leshi Zhixin, Le Vision Pictures, and Leshi Internet. The two companies don’t have many overlapping interests, and LeEco’s finances have continued to sour. Before the Wanda deal, shares of Sunac were falling on fears that LeEco’s problems would spread.
In a January news conference, Mr. Sun said many people had tried to dissuade him from investing in LeEco, adding that several were “resolutely opposed†to it.
“I seriously considered their views, but I don’t think their opinions are sufficient to change my mind,†he said.
–
Article as published in the New York Times
–
–
–
China is probing the loan practices of a group of big private sector conglomerates who have been on a high-profile global spending spree over the past few years.And although the review targets only a few of the country’s most politically-connected companies, some analysts see an attempt to increase government control over the role played by the private sector in foreign markets.
“I think this is an attempt to change the direction (of) the role these Chinese companies play in the Chinese economy,” says Paul Gillis, a professor at Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management. “To align them more closely with the policies of the government and to reduce the risks that actions of these private companies could end up having a shock effect on the economy as a whole.”
Chinese authorities say they launched the probe because of worries that highly leveraged overseas deals pose risks to China’s financial system. Officials have already expressed worries over mounting debt among Chinese lenders, some of which may remain hidden by China’s opaque lending networks.
Notable companies targeted
According to media reports, the list of companies under review is a relative who’s who of Chinese enterprises.
Among those reportedly targeted are Dalian Wanda, which owns the AMC Theaters chain in the United States and has been actively courting deals in Hollywood. High-flying insurance company Anbang, which owns New York’s Waldorf Astoria and Essex House hotels. Also on the list is Hainan Airlines, which bought a 25 percent stake in Hilton Hotels last year and another insurance company Fosun, which owns Cirque de Soleil and Club Med.
Over the past few years, China has seen massive amounts of capital moving overseas with companies and wealthy individuals buying assets abroad. Authorities began taking steps late last year to tighten controls. But many big conglomerates view foreign investment as a golden opportunity – given the low global interest rate environment – and worth the risk of highly-leveraged investments.
Peking University’s Gillis says it appears the Chinese government is coming to terms with how to effectively regulate private enterprises, companies that behave more aggressively than their state-owned counterparts. But he also sees the move as a further consolidation of power by President Xi Jinping, bringing companies more under the control of the central government.
“I think many of the companies had a pretty favorable treatment from prior administrations, and I think Xi Jinping is less enamored of these large private companies than some of his predecessors were.”
Expensive acquisitions by companies like Wanda and Anbang have thrust China into the global spotlight. But the news and commentary that followed the companies’ mega-deals has not always been positive.
People walk past an entrance to the Anbang Insurance Group’s offices in Beijing, June 14, 2017.
–
In some cases, the deals have given China a black eye, says Fraser Howie, author of the Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China’s Extraordinary Rise. Anbang’s attempt last year to purchase Starwood Hotels is one example, he says.
“This is high profile, global Bloomberg headline, Chinese company buys Starwood Group, next week it’s all off because the funding was never there, the due diligence could never be completed there, it made all Chinese bidders look horrible,” said Howie. “It looks dreadful for the party and for the leadership that these private entrepreneurs are running out there and yet China as a country is being impacted by it.”
Earlier this month, the head of Anbang was the latest to be swept up in the ongoing financial crackdown.
Regulating private spending?
Authorities so far have not said specifically what the targeted companies may have done wrong, if anything. Some analysts argue that the probe is just a part of a process that began six month ago to curtail the flight of capital from China.
“If cross-border M&A deals make sense, if they deliver strong returns, then there should be no problem either for bankers or those doing the buying. But, if Chinese groups overpay and get the money to do so from Chinese banks providing risky or underpriced loans, then Chinese regulators have an obligation to step in,” Peter Fuhrman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of China First Capital tells VOA in an emailed response.
Others see a deeper message about Xi Jinping’s view on the role that private companies should serve broader national goals.
Howie says the probe challenges assumptions about the role of private enterprises in China.
“If anyone ever thought these companies were truly private in the sense of being independent or beyond government reach. Clearly that was never true,” he says. “Everyone operates at the discretion of the Communist Party, even if you’ve done nothing wrong and clearly even if you are wealthy.”
https://www.voanews.com/a/china-probes-big-comanys-overseas-loan-practices/3913190.html
–
–
–
–
No health care problem looms larger in China than Alzheimer’s disease. It is the fastest-growing major disease on the mainland, with at least 9.5 million Âsufferers and perhaps as many undiagnosed cases. Almost a million Chinese are diagnosed every year with Alzheimer’s, with the number of new cases expected to rise sharply by around 2030.
Of the major diseases in China, Alzheimer’s also has the greatest mismatch between the number of patients and amount of specialised care available. The US has about half the number of Alzheimer’s patients, and 73,000 beds in specialist treatment centres. China has fewer than 200 beds. Alzheimer’s care is a US$250 billion industry in the US. In China, it has barely even begun.
The reason for this mismatch is clear. China’s health care system is already under strain to improve the quality of care overall, especially for diseases like cancer and hepatitis. Alzheimer’s is not a top priority, either for government policy or health care companies and investors.
But, over the coming decades, no disease will possibly impact more lives in China or possibly cost the country more to treat. By 2050, the number of Alzheimer’s patients in China is expected to reach 45 million, about half the number worldwide.
The total cost of treating all of them is impossible to estimate. Alzheimer’s is already the most expensive disease to treat in the US. With the number of cases there expected to double in the next 20 years, US government spending on Alzheimer’s care is on course to become the single most expensive part of the national budget, topping even military spending.
China is likely to take a different path, with more spending done by patients and their families, rather than through national health Âinsurance. But the near-total lack of ÂAlzheimer’s treatment centres, and trained nurses and doctors, is one of the most significant market failures in China’s health care industry.
In China, Alzheimer’s is still often seen not as a disease but as an inevitable and natural part of ageing, a sad side effect of enjoying a long life. The national broadcaster, CCTV, has of late been airing public service advertisements to raise awareness about Alzheimer’s as a disease. This is the same education process the US and Europe began over 40 years ago.
Alzheimer’s, like diabetes, obesity or colorectal cancer, is a disease of economic success. As a country becomes richer and health care standards improve, people live longer. Nowhere has this transformation happened more quickly than in China, meaning an explosive growth in the number of Alzheimer’s cases as has never been seen before.
The average life expectancy in China has Âincreased more in the past 30 years than in the previous 3,000. China’s life expectancy is still growing faster than that of developed countries.
The facts: Alzheimer’s is an incurable disease that afflicts a large number of older people, but not the majority. About 3 per cent of people aged 65 to 74, and 17 per cent of those between 75 and 85, will develop the disease. Those over 85 have a 30 per cent chance of getting it. It is a mystery why some old people get Alzheimer’s and most do not.
One interesting correlation: people with higher education levels are less likely to get the disease. The more you use your brain in complex ways, the more you may inoculate yourself against Alzheimer’s.
Rural people are more susceptible than city-dwellers. With a larger percentage of Chinese living in rural areas, the percentage of over-80s with the disease may end up higher than in the US, Europe or other more urbanised Asian societies of Japan, Korea, Taiwan or Singapore. Women are more likely to get Alzheimer’s, as they live longer on average.
Despite billions of dollars spent on scientific and pharmaceutical research in the West, there are no drug or surgical treatments for Alzheimer’s. Brain chemistry and biology make developing a drug for Alzheimer’s difficult.
Despite this, there have been remarkable successes in Europe and the US, especially in the past 10 years, at care facilities managed by specially trained nurses and doctors. They work together to slow the progress of the disease in patients, through physical therapy, psychological counselling, special equipment to improve memory and mobility, one-on-one assistance, and a safe living environment designed for the care of people gradually losing their ability to think, speak and function.
The result: Alzheimer’s patients in Europe and the US now live twice as long after diagnosis than 30 years ago, an average of eight to 10 years.
Dozens of US and European-listed companies are focused on research and specialist Alzheimer’s care in nursing homes and clinics. China has none.
Traditionally in China, more money has been spent on children’s education than on medical care for older people. But, as Chinese live longer, the way money is spent across three generations is likely to change. The grandchildren of people in their 80s will have usually already been through college and are working. That leaves more money, both in the hands of older people and their children, to provide more high-quality care for those at the end of their lives.
How should China build its Alzheimer’s treatment infrastructure and bring it quickly up to global standards? The biggest need will be providing care to those with average family income and savings levels.
If there’s one advantage to getting a late start, it’s that China can learn from the mistakes of, and adopt the best ideas developed in, the US, Europe and Asia. Japan, for example, is not only building specialist nursing homes for Alzheimer’s patients in the final years of their lives, but also community centres for those still living at home or with relatives.
Home nursing care is expanding in the West, Âimproving and lengthening the lives of Alzheimer’s patients. Home nursing is still at a very early stage in China, but it is the fastest growing industry and largest source of new jobs in the US.
From little spending now on specialised Alzheimer’s care, China will certainly grow into the world’s largest market for it. Alzheimer’s care will also Âbecome a huge source of new employment in China.
It’s hard to think of a business opportunity in China with better long-term investment fundamentals than specialised Alzheimer’s care. But the greatest return on investment would be in limiting the suffering of Alzheimer’s patients and their families.
–
Peter Fuhrman is CEO and Dr Wang Yansong, is COO, respectively, of China First Capital. This article is adapted from a version originally published in The Week In China
–
–
–
–
Â
–
–
Alzheimer’s is the fastest-growing, major fatal disease in China. Today there are at least 9.5mn diagnosed sufferers in China with perhaps as many cases undiagnosed. Almost one million Chinese are diagnosed every year with Alzheimer’s, with the number of new cases each year expected to accelerate sharply beginning around 2030.
It is also the major disease in China with the greatest mismatch between the number of patients and the amount of specialized care available. The US has about half the number of Alzheimer’s patients as China, and 73,000 beds in specialist Alzheimer’s treatment centers. China today has fewer than 200 beds. Alz care is a thriving $250bn industry in the US. In China, it’s barely even begun.
The reason for this mismatch is clear. China’s healthcare system is already under strain to reform and improve the quality of care overall, especially for acute and infectious diseases like cancer, hepatitis and serious asthma. Alzheimer’s is not now a top priority either for government policy or for healthcare companies and investors. But, over the coming decades, no disease will likely impact more lives in China or likely cost China more to treat. By 2050, it is projected the number of Alzheimer’s patients in China will exceed 45 million, about half of all those worldwide with the disease.
The total cost of treating all those people is impossible to estimate. Alzheimer’s is already the most expensive disease to treat in the US. The US government pays for more than half, through national health insurance paid through taxes on companies and individuals. With the number of Alzheimer’s cases in the US expected to double in the next 20 years, US government spending on Alzheimer’s care is on course to become the single-most expensive part of the US budget, larger even than military spending.
China will almost certainly take a different path than the US, with more spending done by patients and their families, rather than through national health insurance. On average, Chinese Alzheimer’s patients will also be cared for longer by relatives, rather than placed in specialized nursing homes.
But, the almost total lack of Alzheimer’s treatment centers, and trained nurses and doctors, is one of the most significant market failures in China’s healthcare industry. While the government, SOEs and private sector have been making significant investments in old age care (what the Chinese refer to as “yanglaoâ€), most of this money has gone towards building and selling apartments in retirement communities, places for older people who are fundamentally still healthy and active. There has been little investment in the area of elderly care with most urgent need now and in the future– providing specialist centers for people with Alzheimer’s and other chronic diseases that afflict old people like Parkinson’s, serious arthritis, recovery from stroke.
In China, Alzheimer’s is still often seen not as a disease but as inevitable and natural outcome of aging, a sad side-effect of the fortunate fact of being long-lived. China’s national broadcaster, CCTV has lately been broadcasting public service ads to raise awareness that Alzheimer’s is a disease. This is the same education process the US and Europe began over 40 years ago.  There were few cases anywhere in the world then. Europe and the US, the private and public sector, began spending heavily to train doctors and nurses, build out its care infrastructure to meet the projected surge in patients.
Alzheimer’s, like diabetes, obesity, colorectal cancer, is a disease of economic success. As a country becomes richer and healthcare standards improve, people live longer. Nowhere has this transformation happened more quickly than in China, meaning nowhere else has ever seen as explosive growth in the number of Alzheimer’s cases. The average life expectancy in China has increased more in the last 30 years than it did in the previous 3,000. China’s life expectancy is still growing faster than in developed countries. Chinese in Hong Kong recently passed Japan to become the world’s longest-living population.
The facts: Alzheimer’s is an incurable disease that afflicts a large number of older people, but not the majority. 3 percent of people age 65-74, 17% of people between 75 and 85 will develop the disease. For those over 85%, there is a 30% chance of having it.  It is a mystery why some old people get the disease and most others do not. One interesting correlation: people with higher education levels are less likely to get the disease. The more you use your brain in complex ways, the more you may inoculate yourself against Alzheimer’s.
Rural people are more susceptible than city-dwellers. Because China still has a larger percentage of its population living in rural areas，this suggests that the percentage of the +80 year-old population with Alzheimer’s in China may end up higher than in US, Europe or other Asian more urbanized societies including Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore.
Women are far more likely to get Alzheimers than men. The reason is women on average live longer.
Despite billions of dollars in scientific and pharmaceutical research in the West, there are no drug or surgical treatments for Alzheimer’s. A drug cure for AD, widely predicted in the West 20 years ago, now seems very unlikely. Brain chemistry and biology make developing a drug for Alzheimer’s difficult. Since 2002, 244 drugs for Alzheimer’s were tested in clinical trials in the US and Europe. Only one received US FDA approval. It has very limited and short-term impact.
Although there are no drugs to cure Alzheimer’s, there have been remarkable successes in Europe and the US, especially in the last ten years, at Alzheimer’s care facilities managed by specially-trained nurses and doctors. They work together to slow the progress of Alzheimer’s patients, through physical therapy, psychological counseling, special equipment to improve memory and mobility, lots of one-on-one assistance, and a safe living environment designed for care of people gradually losing their ability to think, speak and function. The result: Alzheimer’s patients in the US and Europe now live twice as long after diagnosis as they did 30 years ago, an average of 8-10 years after diagnosis.
The longer Alzheimer’s patients live, the more likely it is they will spend the final years in specialized care facilities. In this final stage, Alzheimer’s patients are often unable to talk, feed or bathe themselves, can remember almost nothing. The body’s immune system gradually stops working. As the brain is overcome by the disease and begins to decompose, even automatic body functions like breathing, digestion and swallowing are disrupted.
In the US and Europe, the average annual cost of caring for an Alzheimer’s patient is about $60,000, with the highest amount coming in the last two years of life. There are dozens of US and European listed companies focused on doing research and providing specialist Alzheimer’s care in nursing homes and clinics. In China, there are none.
Traditionally in China, more money has been spent on young children’s education than on medical care for older people. But, as Chinese live longer the way money is spent across three generations will likely change. The grandchildren of people in their 80s will usually already be through college and working. That leaves more money, both in the hands of older people and their children, to provide more high-quality care for people at the end of their lives.
A French listed company, Orpea, is moving fastest to build a big business in AD care in China. Last year they opened China’s most advanced Alzheimer’s clinic in in Nanjing. Orpea are among the world leaders in Alzheimer’s care. It is their first nursing home in China and they are planning now to expand quickly across the country. They have 775 nursing homes and clinics in Europe. Last year’s total revenues were €2.8 billion.
In Nanjing, Orpea built a 5-star facility, as deluxe as one would find anywhere in the world, with marble floors, an elegant dining room, a huge indoor pool and water therapy center. In total, it has 140 beds, including 22 in the Alzheimer’s clinic. None of the real estate is for sale. It is a service business, offering specialized care and housing to elderly including even the most challenging patients, those with late-stage Alzheimer’s disease 。
Most of those living in the Nanjing facility are paying about Rmb20,000 a month. Though expensive, that’s still half the price per year of a shared room in a 3-star nursing home in the US. The level of care is as high as any specialized Alzheimer’s care center in the US or Europe. In almost all cases, the children of the patients are paying.
Regardless of culture, Alzheimer’s tends to effect people the same way. Nothing can restore patients’ memory, or stop the progress of a disease that is, in all cases, 100% fatal. The goal of treatment is to slow the disease progression by treating early related health problems and the decline in motor skills.
Most important is keeping patients physically and intellectually active. Orpea is using a new form of treatment known as “psychomotricityâ€, which rebuilds connections between a patient’s motor and cognitive skills. Successful treatment not only lengthens the lives of people with Alzheimer’s, it makes these patients more content, more social, more self-sufficient than if they were being treated by relatives at home.
Orpea is also quickly learning new things about Alzheimer’s and how to care for patients in China. Among late-stage Alzheimer’s patients, those who have lost the ability to speak, to recognize people or their surroundings, one of the last skills they hold onto and enjoy is the ability to stuff meat dumplings.  There’s a special kitchen and dining room just for Alzheimer’s patients. The Nanjing center has both a KTV and a “memory room†with objects from the 1950s-60s. As Alzheimer’s progresses, patients can’t recall recent events, but often recover older memories for their youth, including old songs.
Orpea plans to open at least two new nursing homes in Beijing this year and add other facilities soon in Shanghai. For now, they still have China’s Alzheimer’s care market, especially at the high-end, largely to themselves. But, they welcome competitors. “The need is so great, and the impact on patients’ lives so positive that we hope China will quickly develop a large, capable group of companies to care for people here,†explains Orpea’s China CEO, Nathaniel Farouz.
How should China build its Alzheimer’s treatment infrastructure and bring it quickly up to global standards? The biggest need will be providing care to Chinese with average family income and savings levels.
One likely path will be for Chinese companies to acquire or partner with specialist nursing home companies in the US and Europe. There were rumors recently that one large Chinese investment group, CMIG, was seeking to buy Orpea. Orpea, though, denies any deal is being actively discussed.
If there’s one advantage to getting a late start, it’s that China can learn from the mistakes and adopt the best ideas developed in the US, Europe and Asia. Japan, for example, is not only building specialist nursing homes for Alzheimer’s patients in the final years of their lives, but also community centers for those still living at home or with relatives. Family members can drop off parents with Alzheimer’s to give caregivers a few hours to rest or run errands – or even for a few nights so they can take a quick vacation.
Home nursing care is also expanding quickly in the West. This too seems to be improving and lengthening the lives of Alzheimer’s patients. Home nursing is still at a very early stage in China, but it is the fastest growing industry and largest source of new jobs in the US.
The main beneficiaries of professional Alzheimer’s care are the patients, whose lives and health are improved. But, there are also economic benefits for the society as a whole. Alzheimer’s care potentially can offer millions of new, long-term and well-paying jobs in China, for people at all educational levels.
From little spending now on specialized Alzheimer’s care, China will certainly grow into the world’s largest market for Alzheimer’s care. Government, at national, provincial and local level, should play a key policy-making, regulatory and coordinating role. Not only should they set standards and provide more transparent rules on which aspects of AD care will be reimbursed, governments can also do a great deal to foster the growth in urban China of high-quality private-sector nursing homes for chronically-ill old people. As the UN World Health Organization recommended in a recent report, “Central or local governments could adopt preferential tax policies or offer other financial incentivesâ€Â for Alzheimer’s care services and education.”
In rural China, the government’s role will be even more important. The number of Alzheimer’s cases among China’s rural population likely will be proportionately higher and financial resources of families and local governments more limited.
It’s hard to think of a business opportunity in China with better long-term investment fundamentals than specialized Alzheimer’s care. But, the industry should not be measured or motivated by profits. Its success and greatest return on investment will be in limiting the suffering, pain, helplessness and sadness of Alzheimer’s patients and their families.
–
—
–
–
–
(Bloomberg) — Veteran China dealmakers at Wall Street banks and Western buyout firms are heading for the exits, in search of the more lucrative deals and higher remuneration offered by smaller funds.
Three senior merger advisory bankers from Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Bank of America Corp. and Lazard Ltd. have resigned within the past month for senior roles at fledgling investment funds, according to people familiar with their departures, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. Carlyle Group LP Managing Director Alex Ying left the firm in January after two decades to set up Rivendell Partners, which focuses on mid-sized buyouts in Greater China and Vietnam, other people said.
The moves highlight the increasing challenges big banks face in retaining their top dealmakers in an environment of tighter regulations and shrinking fees. Revenue from investment banking in the Asia Pacific region fell 8 percent in 2016 to the lowest in at least five years, according to data from research firm Coalition. Merger advisory revenue dropped 4 percent, the figures show.
“Deal flow from China has come down considerably — those flows are severely curtailed relative to where they were,†said Henry Tillman, chairman of London-based advisory firm Grisons Peak LLP. “With investment banking revenue declining, people are going to look at their options.â€
Imminent departures include Andrew Huang, a managing director advising on Greater China mergers and acquisitions at Goldman Sachs who has resigned to join Chinese private equity firm FountainVest Partners, according to the people. Peter Kuo, a China M&A banker at Lazard, is leaving to help run a technology fund backed by Chinese investors called Canyon Bridge Capital Partners, the investment firm confirmed in response to Bloomberg queries.
Ellis Chu, head of China M&A at Bank of America, has also resigned and will be joining an Asia-focused fund, the people said.
Spokesmen for Bank of America, Goldman Sachs and Rivendell declined to comment on the departures. A representative for Carlyle confirmed Ying’s departure, declining to comment further. FountainVest Chief Executive Officer Frank Tang didn’t answer calls to his mobile phone seeking comment.
Running or working for a smaller, Asia-based fund can offer managers greater independence in decision-making on deals and give them a bigger share of fees and profits from exiting investments. Senior executives at global buyout funds in Asia typically have to share 40 percent to 60 percent of deal fees generated in the region with U.S. and European counterparts, people familiar with the practice said.
Smaller funds are also making more money. Private funds in Asia with assets of $500 million or less had a median internal rate of return of 16.1 percent over a three-year timeframe, compared with 11.5 percent at peers with more than $1 billion of assets, according to data compiled by research firm Preqin Ltd.
“A reason these guys are leaving likely also includes the fact those big firms have been having a challenging time of late in China, which leads to higher work pressure and unusually high turnover,†said Peter Fuhrman, chairman of Shenzhen-based China First Capital. “You can then try to set up on your own, make some deals, hope for success.â€
The exits follow other recent moves to smaller outfits. KKR & Co.’s two most senior China executives left in December to form a China-focused investment firm. Richard Wong, an M&A veteran at Morgan Stanley, resigned this month after 16 years to help set up Nexus Point Partners, a China-focused buyout fund started by MBK Partners Ltd. co-founder Kuo-Chuan Kung.
The bankers and their new funds will face challenges when it comes to sourcing China deals. The government is clamping down on money outflows, which augurs poorly for outbound acquisitions. What’s more, competition is increasing from Chinese securities firms. Three Chinese banks ranked in the top 10 advisers on offshore acquisitions by mainland companies since the beginning of 2016, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Among the first buyout specialists to make the leap from big outfits were KY Tang, who left UBS AG’s private equity fund in 2004 to start Affinity Equity Partners, and Michael Kim, who set up MBK in 2005 with five other senior Asian executives from Carlyle. In 2010, TPG Capital lost Shan Weijian, who left to found PAG Asia Capital. The next year, Mary Ma departed to help start Boyu Capital.
–
–
–
–
BEIJING—The latest WikiLeaks trove hands fresh ammunition to China’s cyberspace hawks, already pushing to reduce dependence on foreign products that could be vulnerable to espionage, observers say.
“The level of alarm in China will certainly increase, and with it a renewed determination to clamp down still further on U.S. technology companies’ operations in China,†said Peter Fuhrman, chairman of Shenzhen-based advisory firm China First Capital, which follows China’s tech sector.
The documents released this week—more than 8,000 pages in all—purport to show how the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency breaks into computers, smartphones, TVs and other electronics for surveillance. Many documents deal with leading non-Chinese brands like Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co., though there is some coverage of Chinese products, including routers from Huawei Technologies Inc. and Baidu Inc.’s search engine.
The Chinese-product references are relatively sparse—and, in some cases, obscure. An undated list of CIA internal hacking demonstrations, for example, includes the “Panda Poke-Huawei credless exploitâ€â€”which one cybersecurity specialist says may be a method for taking advantage of vulnerabilities without logins or other “credentials.†There is also the “Huawei VOIP Collection,†a reference to “voice over internet Protocol,†making phone calls over the internet.
The document doesn’t say whether these methods were used for intelligence gathering. Huawei declined to comment.
A file titled “Small Routers Research-work in progress†lists router models from Huawei and ZTE Corp. It also mentions China’s three state-owned telecom companies and Baidu’s search engine, without further details.
The telecom companies and Baidu declined to comment.
The leak also offered what seem to be workaday notes among colleagues, including one CIA worker’s complaint about one piece of software’s default-language setting. “I don’t speak Chinese,†he griped.
WikiLeaks’ website is blocked in China, but Chinese state-run media reported the document leak, focusing on U.S. companies. Overall response has been muted, possibly because the official spotlight this week is on Beijing’s annual legislative gathering.
Cybersecurity experts say China maintains its own robust cyberhacking apparatus, though Beijing characterizes itself as purely a hacking victim, not a perpetrator.
“China is opposed to any form of cyberattack,†foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Thursday. “We urge the U.S. side to stop its wiretapping, surveillance, espionage and cyberattacks on China and other countries. China will firmly safeguard its own cybersecurity.â€
In recent years, China has seized on leaks about U.S. surveillance to fan public support for its domestic tech products. U.S. tech brands felt a chill after former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed NSA surveillance methods in 2013.
“It is like snow on more snow,†one China executive of a U.S. technology company said of the potential sales impact of the latest leaks.
These leaks could help countries counter CIA tapping and develop their own capabilities, said Nigel Inkster, former deputy chief of U.K. spy agency MI6.
“China, Russia et al will now both be better attuned to the risks posed by these capabilities,†he said, “and will no doubt seek to use them themselves.â€
https://www.wsj.com/articles/wikileaks-dump-adds-to-chinas-foreign-tech-wariness-1489061414
–
–
–
Private equity firms and hedge funds are investing heavily into China’s healthcare industry in a bet on the sector’s upbeat growth potential, fund managers told a Hong Kong forum.
Private hospitals and drug makers are among the bright spots for investors focusing on China, where rising income and an ageing population are boosting the demand for quality medical services.
Private hospitals are set to attract large amounts of capital in the coming decade amid an underdeveloped private medical industry and a shortage of doctors, said investment professionals.
“Healthcare has been the single area that probably everyone can foresee globally an enormous amount of capital and investment,†Peter Fuhrman, chairman of China First Capital told the Asia Private Equity Forum in Hong Kong on Wednesday.
China’s population of individuals aged 60 or older is set to rise 90 per cent to 240 million by 2020, according to the World Health Organisation.
Meanwhile, one consequence of the nation’s one-child policy, introduced in 1979 and officially phased out in 2015, is that the burden of caring for ageing parents will put tremendous pressures on the young generations.
The healthcare sector in China will become a US$1 trillion a year business by 2020, according to a report by consulting firm McKinsey & Company.
Among healthcare institutions, private hospitals are set to become the best investment for this sector, said Li Bin, chief executive of Ally Bridge LB Healthcare Fund, a hedge fund that focuses on investing in China and Asia healthcare companies.
However, he said there are problems that will likely hinder the industry’s growth.
Among barriers, Li cited a shortage of quality doctors, the lack of an ecosystem to support the development of private hospitals, as well as the long time frame needed to build up a trusted reputation.
Although about half of the hospitals in the country are private, more than 80 per cent of medical professionals work in the public sector, which offer higher salaries and better career prospects, according to a recent report by Citi.
“Five years ago I said it would take 10 years for private hospitals to mature in China, now I think it would take another 10 years,†he said.
Alice Au Miu Hing from SpencerStuart, an executive search consultancy, said it remains extremely difficult to find experienced private hospital executives with China experience who can speak Putonghua.
“The common approach now is to bring someone from the industry from outside and see if the person can survive in the mainland market,†said Au.
Meanwhile, pharmaceutical and biotech start-ups will flourish with China’s emerging middle class seeking better healthcare services.
Judith Li, partner at the life science-focused Lilly Asia Ventures, told the forum that China spends about 6 per cent of its GDP on healthcare, versus an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development average of 10 per cent.
“China has so many white spaces where there is nothing exists, and it’s very compelling,†she said.
“If you can bring it [a drug] from the US, you can then avoid the fundamental scientific risk of developing something that’s completely unavailable.â€
–
–
–
A month before his official inauguration, Donald Trump is already tossing diplomatic grenades in China’s direction. It is a sign of things to come. 2017 is shaping up to be a highly eventful, taut and precarious year for China-US relations. This is partly due to a simple scheduling coincidence.
2017 will be the first time ever when both the US and the PRC in the same year will usher in new governments. The US will kick things off on January 20th by swearing in Donald Trump as President. China, meanwhile, will undertake its own large political upheaval, its five-yearly change in political leadership, culminating in the 19th Communist Party Congress sometime late in the year. Virtually the entire government hierarchy, from local mayors on up, will be changed in a monumental job-swapping exercise orchestrated by Xi Jinping, China’s president.
The US under Mr Trump, with a Republican Congress at his back, seems intent to challenge China more assertively in trade, investment and as a currency manipulator while intensifying the military rivalry. China’s leadership, meantime, will become deeply absorbed in its own highly secretive, inward-looking and internecine political maneuvering. While Mr Xi tries to further consolidate his power, Mr Trump will likely be asserting his, leading to a globally ambitious US and an introspective China. This would represent something of a role reversal from recent precedent.
With the chess pieces all in motion, businesses should be plotting their moves in China with caution. The proposed Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal is dead, leaving China’s still-evolving “One Belt,One Road†initiative as the main impetus for new trade flows in Asia. Donald Trump says he will push for what he claims to be more “more fair†bilateral trade deals. China, with its $365bn trade surplus with the US and high barriers to much inward investment, is clearly in his sights.
How will China react? The only certainty is that as the year progresses, China’s government apparatus will slow, and with it decision-making at policy-making bodies and many State-owned enterprises (SoEs). All will wait to hear what new tunes to march to, once the new ruling Politburo is revealed to the public in the fourth quarter.
Chinese officials at all levels are already jockeying for promotion. That means falling into line with Mr Xi’s anti-corruption campaign. The Party Secretary in Jiangsu province, one of China’s wealthiest, got an early head start. He instituted his own form of localized prohibition, ordering that government officials could no longer drink alcohol at any time, in any kind of setting, anywhere in Jiangsu.
The booze embargo did include one loophole. If senior foreign guests are present, alcohol can flow as before, like an undammed torrent.
As the Party Congress approaches, it will be even harder to get a deal with a Chinese SoE lined up and closed within any kind of reasonable time frame. Even after the Party Congress ends, it will likely take more months for any real deal momentum to return. Investment banking bonuses along with billings at global law, accounting and consulting firms are all likely to take a hit.
One other certainty: the renminbi will come under increasing pressure as the US ratchets up its moves to apply tariffs to Chinese exports and China’s own economy remains, relatively speaking, in the doldrums. How much pressure, though, is another question.
Anyone making predictions about the speed and degree of the renminbi’s decline is playing with a loaded weapon. A year ago some of the world’s biggest and loudest hedge fund bosses, including Kyle Bass, David Tepper and Bill Ackman, were proclaiming the imminent collapse of the renminbi. The renminbi, despite slipping by about 6 per cent during 2016, has yet to behave as the money guys predicted.
The Chinese government uses non-market mechanisms to slow the renminbi’s decline. A recent example: its abrupt move in November to tightly control outbound investment and M&A. But shoring up the currency will undercut one of China’s larger economic imperatives, the need to upgrade the country’s industrial and technological base. That will require a prodigious volume of dollars to acquire US and European technology companies such as recent Chinese deals to acquire German robot-maker Kuka and US semiconductor company Omnivision.
Chinese investors and acquirers not only face tighter controls on the outflow of US dollars. The US is also becoming more antagonistic toward Chinese acquisitions in the US and globally. Deals of any significant size need to pass a national security review overseen by a shadowy interagency body known as the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS.
CFIUS works in secret. In recent months, it has blocked Chinese investment in everything from a San Diego hotel, to Dutch LED light bulbs as well as US and European companies more explicitly involved in high-tech industry including semiconductor design and manufacturing. The strong likelihood is CFIUS will become even more restrictive once Mr Trump takes over.
Unlike most areas of bilateral tension between the US and China, this is one area where the Chinese have no room to retaliate in kind. China already has a blanket prohibition on investment by US, indeed all foreign companies, into multiple sectors of the Chinese economy, from tech industries like the internet and e-commerce all the way to innocuous ones like movies, cigarettes and steel smelting. So, for now, China quietly seethes as the US intensifies moves to prevent China investment deals from being concluded.
China will probably need to regroup and start playing the long game. That means investing more in earlier stage tech companies, especially in the Silicon Valley, and hoping some then strike it big. These venture capital investments generally fall outside the tightening CFIUS net. China wants to spend big and spend fast, but will find it often impossible to do so.
Even as political and military tensions rise between the US and China in 2017, one ironic certainty will be that a record number of Chinese are likely to go to the US as tourists, home buyers or students and spend ever more there. China’s ardour for all things American – its clean air, high-tech, good universities, relatively cheap housing, and retail therapy – is all but unbounded.
If informal online surveys are to be believed, ordinary Chinese seem to like and admire Mr Trump, especially for his business acumen. Mr Xi, understandably, may view the new US President in a harsher light. Xi faces cascading complexities as well as factional opposition within China. He could most use a US leader cast in the previous mold, committed to constructive cooperation with China. Instead, he’s likely to contend with an unpredictable, disapproving and distrustful adversary.
https://www.ft.com/content/b1801637-4219-3222-9f45-658740aa1187
–
–
–
–
–
Few technology entrepreneurs start one unicorn, a tech company with a market valuation of over $1 billion. Elon Musk has started three. Xiaomi’s Lei Jun two. Bill Gross has started and exited from seven, and has another two in his active porfolio.
Gross is the founder and chairman of Idealab, one of America’s oldest and probably still most successful technology incubators. Idealab was established in 1996. Gross was 38 years old then. He had already started and sold two software companies. He decided to take some of that money, as well as some from investors he knew, and start his own incubator.
From the beginning, Idealab has pursued a unique path among technology investors in California. Unlike most other incubators and VC funds, Gross himself comes up with most of the ideas for the new Idealab companies. Idealab then provides the first round of capital for each new company, hires a CEO and Gross takes on the role as non-executive chairman. Idealab has a full-time team to manage the back office work like HR and accounting for new companies during their early stages. Idealab headquarters is in an old brick warehouse in the California city of Pasadena, near Los Angeles, and close to Caltech, where Gross went to school.
In the last 20 years, Gross has started 150 businesses. Of these, 45 have had successful exits, either through IPOs or M&A. A similar number are still in the Idealab portfolio.
The unicorns Gross created include some of the most successful early successes in e-commerce and online advertising. The companies are: eToys, Overture, Tickets.com, Netzero, Centra, Shopping.com and Citysearch. Two other Idealab companies have recently merged with other tech startups. These merged companies, Twilio and Taboola, also now have valuations above $1 billion. Over the years, Gross also started and sold companies to Google, eBay, AOL, AirBNB. Along with internet companies, Gross has also started companies in solar and renewable energy, robotics, online education, wireless networking, 3D printing machinery, home medical care.
Gross long ago stopped raising money from outside investors. Idealab is a corporation, not a fund. Gross has the kind of freedom most tech entrepreneurs can only dream of – the imagination and drive to start new technology companies, a few new ones every year, and the capital to help them grow. Idealab’s capital contribution into each new company is about $250,000. If a company begins to grow according to plan, Idealab then raises outside money from VC firms, mainly the large ones based in Silicon Valley. Idealab’s return on invested capital up to now: 13.5 times.
Gross was born in Japan, but moved to California as a boy and got his start as an entrepreneur while in middle school. For 20 years, he has seen technology business opportunities earlier than most people. Anyone interested in where technology is headed, the important problems it may solve, how to incubate successful startups, and how China and East Asia may become more deeply integrated into California’s innovation ecosystem should listen to what Gross has to say.
Venture capital investing and incubators have grown very large in the last few years, both in the US and also elsewhere including China. There’s still a lot of capital looking for good ideas. Let’s dissect please how you look at the world. What are the key “metatrends” you see that will impact the shape and size of the global economy over the next 35 years?
Let me take you through those quickly. Start with population growth. The projections are there will be 9.7 billion people on the planet by 2050, up from 7.4 billion today. Larger population means lots of possibly negative impacts and so areas where technology needs to come up with new solutions. What are the major challenges in the future? I think mostly about six. I’m an engineer, so let me give you a list:
The people working to solve these problems probably hope to win Nobel Prizes, not become technology entrepreneurs. So, where do you see the concrete business opportunities, where there’s both a future market and a potential for some kind of new technology breakthrough?
Of course, you wouldn’t expect me to hand over the keys to my kingdom, to give you the exact business areas we are now working on. But, I can share the industries where I think there’s lots of opportunity worldwide and where we’re actively coming up with new business ideas and looking to start new companies. Again, if you don’t mind, let me give it to you as a list.
While it’s still possible to start successful companies with limited capital and get to market quickly as we’ve been doing for the last 20 years, some of the newer business opportunities I like will need much larger amounts of money and a longer incubation period. But, the rewards for success will be larger than anything we’ve seen up to now.
Â
Up to now, you’ve focused only on building breakthrough tech companies in California to serve to US market. There are other places in the world with money and markets for good technology.
Yes, I definitely see a fusion of powerful and positive forces taking place in Asia that could allow Greater China to emerge as an important constituent in globally-important innovation, both as a market and as a base of ideas and manufacturing. This will be good for China, good for Asia, good for the US, good for the world.
I’m an inventor, and so have always looked to China. I have huge respect for the ingenuity, diligence and entrepreneurship of the Chinese people. Look at the example of China’s greatest inventor, Lu Ban, who lived almost 2,500 years before America’s Thomas Edison. He came up with ideas for flying machines and all kinds of advanced wooden implements .
So what role can you envision China playing as one of the world’s centers of technology innovation?
China, like the US, is a place where a large domestic market, manufacturing strength, capital and entrepreneurial culture all come together.
A few years ago, I gave myself a challenge, to come up with one new business idea every day. I’ve mainly been able to keep up that pace. We could start even more companies, but there’s often one big constraint. We can’t find enough great people to run each new company. Greater China is blessed with having a large number of talented managers and engineers. That’s a huge and valuable resource. On the downside, intellectual property protection in China isn’t nearly as robust as it needs to be.
All of Idealab’s billion dollar exits happened during the early years of the internet, with IPOs for companies including eToys, Citysearch, Tickets.com and the sale of online-advertising business Overture to Yahoo. Have big exits become harder?
IPOs have certainly slowed down. The total number of annual IPOs in the US has been falling since we got started 20 years ago. It used to be over 300 companies on average IPOd every year in the US. It’s now below 100. This year is looking like one of the slowest for US IPOs. A big reason is the cost and regulatory burden of being a public company in the US. Our exits now come from M&A. We continue to do pretty well.
Let me quickly go over our three of our most recent M&A exits. The three are all in different industries — mobile phone security, solar energy and robotics. We started Authy to provide simple but more effective mobile phone data and transaction security. We merged it last year with Twilio, which IPOd this summer on the New York Stock Exchange and now has a market cap of over $4 billion.
RayTracker is a company we started to improve the performance and energy production from solar panels by getting them to track the movement of the sun across the sky. This has been a passion of mine since high-school, to make solar energy more affordable and efficient. We sold RayTracker to First Solar, a Nasdaq-listed company. Today ground mounted trackers like RayTracker invented account for more than 90% of all solar installations in the US and First Solar is a leader the field.
The other recent exit is a little bittersweet, because we may have come to market a little too early with a product consumers originally didn’t really understand. They do now. Being too early with an idea can lead to failure just as quickly as being too late. Our company was Evolution Robotics, which was probably the first company to design hardware and software for a home robot to clean floors. We had to come up with substantial new technology in vision recognition and spatial mapping, including our own proprietary indoor GPS system using infrared. We sold our company to a competitor, iRobot, which is now by far the largest company in this industry.
Can we have a peek inside the current Idealab portfolio? Talk to us about companies you think have the potential to grow into billion dollar businesses within the next few years?
I mentioned already my lifelong passion for clean energy and making solar energy cheaper and more efficient. We have two companies now, Edisun and Cool Energy, that have unique solutions that are finding a lot of market acceptance. Edisun both generates and stores solar energy, so it can be delivered to the grid when it’s needed. Cool Energy uses a Stirling Engine to capture low temperature waste heat, like from machines in a large factory, and turn it into clean electricity. It can also make electricity from waste cold, like the huge refrigeration vessels used for LNG storage.
Mark Andreesen, the guy who invented the first commercial web browser and is now a successful venture capital investor, has said that “software is eating the world”. He means that just about every product and service is going to need more and better software in the future. I agree. The problem is, where are all those new software engineers going to come from? We’ve started two companies to teach kids how to write software, CodeSpark and Ucode. We’re noticing CodeSpark has more and more kids in China using it to learn to write software. We need to come up with a Chinese version, as well as Japanese, Korean.
One other area where we see huge potential is capturing and analyzing more and better mobile data, then using it for more efficient advertising. This could be as big a future market as “Pay-per-click” online advertising that earns so much money for Google and Baidu. I have a longer history in this area than most people. Overture, a company I started and sold to Yahoo for $1.6 billion in 2003, was an early successful pioneer of online advertising.
In the last 20 years, you’ve started 150 businesses, and had ideas for hundreds of others. Few people anywhere at any time have done that much business creation. What you have you learned about the reasons why start-ups succeed and fail?
I believe that the startup organization is one of the greatest forms to make the world a better place. If you take a group of people with the right equity incentives and organize them in a startup, you can unlock human potential in a way never before possible. You get them to achieve unbelievable things. Â But if the startup organization is so great, why do so many fail?
This matters to me as an investor and entrepreneur. I’ve started more failed companies than probably just about anyone else. They all looked promising at the beginning, had money and people in place, but ended up dying. Each time a company fails it’s heartbreaking for the entrepreneur. So, trying to get some usable analysis on this process may end up reducing the failure rate for me and I hope many others too.
I tried to look across what factors accounted the most for company success and failure. So I looked at the five key factors — the idea, the team, the execution, the business model and the timing. It accounted for 42 percent of the difference between success and failure. Team and execution came in second, and the idea, the differentiability of the idea, the uniqueness of the idea, actually came in third.
After 20 years at Idealab, and twenty years before that starting and running your own start-ups, aren’t you getting tired of this, the pressure, the risk, the uncertainty of starting new companies? There’s got to be an easier way to earn a living.
I think we are in a very exciting time where technology and innovation permeates everything we do, and every company. If the previous 20 years of my life were devoted to fostering entrepreneurship, I would love my next 20 to be about pushing new technological boundaries to make the world a better place. To happen, it’s going to need Asia and California to push together.
Version as published by Nikkei Asian Review
Chinese version as published by Caijing Magazine (è´¢ç»æ‚å¿—ä¸æ–‡ç‰ˆï¼‰
Bill Gross’s TED Talk on why startups succeed
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
The event was not dreamt up by Alibaba, but the e-commerce giant dominates it. Shoppers spent $14.3bn through its portals during last year’s event. That figure, a rise of 60% on a year earlier, was over double the sales racked up on America’s two main retail dates, Black Friday and Cyber Monday, put together. Chinese consumers are still confident, so sales on this Singles’ Day should again break records.
It points to an intriguing question: how will all of those purchases get to consumers? Around 540m delivery orders were generated during the 24-hour spree last year. That is nearly ten times the average daily volume, but even a slow shopping day in China generates an enormous number. By the reckoning of the State Post Bureau, 21bn parcels were delivered during the first three quarters of this year.
The country’s express-delivery sector, accordingly, is doing well. In spite of a cooling economy, revenues rose by 43% year on year in the first eight months of 2016, to 234bn yuan ($36bn). And although the state’s grip on China’s economy is tightening, the private sector’s share of this market is actually growing. The state-run postal carrier once had a monopoly on all post and parcels. Now far more parcels are delivered than letters, and the share of the market that is commanded by the country’s private express-delivery firms far exceeds that of Express Mail Service, the state-owned courier.
China’s very biggest couriers have been rushing to go public on the back of the strong growth. Most of them started life as scrappy startups, and are privately held. But because of regulatory delays, which mean a big backlog of initial public offerings, many companies have resorted to other means. Last month, two of them, YTO Express and STO Express, used “reverse mergersâ€, in which a private company goes public by combining with a listed shell company, to list on local exchanges. In what looks to be the largest public flotation in America so far this year, another, ZTO Express, raised $1.4bn in New York on October 27th. Yet another, SF Express, China’s biggest courier, recently won approval to use a reverse merger too.
But investors could be in for a rocky ride. Shares in ZTO, for example, have plunged sharply since its flotation. That is because the breakneck growth of courier companies masks structural problems. For now, the industry is highly fragmented, with some 8,000 domestic competitors, and it is inefficient.
One reason is that regulation, inspired by a sort of regional protectionism, obliges delivery firms to maintain multiple local licences and offices. Cargoes are unpacked and repacked numerous times as they cross the country to satisfy local regulations. Firms therefore find it hard to build up national networks with scale and pricing power. All the competition has led to prices falling by over a third since 2011. The average freight rate for two-day ground delivery between distant cities in America is roughly $15 per kg, whereas in China it is a measly 60 cents, according to research by Peter Fuhrman of China First Capital, an advisory firm.
A handful of the biggest companies now aim to modernise the industry. Some are spending on advanced technology: SF Express’s new package-handling hub in Shanghai is thought to have greatly increased efficiency by replacing labour with expensive European sorting equipment. A semi-automated warehouse in nearby Suzhou run by Alog, a smaller courier in which Alibaba has a stake, seems behind by comparison but in fact Alog is a partner in Alibaba’s logistics coalition, which is known as Cainiao. The e-commerce firm has helped member companies to co-ordinate routes and to improve efficiency through big data.
Other investments are also under way. Yu Weijiao, the chairman of YTO, recalls visiting FedEx, a giant American courier, in Memphis at its so-called “aerotropolis†(an urban centre around an airport) in 2007. He was awed by the firm’s embrace of advanced technology. He returned to China and sought advice from IBM on how his company could follow suit. YTO is using the proceeds of its recent reverse merger to expand its fleet of aircraft, buy automatic parcel-sorting kit and introduce heavy-logistics capabilities for packages over 50kg.
There is as yet little sign that China’s regions will begin allowing packages to move freely, so regulation will remain a brake on the industry. More ominously, labour costs are rising. There are fewer migrant labourers today who are willing to work for a pittance delivering parcels. This week China Daily, a state-owned newspaper, reported that ahead of Singles’ Day, courier firms were offering salaries on the level of university graduates.
–
–
—
–
–
China International Capital Corp., the investment bank ex-Premier Zhu Rongji set up two decades ago to help restructure the Chinese economy, is again taking on a role that fits with the government’s agenda.
CICC’s $2.5 billion acquisition of China Investment Securities Corp. will plunge the firm into the retail investor market, a segment it had long shunned because of thin margins and a traditional focus on institutional clients. The deal is part of Chief Executive Officer Bi Mingjian’s push to lessen dependence on volatile investment banking fees.
Yet the transaction also ties in with a key objective of the government, which will become CICC’s largest shareholder as a result of the purchase. Having used CICC to take some of the largest state companies public since the late 1990s, China is now looking for assistance in its quest to reform a retail-driven equities market that’s prone to speculative booms and busts.
In the wake of the latest such episode, a stock market meltdown last year, the government launched an unprecedented crackdown on the securities industry and arrested several high-ranking executives.
“CICC will once again play this civilizing and globalizing role, only with the more far-reaching aim of helping to professionalize the often-shambolic Chinese stock market,†said Peter Fuhrman, chairman of China First Capital, a Shenzhen-based advisory firm. “Its reputation is still unsullied in China, unlike other banks whose leaders have been marched out in handcuffs and whose market practices are widely blamed for the rampant speculative fever that often afflicts China’s domestic capital markets.â€
In announcing the takeover on Friday, CICC hinted at a reforming role by saying the two firms will “work together to improve the quality and efficiency of mass market services†through training and by upgrading technology systems at China Investment Securities’ 192 branches across the country that serve retail clients.
CICC is buying China Investment Securities from state-owned Central Huijin Investment Ltd. It will issue shares to Central Huijin, more than doubling the entity’s stake in CICC to 58.7 percent. CICC had to get a waiver from the Hong Kong Stock Exchange for the transaction, so that Central Huijin’s controlling stake wouldn’t be classified as a reverse takeover.
An additional rationale for the deal is Huijin’s push to consolidate the securities industry by combining institutional and retail brokerage businesses, said Zhang Chunxin, an analyst at CMB International Capital Holdings Corp. She cautioned that “the reform process will be long and gradual.â€
China Investment Securities ranked 17th among Chinese securities firms by revenue last year, while CICC was 23rd, according to official data. Bi’s overhaul has the support of the firm’s foreign shareholders, who had already been pushing CICC to diversify into areas such as asset and wealth management, a person with knowledge of the matter said.
Sherry Tan, spokeswoman at CICC, declined to comment.
The combined stakes of CICC’s main foreign backers — private equity firms TPG Capital and KKR & Co., and Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte — will drop to 15.3 percent as a result of the takeover. However, the foreign firms may buy additional stakes from Central Huijin in future, people familiar with the matter said.
When former premier Zhu Rongji created CICC in 1995, China was launching a shakeup of its state-run industrial sector, leading to the closure of some 60,000 firms and loss of 40 million jobs. Since then, CICC has worked on some of the biggest listings of state enterprises, such as China Construction Bank Corp. and China Mobile Ltd. It was the top adviser on mergers involving Chinese companies in 2014, 2015 and so far this year.
Buying China Investment Securities is a departure from former CEO Levin Zhu’s strategy. The son of the former premier, who ran the firm until two years ago, had long resisted expanding into retail broking, fearing it would erode margins and its differentiation from other Chinese securities firms, according to people familiar with the matter.
Last year’s leverage-fueled equities rally and the subsequent implosion brought worldwide attention to the shortcomings of China’s markets. The government responded with an effort that included enlisting securities firms in supporting the stock market as well as jailing senior brokerage executives for alleged wrongdoing. CICC wasn’t among the firms that took part in the stock-market rescue, but China Investment Securities was.
China’s 114 million individual investors account for the bulk of equities trading. That makes them a hard-to-ignore segment, but also one that tends to be susceptible to market manias. Critics contend that the government’s efforts to restore market calm last year only served to hurt investor confidence further.
The Shanghai Composite Index remains 39 percent below its June 2015 peak. Xiao Gang, who was removed from his post as chairman of China’s securities regulator this year, in January acknowledged loopholes and ineptitude within the regulatory system.
Some analysts aren’t convinced the deal is in CICC’s best interest. The stock fell 2.1 percent on Monday after a trading halt was lifted.
The transaction makes the firm “more like a state-owned company, which could compromise CICC’s corporate governance, operational autonomy†and its ability to retain top talent, said Fred Hu, Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s former Greater China chairman.
–
–
–
–
–
—
—
Global consumer companies trying to find a business model for China’s burgeoning domestic market will be watching closely as one of the oldest Western brands in the country starts a new strategy.
Yum! Brands Inc., which opened its first KFC restaurant in China in 1987 and also operates Pizza Hut outlets, has been losing market share thanks to a food-safety scare, changing tastes, increasing local competition and a host of other challenges that foreign companies face in China. It carved out its China operations into a separate company, Yum China Holdings Inc., which begins trading today in New York.
Ring-fencing the business, the largest independent restaurant company in China with 7,000 outlets and more than $900 million cash on hand, offers Yum a number of advantages in dealing with a fast-changing market. Yum’s example could provide a road map for other global consumer brands in the world’s most populous nation.
Yum China has issued 386 million shares at $24.36, which puts its valuation at around $9 billion, according to New Jersey-based research firm Edge Consulting Group LLC. The stock rose about 2 percent to $24.85 as of 9:59 a.m. in New York, while Yum Brands gained 0.7 percent to $62.49.
“When their China operations get so big and are clearly catering just to the China market, splitting off could unlock a lot of value for shareholders,†said Shaun Rein, Shanghai-based managing director of China Market Research Group. “If I were an activist hedge fund investor, I would be looking at carving out brands within large conglomerates that are China plays.â€
Doing so allows Yum’s management of the China business to tailor its operations and products more swiftly to changing local conditions, such as the menu preferences of diners in different parts of the country, mobile-based payments systems, hiring and other factors.
It also helps tap Chinese investors willing to pay high premiums for a stake of an international brand’s China operations. Yum sold a combined $460 million stake in its Chinese business to Primavera Capital Group and an Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. affiliate, Ant Financial Services Group, in September.
In recent years, Yum has ceded market share to local competitors because it was slow to react to market changes, said Rein.
“They didn’t make corporate decisions quickly enough, such as in adopting mobile payments, or adapting to consumers wanting more premium offerings,†Rein said. “Their ability to deal with the more complex environment here was held back by the lack of knowledge, the slowness of the U.S.â€
Localization of offerings at KFC and Pizza Hut outlets in China will be an important component of the firm’s strategy for the country, Yum China Chief Executive Officer Micky Pant said at a briefing Tuesday in Shanghai. The company plans to increase investment in new outlets across its brands and does not plan to raise more capital, he said.
An activist hedge fund investor upset with the company’s handling of its China business is how Yum China came into being.
After a food-safety scandal in 2014 and cheaper local competition torpedoed Yum’s sales and profit in China, Corvex Management founder Keith Meister in mid-2015 urged the company to split off its Chinese operations — which contribute about half the group sales — saying that the move could generate an additional $16 a share in value for the Louisville, Kentucky-based company.
Yum’s total share of China’s market for fast-food chains dropped to 30 percent last year, from 40 percent in 2012, according to data from Euromonitor International. While sales have been growing again in China in the mid-single digits since late last year, the company has suffered from consumers shifting to healthier options and domestic chains sprouting up with more variety.
Volatility Reduction
Unlike Yum’s U.S. operations, where most of its restaurants are run by franchisees, Yum China directly operates over 90 percent of its outlets and plans to triple the number to more than 20,000 in the long term.
Yum’s spinoff would reduce volatility for its remaining business, while “giving investors with a higher risk tolerance access to a more pure-play China growth story,†said Jonathan Morgan, an analyst for Edge Consulting. “China’s economic slowdown could induce other U.S.-listed restaurant stocks to spin off their China businesses, to protect their core businesses.â€
So far, companies with China consumer arms have often chosen instead to sell the division to a local competitor and take a stake in that business instead.
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in June sold its e-commerce platform Yihaodian to China’s second-largest e-commerce company, JD.com Inc., for a 5 percent stake in JD. In August, Uber Technologies Inc. surrendered after a year-and-a-half battle with Didi Chuxing and agreed to sell its business in China. It departed the country in exchange for $1 billion in cash and a 17.7 percent stake in Didi.
McDonald’s Corp., meanwhile, is seeking to sell its 20-year mass franchise rights for China and Hong Kong for a reported $2 billion.
Starbucks Corp. is the only other major U.S.-listed food and beverage chain in China beside Yum, which owns and operates its outlets, numbering 2,400 stores across 110 cities.
China, Starbucks’ largest international market, represents the most significant opportunity for the company, said a company representative. The company has no intention to change its operation model in the market, according to the spokesperson.
Jackpot Valuations
“What we’ve seen across various industries is that foreign players eventually pull out or find a local partner,†said Hong Kong-based S&P Global Ratings’ restaurant and retail analyst Shalynn Teo. “It’s the local market knowledge and local relationships that determine which foreign businesses survive in China, and local players will always have an edge.â€
With Chinese investors paying a premium for market share, such deals can prove attractive, said Peter Fuhrman, CEO of Shenzhen-based investment bank and advisory firm China First Capital. “As long as Chinese investors are offering jackpot valuations,
Those that don’t face the need to tailor their businesses to China’s widely diverse and morphing consumer market. Only from March this year did KFCs in China began accepting WeChat Pay; they started accepting Alipay mobile payments in July last year. Yet the country leads the world in the use of such transactions, with four out of 10 Chinese consumers using mobile payments at physical stores, research firm EMarketer estimated.
Starbucks stores in China still do not accept Alipay or WeChat, only Apple Pay, a decision which costs them 5 to 10 percent of sales, estimates China Market Research Group’s Rein.
Starbucks launched its own mobile payment system in China in July, allowing customers to pay with preloaded Starbucks Gift Cards via their mobile devices, according to the company.
As China’s consumer market continues to grow, more overseas companies may consider following Yum down the path of segregation.
“Four out of 10 spinoffs do not generate a return in the first year of separation,†said Edge Consulting’s Morgan. “How Yum China performs will help U.S.-listed companies evaluate their strategic options in China.â€
Â
–