McDonald’s and KFC are believed to be the memories of a generation of Chinese people.
Fund Jun remembers that when he first ate it, he traveled to Shenzhen as a child. At the first meal, he clamored for McDonald’s, because he had long yearned for it in front of the overwhelming TV advertisements at that time.
There is a joke that says: the first English letter learned by kindergartens or primary school students was basically not A, but M, the M of McDonald’s.
After the reform and opening up, McDonald’s is one of the first two "foreign fast food" from the United States to enter the China market. After more than 30 years in China, I finally sold China’s business to China people.
(The first McDonald’s restaurant in mainland China at the east gate of Shenzhen)
Let’s take a look at the opening of the first McDonald’s in China.
On October 8, 1990, the first McDonald’s restaurant in mainland China — — Guanghua Restaurant was grandly opened in Dongmen Commercial Pedestrian Street, Luohu District, Shenzhen.
The queue for buying fast food went from the third floor to the first floor of the restaurant, and then turned around the whole Guanghua several times. Many people from Shenzhen went to taste McDonald’s food with their families. The customers who came to watch the grand opening of McDonald’s restaurant packed more than half of Dongmen Commercial Street.
The number of employees serving the opening of the new restaurant is nearly 1000. In addition to the first batch of more than 400 employees in China, McDonald’s temporarily transferred more than 500 employees from the Hong Kong company to help.
Guanghua restaurant at that time could be settled in Hong Kong dollars or RMB. Unexpectedly, the front of the Hong Kong dollar settlement counter was crowded with Shenzhen people who were born and raised in Shenzhen. It is said that in order to come to McDonald’s to taste the fast food chain, they all prepared a sufficient amount of Hong Kong dollars in advance.
Yes, McDonald’s in China changed its name from "foreign" to "Chinese".
On August 4th, CITIC Hong Kong Stock Exchange announced that the acquisition of the controlling interest in McDonald’s business in China Mainland and Hong Kong was completed on July 31st. This will become the largest McDonald’s franchise business outside the United States, and the partners will operate and manage about 2,700 McDonald’s restaurants in China Mainland and Hongkong market.
CITIC announced on January 9th this year that CITIC, CITIC Capital Holdings, Carlyle Investment Group and McDonald’s, a subsidiary of CITIC Group, jointly announced that they had reached a strategic cooperation and established a new company. The new company will acquire McDonald’s business in mainland China and Hong Kong for a total consideration of up to US$ 2.08 billion (about HK$ 16.14 billion).
After the transaction is completed, CITIC and CITIC Capital will hold a total of 52% of the controlling shares in the new company, while Carlyle and McDonald’s will hold 28% and 20% respectively.
CITIC Group has a total of 176 companies with total assets of 2.1 trillion yuan, and its business involves finance, resources and energy, manufacturing, engineering contracting, real estate and other fields. In recent years, CITIC Group has also begun to lay out the consumption field. Just before the acquisition of McDonald’s China, Chunxin Capital, a subsidiary of CITIC Group, acquired 100% equity of Jianlibao Trade in the hands of Uni-President Group for 950 million yuan.
Quite simply, the good times in China market are gone.
Think about it, will you go to McDonald’s and KFC every day to solve the problem of eating?
The data shows that the market share of KFC and McDonald’s in China’s fast food industry has dropped from about 57% (40% and 17% for two brands respectively) to about 37% (24% and 13% for two brands respectively).
Unable to maintain high growth, the trick McDonald’s came up with to get out of the predicament is to sell its brand management rights in the China market for the next 20 years, including the management rights of 2,200 stores that are operating.
Both companies have obtained a lot of funds for this round of transactions, which will be an important source of their next investment from me. Both companies have a large number of restaurants waiting to be renovated — — No matter what kind of restaurant, young people want a more comfortable and fashionable dining environment. In order to find consumers in the fragmented market, they have to catch up with the trend of digitalization. These all need money, a lot of money.
Fund Jun did a search in Weibo. This kind of problem actually appeared.
Many netizens are asking:
Are there any cups, toilet paper, free wifi, ketchup and straws available for free?
You can’t get ketchup after that.
I just want to ask, when boycotting American goods in the future, should McDonald’s boycott [allow sorrow]
Can I go to McDonald’s to go to the bathroom in the future?
These strange questions can only be observed later.
Today, Fund Jun continued to talk about the development of overseas brands after Chinese capital acquired them.
On May 21st, 2012, Wanda announced the acquisition of AMC, the second largest cinema in the world, for US$ 2.6 billion. This is the first international merger of China’s cultural industry and Wanda’s total transaction amount is 2.6 billion US dollars, including buying 100% equity and taking on debt. According to the M&A agreement, after the completion of the merger, Wanda Group will take over 338 cinemas under AMC and operate AMC as its wholly-owned subsidiary, and at the same time inject no more than 500 million US dollars into it every year.
A masterpiece of Wanda’s overseas mergers and acquisitions is now caught in the dilemma of loss-making and layoffs. On August 2nd, AMC Entertainment Holding Company (hereinafter referred to as "AMC"), a subsidiary of Wanda Group, released its second-quarter performance forecast, with estimated revenue ranging from $1.2 billion to $1.204 billion, net loss ranging from $174.5 million to $178.5 million, and loss per share ranging from $134 to $1.36, compared with earnings per share of 24 cents in the same period last year. In the face of performance losses, AMC also indicated that it will cut costs through measures such as layoffs. However, under the situation that the global film market is relatively depressed, AMC faces greater challenges. For Wanda Group, the frequent performance difficulties of overseas assets are not conducive to the layout of Wanda Group’s global film and television industry.
In 2004, under the auspices of Yang Yuanqing, Lenovo acquired IBM’s PC business for a total price of 1.25 billion US dollars. This acquisition, which Lenovo called "snake swallowing elephant", made Lenovo become the third largest computer manufacturer in the world.
After the acquisition, Lenovo experienced a long run-in because of cultural conflicts and changes in management. Until 2008, Lenovo lost $226 million, and Lenovo CEO was changed from Amelio, who was originally from IBM, to Yang Yuanqing.
In the 12 months to the end of March 2017, Lenovo’s total revenue was $43 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 4%. It made a net profit of $535 million, but nearly 85% of it came from the income from selling houses in the past year. Other products, including personal computers, mobile phones and servers, contributed less than $100 million in profits.
In the past fiscal year, Lenovo’s PC business was not very good, facing the global environment of the fifth consecutive year of decline in shipments. And, although Lenovo’s market share as of the end of 2016 is still the first in the world, reaching 21.7%, the second-ranked HP has narrowed the gap from 1.8% to 1.3%. An important reason for the overall market search is that people don’t change computers as frequently as before: once in the past 3-4 years, now 5-6 years.
In October 2014, Lenovo Group acquired Motorola Mobility, with a total acquisition of about 2.91 billion US dollars, and Lenovo immediately became the third largest smartphone manufacturer in the world.
After the acquisition, nearly 3,500 employees from all over the world will join Lenovo, including about 2,800 employees in the United States.
Lenovo will adopt a dual-brand strategy, that is, the parallel strategy of MOTO and Lenovo. Moto will be a supplement to Lenovo’s high-end product line in China, and its product design, R&D and operation are completely independent.
Looking back at Lenovo Mobile’s strategy, it is widely believed that Lenovo failed to grasp the transformation of Internet mobile phones or the offline channel changes initiated by OPPO and vivo.
In terms of mobile business, the revenue of Lenovo’s mobile business group since 2014 decreased by 10% year-on-year to US$ 7.707 billion. Revenue outside the China market fell by 5.4%, and profit margin before tax fell by 1.9%. At the beginning of 2014, Lenovo still had the status of the second smartphone manufacturer in China, but in the past three years, its ranking dropped to ten, and it was overtaken by Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo and other mobile phones.
On the morning of January 12th, 2016, the signing ceremony of Wanda Culture Group’s acquisition of American Legendary Pictures Company was officially held in Beijing. Wanda Group will acquire 100% of Legendary Pictures, a well-known Hollywood film and television production company in the United States, with a cash of no more than US$ 3.5 billion (about RMB 23 billion), which is also the largest cultural acquisition of China enterprises overseas. Thomas Tull, Chairman and CEO of Legendary Pictures, will remain in office and continue to be responsible for the day-to-day operation of the company.
One year after Wanda acquired Legendary Pictures, ThomasTull, founder, chairman and CEO of Legendary Pictures, announced his resignation.
On January 17, 2017, the American media "Hollywood Reporter" reported that Thomas Tour’s resignation was not voluntary, but was under pressure from Wanda. Wanda is dissatisfied with his management level and ability to operate the Great Wall, Pacific Rim 2 and other projects.
On January 19th, Dalian Wanda Group Co., Ltd. issued a statement saying that online media reported recently that Thomas, the legendary American CEO, resigned because of the failure of Great Wall. The report is unverified and seriously inaccurate.
On August 2, 2010, Geely Holding Group officially completed the acquisition of all the shares of Volvo Car Company, a subsidiary of Ford Motor Company.
When negotiating the acquisition of Volvo, Li Shufu met with Volvo engineers. The other party made a somewhat harsh request, asking him to explain in three words why Geely’s acquisition of Volvo is the best. The scene was a little tense, and the host tried to beat the circle. Li Shufu stopped him: no problem, I can answer, three words, very good, because, "IloveYou!" "
Seven years after Geely acquired Volvo’s passenger car business, the two sides plan to jointly enter the mid-to-high-end automobile market in the form of a joint venture.
On August 4th, Link Investment Co., Ltd. was established in Ningbo, Zhejiang. This is a three-party joint venture, with Geely Automobile Holdings Limited, Zhejiang Geely Holding Group and Volvo Car Group holding 50%, 20% and 30% respectively.
Many market participants are optimistic about the cooperation between Geely Automobile and Volvo. Ni Wei, an analyst at Everbright Securities, said in the research report that they are optimistic about the long-term cooperation between Geely and Volvo based on Lectra. "The company or its own brand will switch up one of the most certain targets." The research report predicts that the sales volume of the Lectra brand will reach 15,000, 150,000 and 300,000 respectively from 2017 to 2019.
In 2016, Haier Group announced on January 15th that it would acquire the home appliance business of General Electric (GE). The acquisition amount is $5.4 billion, which will take over the personnel of GE’s home appliance department and its business base in the United States. At the same time, it will also obtain intellectual property rights and "GE" brand, which will be used as a foothold for officially opening up developed countries such as Europe and America. GE and Haier also announced that they will establish a long-term strategic partnership and explore cooperation in industrial internet, medical care and advanced manufacturing.
On the evening of March 30, 2016, Midea Group announced that Midea intends to acquire 80.1% equity of Toshiba’s white goods business with its own funds of about US$ 473 million after negotiation between the two parties. With this transaction, Midea will receive 40 years of global authorization from Toshiba brand, more than 5,000 patents related to household appliances, and the markets, channels and manufacturing bases of Toshiba household appliances in Japan, China and Southeast Asia. However, Midea’s acquisition needs to undertake about $220 million in debt from Toshiba’s home appliances.
TCL Group, one of the pioneers in the field of household appliances in China, and Thomson Company, the fourth largest consumer electronics supplier in the world, formally signed an agreement in Guangzhou to reorganize their color TV and DVD businesses and form the largest color TV supplier in the world — — — TCL— Thomson electronics company. This is also the first time that China’s home appliance enterprises have merged the mainstream business of the world’s top 500 companies.
The total assets of the merger and reorganization of the two parties will exceed 450 million euros. TCL International Holdings will become the major shareholder of the joint venture company, accounting for 67% of the shares, while Thomson will hold the remaining 33%. The newly established joint venture company has more than a dozen production bases in Europe, America and Asia, with an annual sales of 18 million color TV sets, making it the largest color TV supplier in the world.
On June 21, 2016, Tencent announced that it had acquired 84.3% equity of Supercell after consulting with Finnish mobile game developer Supercell84.3% The transaction amount is expected to be 8.6 billion US dollars (about 56.6 billion yuan). Supercell is a game giant from Finland. As of March 2016, the number of daily active users (DAU) of its games has exceeded 100 million.
According to sources, any buyer of Supercell must agree to the condition that six founders control the company. The new owner can’t force an IPO or fire the existing management team. At present, Supercell has launched games such as Clash of Tribes, Cartoon Farm and Raiders of the Island for the global market. In contrast, Zynga, which has more mobile game products, has about 21 million daily active users, while Gameloft and Glu have about 19 million and 5 million respectively. King, the developer of Candy Legend, has more than 130 million daily active users. Among them, the "local tyrant game" and "clash royale", which are well known by netizens, were also developed by them.
Source: China Fund News (ID: China Fund News)
Reporter: Taylor
