On 1 August, the Yangtze River International Forum—2016 China Entrepreneurs Family Succession Convention, hosted by the Jiangsu Association for Friendship and International Exchanges (JAFIE) and Jiangsu Federation of Industry and Commerce was held in Nanjing. Nearly one hundred well-known entrepreneurs and professional investment institutions from Jiangsu participated in the forum which focused on topics relevant to the development of private companies. Yue Lei, Senior Vice President of Sanpower Group, was invited to attend the forum and make a keynote speech in the breakout session entitled “Overseas Positioning of Private Chinese Enterprises”, during which he shared the story of Sanpower’s international development.

Yue made a brief introduction to the four overseas acquisitions made by Sanpower Group and its wholly owned subsidiary Nanjing Cenbest, which acquired British department store House of Fraser (which has a history of more than one hundred years), the American novelty retailer Brookstone, the Israeli telemedicine and homecare enterprise Natali, as well as China Cord Blood Corporation (CO Group, for which acquisition is not yet complete).

Yue Lei said that Sanpower’s overseas spending has followed three important logical approaches: namely a focus on M&A, synergy and the right to manage. With this concept of international development, Sanpower has made outstanding achievements in both the domestic and the overseas markets.

Entrepreneurs attending the forum noted that Yue Lei not only introduced the experiences of Sanpower, but also shared a route for supply-side reform. The combination of “going global” and “introducing in” gave the private enterprises inspiration to speed up supply-side reform.