On 17 August, a British delegation led by Jeff Astle, executive director of China-Britain Business Council in China, visited Nanjing to develop high level government and business ties. The theme of the business trip was the Belt and Road Initiative and overseas investment from China. Sanpower Group was one of two enterprises visited during the trip to the city and Yue Lei, Senior Vice President of Sanpower Group, received the guests. Kong Jun, CEO of House of Fraser in China and Hu Leiyong, the Director of Public Relations and Administration Centre of the Group, also took part in the meeting.

The delegation consisted of representatives of a number of well-known companies including Jardine Matheson, InterContinental Hotels Group, Scottish Development International, Standard Chartered Bank, and PricewaterhouseCoopers. They visited the showroom for Sanpower’s corporate culture, the Brookstone concept store and the senior care service command centre and gained an in-depth knowledge of Sanpower’s industrial positioning in the “broad finance, broad consumption, broad health” sectors as well as its developmental history.

Jeff Astle said that Sanpower Group is a fine example of Chinese enterprises “going global” and that it has made a great contribution to the promotion of economic, trade and cultural exchange between China and the UK. Jeff Astle hoped the visit would allow CBBC and its members to understand the commercial progress of House of the Fraser department store in China so as to provide a better service.

Members of the CBBC delegation were astonished by the growth performance of Sanpower and expressed great respect for Chinese entrepreneurs. The delegation was seeking to cooperate with Sanpower. Ge Mingyu, the General Manager of the Central China area for Scottish Development International hoped to cooperate with House of Fraser to develop a Scottish culture exhibition in Nanjing. Chen Sheng, partner at King & Wood Mallesons, hoped to provide services to Sanpower. Lu Jun, partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, was interested in Sanpower’s planned M&A activities over the next five years. Wang Ning, chief representative of the Shanghai Office of Jardine Matheson (China) Ltd said that Jardine Matheson is always on the lookout for partners like Sanpower who are full of confidence in the real economy.

One by one, Yue Lei answered questions raised by members of the delegation about many different aspects of Sanpower. He said that Sanpower’s confidence in investment in the UK is boosted by the bigger picture of the “golden decade” of China–UK relations. So far, cooperation between two cities of Nanjing and London has become increasingly close. The “Nanjing Week” of London Design Festival and the expansion in joint charity endeavours between Sanpower and the British royal family are creating new success stories for each of the two cities. Meanwhile, Yue Lei said that Sanpower is willing to make progress together, seek out cooperation opportunities and promote China–UK relations to a higher level together with China-Britain Business Council and its member companies.