The Spring Festival is a Chinese traditional festival when people have family reunions no matter how much time and how far away they have to travel and Chunyun, the Spring Festival travel rush, has become a typical feature of Chinese holidays known to the outside world. In recent years, Chinese enterprises have accelerated their pace of internationalization, which contributed to the internationalization of Chinese culture.

Around the Spring Festival of 2017, as eye-catching as state leaders and leaders of international orgainzations making speeches on Chinese New Year is the fact that Chinese enterprises continued their overseas M&A activities during the holiday. Each displayed their own styles in M&A and has established fame both at home and abroad.

Sanpower Group acquires Dendreon Corporation at 820 million USD

On January 10, Sanpower Group, a Chinese private enterprise agreed with Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, Inc. (Canada) on an equity acquisition agreement in San Francisco. Sanpower acquired 100% of Dendreon Corporation of Valeant Pharmaceuticals with a cash offer of 819.9 million USD and became the first and the only enterprise approved by FDA of the U.S to possess the advanced prostate cancer treatment Provenge.

Valeant Inc., based in Quebec, Canada, is the biggest Canadian pharmaceutical enterprise and gets listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Valeant owns Bausch & Lomb, a famous manufacturer of contact lenses. It is the first time that a Chinese enterprise has acquired an original drug product in the U.S. The transaction amount of 819.9 million USD, set a new record of Chinese enterprises purchasing drug products in the U.S. Yuan Yafei, Chairman of Sanpower, says they will bring into China and Asian market the advanced prostate cancer treatment Provenge. Sanpower’s broad health strategy includes bio-therapeutics, cord blood storage and homecare services.

Sanpower acquired advanced prostate cancer treatment Provenge

Ant Financial acquired MoneyGram for 880 million USD

On January 26, Alibaba’s financial service provider Ant Financial acquired MoneyGram (the U.S.) for 880 million US dollars. It is the first time that Ant Financial has acquired a U.S. listed company. That demonstrates its determination to “Go International”. It announced that it acquired MoneyGram at 13.25 US dollars per share, 1.37 US dollars higher, about 11.5%, than that in the previous trading day (January 25).

MoneyGram, similar to the global money transfer leader Western Union, mainly provides personal services of instant money remittance and collection based on a global network. In the U.S., the main partner of MoneyGram is Wal-Mart whose money transfer services are powered by the former.

Fosun Pharma acquires healthcare company Breas Medical for 90 million USD

On January 26, Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group Co., Ltd acquired Breas, a leading manufacturer of respiratory ventilators in Europe with 90 million US dollars. On the very day, Fosun Pharma publicly stated that Fosun Industrial Co. Ltd and Fosun Industrial Holdings Ltd. planned to co-found a SPV company (Goldcup) in Sweden and through the company, the acquisition of 80% of the shares of Goldcup would be completed; after the transaction, the existing shareholder PBMRESP Holdings would still hold 20% of Goldcup’s shares.

Goldcup is a new company established in 2017 in Sweden especially for the reorganization and the transaction. Prior to the transaction, PBM Capital had transferred all the business of Breas to Goldcup. Breas headquartered in Gothenburg is a leading researcher and manufacturer of sleep apnea products and products for chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases. Breas has built a well-formed sales network in Europe and America with its high-quality and high-performance respiratory ventilators.

Advance to the Internationalization of Chinese Culture

Besides buying advanced overseas technology and high-quality assets, Chinese enterprises endeavored to advance the internationalization of Chinese Culture during the Spring Festival.

Sanpower Group: On January 29, second day of Chinese Lunar New Year, Yuan Yafei, Founder and Chairman of Sanpower gave his New Year message in both Chinese and English to Sanpower partners all over the world. The letter started with a sum-up of the t year 2016:

“In Broad Consumption, we have become the strategic partner and major shareholder of Wangfujing Group; our successful implementation of Brookstone in China is taking the lead in transforming the domestic conventional consumer electronics industry and  making it more unique, novel and innovative; the opening of the first stores of Hamleys and House of Fraser created an unprecedented sensation to the Brick & Mortar retail business in China; and we also presented a world class lightshow in the Sanpower International Plaza in Xinjiekou Nanjing after we finished the renovation.

In Broad Health, Natali entered the Chinese market and the first B2C-modeled telemedicine pilot project was officially launched in Changzhou. The number of subscribers of An Kang Tong has exceeded 4 million, earning it the prestige of the largest home-based senior care company in China. Moreover, we acquired China Cord Blood Corporation (NYSE：CO) from the U.S. and Cordlife Group (SGX：P8A) from Singapore and then became the largest cord blood bank company worldwide. At the beginning of 2017, they acquired Provenge, the only cellular immunotherapy medicine in the world for prostate cancer treatment, which puts us in the leading position in the global precision medicine industry.

In our Broad Finance, we acquired Pengyuan Credit Rating, one of China’s leading Chinese credit rating companies, obtained a full service license for our third party payment company, Tianxia Pay, and established Liberty China through a joint venture with Liberty Mutual Group U.S. Tianxia Financial Service was founded aiming to be the most competitive private financial holdings company in China.”

Then Yuan Yafei went on to talk about some problems confronting Chinese enterprises in the process of internationalization: ” Over the past year, all of our overseas enterprises successfully began operations in China. This achievement wouldn’t have been possible without the trust between our domestic and overseas businesses. Trust is the precondition for all the work we do. Only those that are narrow-minded and lack wisdom will staunchly subscribe to the philosophy of “seeing is believing”, meaning one is not willing to do anything without immediate and tangible results. This stubbornness only reveals their rigid thinking and lack of self-confidence. By contrast, those with true wisdom, kindness and confidence are able to trust, love, and actively listen to others. As Sanpower continues to blossom into a global enterprise, we should also work to trust our colleagues and our friends. We’ve brought together talents from all around the world, wherever their talent lies. Only trust can gather strength; only trust can make us successful.” Yuan Yafei also remarked “As long as we have love, we will be one family.”

Wanda Group: On January 29, Wanda official Wechat account had a 4-minute video entitled New Year Greetings from Wanda Employees All over the World. It shows an international Wanda Group and what it has achieved in its internationalization. By taking advantage of the time difference between countries in a day, a parallel narrative was created and all Wanda overseas companies were displayed one after another in the video. All the overseas executives and employees gave their New Year greetings in front of the camera; they were from Britain, the U.S., Australia, South Africa and France, etc.

In recent years, there is a steady increase in M&A activities done by Chinese enterprises in overseas market. The statistics show that in 2016 the direct foreign investment of Chinese enterprises set a new record, up 44% than 2015. But Chinese enterprises also encounter some problems concerned about cultural difference, managing and synergetic development. Enterprises like Sanpower, Wanda, Fosun and Alibaba are very stouthearted to “Go Intercultural” in holidays. We believe that with the advancement of internationalization of Chinese culture, more overseas enterprises will join the Chinese New Year Greetings.

Source:

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