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Chapter 547 0535 [The Unconventional Capitalist]

Before this year's ChinaJoy expo even started, Chen Guiliang had already flown to Shanghai.

First, we visited Kangheng Environment to make a preliminary decision on whether to invest in this environmental protection company.

Secondly, the CEOs of Youke's overseas subsidiaries gathered in Shanghai before the opening of CJ Expo, and Chen Guiliang was going to talk to them.

In fact, ever since Chen Guiliang expressed his intention to invest in Kangheng, he has sent a team from Xiyi Investment to conduct due diligence.

The due diligence report had long been on Chen Guiliang's desk.

Kangheng Company founder Long Jisheng warmly received them and also notified the investment heads of CITIC Industrial Fund and Shenzhen Capital Group.

The parties had initial exchanges at Kangheng and basically reached an investment intention. The specific details will be discussed by the execution team.

The purpose of this exchange among all parties was to first determine the post-investment shareholding ratio, and then discuss how much capital each party should invest.

The agreed shareholding ratio is as follows: 45% for the founding team, 18% for Chen Guiliang's Xiyi Investment, 23% for CITIC Private Equity Funds, and 14% for Shenzhen Capital Group.

The equity structure was set up like this during the Series A funding round, and none of the parties considered multiple rounds of financing and an IPO. It was purely treated as a long-term business project.

After leaving Kangheng, Chen Guiliang met with the CEOs of Youke's overseas subsidiaries.

He was just there to give a speech; Qu Guohao was mainly responsible for the details of the communication.

Then he was invited to meet friends at the club.

Huang Wenzheng, who was responsible for shorting Lehman Brothers for Chen Guiliang during the economic crisis, has long since returned to China. His own hedge fund is headquartered in the United States, but has branches in Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong.

"Mr. Chen, let me introduce you. This is Mr. Liang Jianzhang, the founder of Ctrip. Jianzhang, this is Mr. Chen Guiliang, the CEO," Huang Wenzheng said.

"Haha, I've heard so much about you."

"Same to you, they've all been around for ages."

Chen Guiliang and Liang Jianzhang shook hands warmly.

Liang Jianzhang was among the first graduates of Fudan University's gifted youth program. He joined Oracle before completing his doctoral studies and then founded Ctrip.

The company was doing well, and no one forced him to leave, but Liang Jianzhang resigned from his positions as chairman and CEO and went back to the United States to pursue a doctoral degree.

Liang Jianzhang said, "I recently read Mr. Chen's graduation thesis. I benefited greatly from it and wholeheartedly agree with it."

Huang Wenzheng said, "General Manager Liang is also studying population issues."

“My paper was utterly inadequate in front of you two,” Chen Guiliang said.

Liang Jianzhang said, "We plan to launch a proposal calling on the country to stop the one-child policy as soon as possible and encourage everyone to have more children in the future, so as to alleviate China's birth rate and aging problem. Currently, more than 20 economists and demographers have agreed to sign it. Would you like to take a look at the proposal, Mr. Chen?"

“Okay,” Chen Guiliang said.

Liang Jianzhang took out his briefcase and handed Chen Guiliang a file folder.

Chen Guiliang carefully read through the proposal and found that there were many signatures at the end. Moreover, some of the signatories were well-known biased public intellectuals.

Chen Guiliang smiled. He agreed with the basic content of the proposal and directly signed his name.

Huang Wenzheng said, "President Liang has accepted Peking University's invitation and will become a professor at Peking University's Guanghua School of Management next month."

“Then I should call him Teacher Liang,” Chen Guiliang said.

Liang Jianzhang said with a smile, "There's no need. Let's not call each other 'General Manager Liang' or 'General Manager Chen' in private. It's too formal. Just call each other by our names."

The three men drank their wine and began to talk about population issues.

They then talked about their respective businesses, including social networks, travel booking, hedge funds, online games, and so on.

During the conversation, Liang Jianzhang asked, "Mr. Chen, are you interested in merging Ctrip and Kuxun?"

Kuxun was founded by Chen Hua, who currently serves as the CEO of ByteDance Pictures.

Chen Guiliang acquired Kuxun last year, and now Xiyi Investment is Kuxun's major shareholder, making it a direct competitor of Ctrip. Liang Jianzhang said, "Now that I'm back in China, I will resume my role as Chairman and CEO of Ctrip. If Kuxun is willing to merge with us, I can offer a very high premium for shares. If Mr. Chen is willing to invest further, Ctrip can then be considered part of the ByteDance ecosystem."

Chen Guiliang asked with a smile, "Did Qunar.com put pressure on you?"

"I suppose so," Liang Jianzhang said.

Baidu invested over $3 million in Qunar.com last year, and Chen Guiliang also acquired Kuxun.com, marking a significant step forward. This has put immense pressure on Ctrip.com, especially in terms of online traffic entry points.

Baidu has Qunar.com, ByteDance has Kuxun.com, and Tencent has QQ Travel.

Sina, Sohu, and NetEase all have their own travel channels and can cooperate with Ctrip, but the related traffic is decreasing.

Ctrip needs to find a major internet company to back it up, otherwise its traffic entry point will be blocked.

Liang Jianzhang had already approached Jack Ma, but the demands made by Alibaba greatly displeased him—they involved changes in the management of Ctrip.

Faced with Liang Jianzhang's initiative to "join forces," Chen Guiliang said, "We can talk. I'll send a team over to discuss the specifics of the merger and share swap."

Liang Jianzhang said, "Everything else is negotiable, but ByteDance cannot interfere with Ctrip's daily management. I will only give ByteDance a board seat. As for the senior executives of Kuxun, I will give them a vice president position at Ctrip."

Chen Guiliang repeated, "I won't participate in the specific negotiations. I'll send a team over to discuss things slowly. Even if the negotiations break down, we can still be friends."

“Okay,” Liang Jianzhang said.

Huang Wenzheng said, "Haha, let's drink!"

Liang Jianzhang asked, "How about we get together with all the scholars who signed the population proposal another day?"

Chen Guiliang said, "No need. We have different views and cannot work together. I strongly disagree with some of their views. Being able to sign the population initiative together is already the limit of what I can tolerate."

Huang Wenzheng laughed and said, "I know who you can talk to. There's a professor named Zhai Dongsheng at Renmin University. Next time I go to Beijing, I'll arrange for you two to get together and have a chat. It just so happens that Lao Liang is also going to Peking University to become a professor. The four of us can get together often then."

Chen Guiliang said, "I reckon the conversation will mostly end in arguments. The three of us were talking about population, and we almost got into a fight just now."

(This long paragraph had display issues, so I deleted it to remove the censorship. It didn't contain much content; it was just a discussion of academic matters and the current situation. I'm not sure which words were considered sensitive.)
"I can't discuss this issue right now; I need to study it further," Liang Jianzhang said.

Three capitalists were drinking in a club, not hiring any young models to keep them company, and they actually spent most of their time talking about this kind of thing.

They're pretty eccentric.

The more they drank, the more intoxicated they became. At first, they talked very rationally, but gradually they started talking nonsense.

Chen Guiliang stood up unsteadily: "If you two are interested in visiting the Youke booth at tomorrow's CJ Electronics Show, you can come and check it out."

“I’ll definitely go. I used to enjoy playing video games when I was younger,” Liang Jianzhang said.

Huang Wenzheng said, "Then I'll go take a look too."

This year marks the 10th anniversary of ChinaJoy Electronics Show, and the scale is unprecedentedly large, with nearly a thousand journalists attending alone.

At the exhibition, chaos reigned!
One cosplayer dressed as Athena had her breasts completely exposed. While the skirt was very long, the front was deliberately skimped on fabric, and she wasn't wearing any safety shorts, making her panties clearly visible.

This Athena has become an internet sensation, generating a surge in online traffic, but also attracting a deluge of criticism online.

On the third day of the exhibition, she was forcibly expelled, which sparked a heated online battle between supporters and opponents on Weibo. Then a large number of netizens began to criticize the company, saying that the game was suspected of being a knock-off and plagiarism.

Another game company offered a reward of 10 yuan in cash at its booth for the perverted man who was allegedly forcibly kissed.

There were also cases of wealthy young men throwing banknotes at players who were trying out the game, hurling insults and demanding they give up their computers. The players, humiliated by the banknotes, obediently crawled on the ground and picked up the scattered bills.

A player fainted at the Shanda booth, and a showgirl quickly and kindly helped him. This was a good deed, but the subsequent media coverage was so extensive that it raised suspicions that Shanda was putting on a show.

Similar incidents happen every day, and game companies use every trick in the book to attract attention.

Qu Guohao was convinced and said, "These competitors really know how to create buzz; I could never come up with some of their tricks."

Chen Guiliang said, "We don't need to pay attention to their crooked ways. What I find lamentable is that Shanda, once an industry leader, has actually stooped to playing these tricks, and doing this at the 10th anniversary of CJ Expo. Shanda is truly finished."

(End of this chapter)