China’s Wanda E-Commerce raises $160m

The transaction values the newly-established e-commerce platform at RMB20 billion, according to a statement. Shengke Limited and Hong Kong Xu De Ren Dao E-commerce Investment, the new investors, will hold a 3% and 2% interest in Wanda E-Commerce, respectively.

The JV was incorporated in Hong Kong in August with registered capital of RMB5 billion. Tencent and Baidu each hold 15%. Wanda's founder, Jianlin Wang, and its property subsidiary Wanda Commercial Properties will remain the controlling shareholders in the e-commerce unit. The partnership plans to increase the investment to RMB20 billion within five years.

Wanda noted that e-commerce has become one of its four core industries. Last month, the company acquired a controlling stake in third-party online platform 99Billion, with a view to building a complete internet finance ecosystem to complement its existing financial business.

Wanda is also expanding into Wi-Fi services, beacon technology, data center construction and other online-to-offline (O2O) software services.

Wanda E-Commerce will be fully operational by the fourth quarter of this year, at which point the firm plans to initiate a second round of fundraising and its value will be further reassessed, it said in a statement.

Wanda Group purchased US movie theater chain AMC Entertainment for $2.6 billion in 2012. Wanda Commercial Properties, China's biggest shopping malls developer which operates 98 plazas in the country, raised $3.7 billion through a Hong Kong IPO last month. The US hedge fund Och-Ziff Capital Management, the Kuwait Investment Authorities and Ping An Insurance were among the cornerstone investors in the offering.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Venture
• Consumer
• China
• e-commerce
• Baidu
• Tencent
• Consumer
• Joint Venture
• Venture