2011-09-03

Wang Qunbin: An enterprise has both economic and environmental commitments

Wang Qunbin: I’m honoured to join this conference and learn from multinational companies. I believe we have two important reports, one is how we perform in boosting industrial capacity and the other one is what we have done in ensuring sustainable development. We valued social responsibility report a lot.
I’d like to brief you on another two points also. Although, we are still learning, we have also done some work in our globalization development.

First, we come out with the going global strategy now to find ways to integrate global resources in a diversified group like us in China. We started our business with RMB83,000 and have now expanded our worth to RMB35 billion, covering pharmaceuticals, iron and steel, real estate, culture and finance. We started with products, mainly medicines and real estate. During our business operations, we found merger, acquisition and industry consolidation in China and so we began M&A and investment very early. But we soon learned M&A investment was not common in China, and we met new trouble in our operations. We did not limit ourselves to industrial investment but reached out to strategic and P investment. That’s why we have 6 operations listed this year. We diversified our investment in the financial crisis and have US$700 million remaining after recalling US$300 million. Now we find few Chinese enterprises make investments with a view of integrating global resources into China’s fast growing economy. So, we are in such a situation: we are a China expert compared to foreign investment groups and are in a better global position than China’s investment groups. So we are the benchmark mainly in four aspects: innovative manufacturing, financial service and energy and resources. In respect of strategic global investment, we are different from many other enterprises. Many of our investments are holdings, as in two companies in the Silicon Valley of the United States, so we have many patents in alignment with international standards. Concerning international standards, we may turn to Mr. Wang, our general manager, who has competently professional for much special knowledge is concerned in this aspect.

Second, we are not necessarily controlling the stocks , we may take stakes indtead. Last year, after investing in General Mediterranean Holding (GMH), we became GMH’s largest shareholder and the first branch of GMH in China. We also invested in luxury brands with 10% of our revenue. We believe that we can satisfy the growing domestic demand through investing in global brands and support and help it to develop in China with Chinese elements added. In our concept, globalization means, on the one hand, supporting the enterprises we invested in, like pharmaceuticals manufacturers, to go global; on the other hand, seeking some international brands and introducing them to China. This is also our important strategic positioning. This positioning of ours, namely a brand and diversified investment group, is unique, at least in this respect.

Speaking of positioning, I would like to shift to the second point of globalization, namely, global responsibility. I’m of the view that an enterprise should have both economic and environment commitments. I would like to share with you three aspects of Fosun. First, natural and business ecology complies with regulations and intellectual property rights. The essence of the later is to facilitate sustained development of enterprises and the industry. Needless to say, we are constantly participating in this respect, including support and investment in enterprises of the industry, making their development better conform to standards. Second, we boost creative development in technology. Although considerable headway has been made, we still lag behind international multinational companies. We will continue supporting more creative development, specifically, IBC in terms of technology. In participating in Distance Foundation, we inspired farmers to be more creative. In short, we set our technological strategy as making more contributions to the society by backing up entrepreneurs. The third is about culture. We think we should undertake the obligation of integrating Chinese traditional culture with modern and international trends in the course of China’s economic rise. This is also a great impetus for the development of our enterprises. For example, we tried hard to promote Taichi, homegrown and indigenous to China, to the world. To do so, we not only invested in enterprises engaging in popularizing Taichi, but also conducted a range of cultural activities, say, last year’s World Expo, which we attended, and in New York and Paris. If we can make Chinese culture like Taichi internationally compatible, in other words, help foreigners better understand Chinese culture like Taichi, it is also a kind of cooperation, to be more exact, better coordinate with international enterprises in an ecologically sustainable way.