Billionaire Wang Jianlin, chairman and president of Dalian Wanda Group
Wang Jianlin, China’s second-richest man, is buying a 20 percent stake in Spanish soccer team Atletico Madrid while eyeing more deals including another European club and a multibillion-euro unspecified purchase in Spain.
Dalian Wanda Group will pay 45 million euros (USD52 million) for the Atletico stake, marking the first investment by a Chinese company in a top European soccer club, Wanda said in a statement announcing the agreement. Wang, who is Wanda’s chairman and founder, said yesterday he’d also met Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy to discuss a 3-billion-euro “megadeal.”
“If you use the language of soccer – we have kicked the ball to the Spanish side,” Wang said of the 3-billion-euro deal at a briefing held in Beijing, without specifying which industry it would be in. “We’ll finalize the deal” as long as both parties’ plans complement each other, he said.
Wanda, a closely held group whose businesses include movie theaters and shopping malls, has led Chinese developers including China Vanke Co. and Greenland Group on an overseas buying spree with plans to buy a stake in film studio Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. and build properties in Beverly Hills. The Beijing-based group spun off Dalian Wanda Commercial Properties Co. in a Hong Kong initial public offering last month.
Wang also said he’s interested in adding more soccer clubs to his collection, which wouldn’t necessarily be confined to Spain. British newspaper the Daily Mirror reported in January 2014 that Wang may make a bid for English Premier League club Southampton.
A longtime supporter of soccer in China, Wang helped the city of Dalian’s government set up the Dalian Wanda Football Club in 1994. He said the Atletico investment is “purely for public good” and will offer a path for young Chinese soccer players to advance.
“I have a passion for soccer,” Wang said. “As long as three or five players could compete in first-tier European soccer clubs in the future, Wanda isn’t wasting money in this deal.”
Wanda and Atletico will each invest 15 million euros to build a training center for young soccer players in Madrid and will open three soccer schools in China, according to yesterday’s statement. The soccer club will also play matches in China each year after the deal.
“The purchase of a renowned European brand will boost Wanda’s brand recognition,” Liu Yuan, Shanghai-based research director for Centaline Group, China’s biggest property agency, said in a phone interview before the Atletico announcement. “Also, Dalian Wanda is trying to reduce risks in the increasingly competitive domestic commercial real estate market by tapping into other industries and countries.”
China’s housing market has ended its period of rapid growth after expanding at an “unhealthy, crazy” rate over the past few years, Wang said in an interview last month. His $24.6 billion fortune is behind only Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma’s in China, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Bloomberg
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