How to continue to write the business legend of ＂creating a generation＂ in the intergenerational inheritance of private enterprises

　　On March 1st, there was a heavy news from Country Garden, a leading real estate enterprise: Yang Guoqiang, the chairman and executive director of the company’s board of directors, resigned due to his age, and was replaced by his daughter and co-chairman, Yang Huiyan, with effect from March 1st, 2023.

　　In this regard, Yan Yuejin, research director of Yiju Research Institute, told the Securities Daily reporter that the resignation event was generally in line with expectations. At present, private enterprises are experiencing an intensive period of replacement of old and new, and some founders of enterprises will indeed enter the stage of resignation because of their age, so it is also a normal adjustment in itself. At the same time, the growth of Country Garden is closely related to the rapid development of urbanization in China. It is precisely because it has seized this dividend and its business scale has expanded rapidly. It is an outstanding representative of the rise of housing enterprises under the background of urbanization. At present, the replacement of old and new, how to seek new space on the basis of a new round of urbanization, this is also the content that investors pay more attention to.

　　Yang Guoqiang is 69 years old. As one of the earliest real estate entrepreneurs in China, he founded Country Garden in the early 1990s, and its famous super-market model well stepped on the rhythm of China’s new urbanization construction and achieved rapid success. In 2017, Country Garden became the first real estate enterprise to break through the threshold of 500 billion yuan and remained at the top of the country at the end of the year. Also in the same year, Country Garden ranked among the Fortune 500 for the first time, ranking 467th. By 2022, its ranking has climbed to 138th.

　　In 2022, when the real estate industry in China suffered from extreme cold, its scale shrank, the loan stopped and spread, and the news of thunder storm broke out from time to time. Country Garden’s business and sales maintained a rare stability, and there was no delay in paying the principal and interest due to breach of contract, and it became a model private real estate enterprise with benchmark significance, showing sufficient resilience.

　　At present, the real estate industry in China has just passed through the cold winter and is gradually showing a good trend. Under such a special background, Yang Huiyan took over Country Garden, which has also become an observation model for China’s modern private economy to do a good job in enterprise inheritance. After taking over the real estate aircraft carrier, can Yang Huiyan successfully carry on the business mission? Under the leadership of a new generation of successors, where will Country Garden go?

　　Expected succession

　　China’s reform and opening up has been promoted for more than 40 years. Over the past 40 years, the earliest batch of private entrepreneurs in China have created unprecedented wealth through hard exploration in the wave of reform dividend and urbanization. Forty years later, most of these entrepreneurs are over 60 years old, and they are beginning to face a new challenge-corporate inheritance.

　　Yang Huiyan was born in 1981, the second daughter of Yang Guoqiang. As early as the eve of Country Garden’s listing in 2007, when Yang Guoqiang transferred all the shares of the company worth tens of billions of yuan to Yang Huiyan, she had stepped into the public eye and attracted much attention.

　　"The inheritance of an enterprise is still a realistic development trend in the China real estate market in the next decade, whether from the traditional concept of" inheriting the father’s business "in China or from the transformation and upgrading process of the enterprise itself. Because blood is the best contract. " Gao Xianlin, vice president and senior partner of Hanjia Real Estate Consulting Co., Ltd., has quite representative views. In fact, among private entrepreneurs in the United States, Europe, Japan and Southeast Asia, there have been many classic examples of the inheritance of family businesses, and it is not uncommon to see the legend of family fortune that lasted for more than one or two hundred years. Of course, this traditional way of inheritance also has potential risks, such as whether the quality of the successor can meet the requirements and take charge of the enterprise well after inheritance.

　　Yang Guoqiang’s train of thought about children is very similar to Li Ka-shing’s. Like Li Zeju and Li Zekai, Yang Huiyan and his sister had the opportunity to sit in on the work assigned by their father at the board meeting at an early age.

　　Since joining Country Garden in 2005, she has worked in important business departments such as investment planning center, purchasing department, human resource management center and digital management center and held major management positions. In 2012, she became the vice chairman of the board of directors of the group, and in 2018, she was transferred to be the co-chairman of the board of directors. It has been 18 years since it successfully led the listing of Country Garden education sector and the spin-off listing of property sector. In fact, the industry had long expected Yang Huiyan to take over Country Garden.

　　According to insiders of the company, during his term as co-chairman, he has jointly managed the daily work of the Group with Yang Guoqiang, and was responsible for the strategic investment and new business development of the Group, and his working ability has been highly recognized by the board of directors. Yang Guoqiang’s efforts to cultivate Yang Huiyan can be described as foresight and careful layout, and it has also laid a thick enough safety mat for the long-term stable operation of enterprises.

　　The successor’s new topic

　　The market also gave positive feedback to Country Garden’s takeover. On March 1, Country Garden’s share price closed up 8.33%.

　　The inheritance of successors is not a stick-in-the-stick in the traditional sense. At present, the real estate market in China is in transition to a new development mode. How to adapt to the changing times and maintain the development competitiveness under the new situation is not only a new challenge and a new topic, but also provides a new stage for successors to show their talents.

　　Still taking Country Garden as an example, in recent years, Country Garden has strategically laid out new businesses such as construction robots and modern agriculture, which have achieved initial results, and construction robots have made a series of major breakthroughs. As of January, 2023, Guangdong Bozhilin Robot Company, a subsidiary of Country Garden, has put 33 construction robots into commercial application, with a cumulative application construction area of over 10 million square meters. In addition, Country Garden has also set up a Science and Technology Building Group, focusing on the promotion and application of the smart construction system of science and technology, which integrates advanced technologies such as construction robots, BIM digitalization and new prefabricated buildings.

　　Some insiders pointed out that smart construction is expected to bring a new look to the traditional construction industry, and it is also a great weapon for the real estate industry to cope with the new cycle, which will surely win more development space for the enterprises themselves and even the whole industry. In the exploration of new technologies and new business models, a new generation of entrepreneurs may have natural advantages. From this perspective, it may be just the right time for Yang Huiyan to take over Country Garden at such a special moment.