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Dalian Wanda to restructure assets after withdrawing troubled Shanghai IPO plan for property arm

  • Dalian Wanda Commercial Management has decided to withdraw its A-share listing plan in Shanghai after a five-year wait without progress
  • The group aims to restructure its assets and hopes to seek another listing at home or abroad ‘as soon as possible’

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The Wanda Mall commercial complex covered with giant portraits of movie stars on its facade at the group’s film production hub in Qingdao, China. Photo: Bloomberg
Martin Choi
Dalian Wanda Group, which is controlled by billionaire Wang Jianlin, is seeking to reorganise part of its sprawling businesses after halting a five-year pursuit to list its real-estate business on mainland Chinese bourses.
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The group has decided to withdraw a plan to list its unit, Dalian Wanda Commercial Management, due to “strategic considerations”, according to a statement on its website. Instead, the unit intends to “restructure its assets in areas including commercial operation, technology and data”, it said.

The company had earlier submitted an application to sell 250 million yuan-denominated shares in September 2015, according to a filing at the time. It has stalled since market regulators suspended a review of its initial public offering (IPO) proposal in February 2019 without disclosing any reasons.

Some 84 Chinese companies have pulled their onshore IPO applications this quarter, compared with nine in the same quarter last year, according to Bloomberg. The technology-focused Shanghai Star Market and Shenzhen ChiNext were seeing the most cancellations, it added.

A slumping stock market and signs of tightening industry regulations have made companies and investors more cautious about the IPO market, with officials highlighting bubble risks abroad. Closer to home, Chinese authorities have also intensified their oversight of property developers with “three red lines” rules to curb excessive leverage.
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The 66-year-old Wang’s business empire has also buckled under pressure from leverage and the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. His global ambitions in the entertainment business have crumbled after the group’s stake in AMC Entertainment, the US’s biggest cinema chain, fell below 10 per cent.
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