Author |Cao Anxun.
Edit |Zhang Xiaoling.
More than 20 years ago, the game "Legend" was launched in China and became popular in one fell swoop, opening the era of Chinese online games. **The legendary chairman of Shanda Group*** made a lot of money, and at the age of 30, he became the youngest richest man in China.
More than 20 years later, ***, who had disappeared for many years, reappeared in the public eye as a new identity of the "big landlord" in the United States, setting off a wave of amazement and emotion.
Recently, the latest ranking of the American magazine "Land Report" showed that ** ranked among the "Top 100 Landowners in the United States" for the first time, ranking 82nd in the United States, and also the second largest foreign landowner in the United States.
According to Oregon's December 2023 tax records, he owns 1980,000 acres of woodland.
According to the land report, the forest land was purchased from Fidelity National Financial Investment Corporation in 2015 for $85 million ($430 per acre).
The most valuable part of the strip, called Bull Springs Skyline Forest, is adjacent to the Deschutes National Forest and is now worth $95 million, more than the entire cost of buying land in Oregon.
In addition to forest land, the land report shows that the ** couple also purchased two properties in the United States in 2018 and 2021, located in Manhattan and Los Angeles, with a cumulative cost of about $65 million.
Their investment hand also extends from the United States to Canada. According to the Land Report, ** also owns about 500,000 acres of woodland in Ontario, Canada.
**Behind the huge identity change, there is a legendary past in the history of China's Internet, which has been sighed by people in the game industry and Internet industry.
** Became famous at the beginning of this century, with the game empire he built single-handedly, he became the leading Internet tycoon in China at that time.
In 2004, with a net worth of 8 billion yuan, it was rated as the richest man in China by the "Hurun Report", Ding Lei, Robin Li, Zhang Chaoyang, Ma Huateng, Zhou Hongyi, Ma Yun, etc. were left far behind.
Hurun Report, the founder of Hurun Report, once publicly praised him for going from an entrepreneur to a billion-dollar super-rich man in the fastest possible way, which only took three to four years, which is as fast as Facebook's Zuckerberg.
However, such a rising business tycoon fell ill in 2009, and he has always had a dream of transformation, so he chose to retreat bravely, sold Shanda Games, Shanda Literature and other assets, moved the headquarters of Shanda Group to Singapore and delisted.
Bidding farewell to the game, the new direction he chose for himself was investment.
At the beginning of 2016, Shanda Group announced that the company would be fully transformed, with the goal of becoming the world's leading investment group.
This is the third transformation adventure after the transformation of self-developed games and grand "boxes". According to Shanda Group's official website, ** investments cover public and private equity, venture capital and real estate.
Among them, land is a stable asset preservation investment product that he favors. In 2023, the average value of arable land in the United States is 81%。
Indeed, in recent years, more and more wealthy global billionaires seeking to hedge against risk and inflation have flocked to U.S. farmland.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, as of 2021, about 40 million acres of U.S. agricultural land are owned by non-U.S. entities.
And *** has single-handedly bought the second largest foreign landowner in the United States.
In addition to buying forest land in the U.S. and Canada, it is also stirring up trouble in the capital markets.
In 2015 and 2016, Shanda successively invested in Legg Mason Group, one of the world's largest asset management companies, Sotheby's, a global auction house giant, Lending Club, an online loan company, and Community Health Systems, one of the largest hospital operators in the United States, becoming a well-known capital predator.
At present, ** has built a grand system empire. According to the enterprise investigation, the actual control of 45 enterprises, most of which are involved in financial investment and asset management, and a small number of them are IT, real estate and other industries.
In this way, through the investment map all over the world, for more than 20 years, the first couple has firmly grasped the huge wealth through multiple rounds of economic cycles, and has become an "old face" that has never fallen in the Hurun Report.
In 2023, the ** couple will rank 77th in the "Hurun Report" with a net worth of 53 billion yuan, an increase of ten places year-on-year, more than the net worth of Yang Huiyan family, Wang Jianlin family, Zhu Mengyi family and other domestic old real estate families.
It's a touching story. How many of China's former richest men have been annihilated in the dust and smoke of history, but *** has been able to successfully allocate assets on a global scale and look at the situation with a smile.
Also once the richest man in China, Yang Guoqiang, Wang Jianlin and Xu Jiayin have not escaped the crushing of the cycle.
In 2007, Country Garden went public, telling the story of China's largest landlord, and then Country Garden sank all the way, and even went to China's remote towns to develop real estate, until the current round of real estate adjustment, and Country Garden, which had persisted for more than two years, still defaulted.
Wang Jianlin sits on more than 400 Wanda Plazas, but he has twice broken his arm to survive, and is still running for listing and financing. In order to repay his debts, many Wanda Plazas under his name have changed hands.
Xu Jiayin is even more because of Evergrande 17 trillion debts and was held accountable and imprisoned. Those who followed him and got close to him were not spared, and the executives of the Evergrande Department who were taken away one after another included Ke Peng, Liu Yongzhuo and others.
Land and real estate are the oldest wealth of mankind and the natural collateral for various derivative assets. However, the ** of real estate and land is by no means forever**, but there are also ups and downs and cycles, such as the Hong Kong property market after 97 years, the Japanese real estate market after 90 years, and the current Chinese property market in 08 years, all of which are experiencing a process of de-bubble.
Nowadays, the Chinese real estate market that has been hit hard, as well as the predators who are active in this market, have tasted the taste of the fall and feel the pain of the cycle, and the super-rich like ***, who have already allocated real estate and land assets around the world, have lived themselves as "old money".
From the richest man in China to falling, transforming, going to sea, and then becoming a big landowner in the United States, ** deduced the legend of an individual in this era.
From the game "Legend" to living a legend, the life of ** is destined to be irreproducible.
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