A few days ago, Zhang Yuliang, chairman of Greenland, was reported.
The whistleblowers, 24 former employees and employees of Greenland's Central Plains Division, wrote a whistleblower letter saying that they had been harmed by Greenland's forced fundraising. Up to now, except for the statement of "proper handling" of the green space, there is no follow-up to the incident.
What makes these employees dissatisfied is a "rich plan" proposed by Greenland in 2019. At the heart of the plan was the requirement for all management cadres to buy a specified amount of company shares, including these 24 people. In the end, they needed to buy a total of about 6.98 million Greenland shares, and the first of these shares was Greenland's employee stock ownership platform - Greenland.
Employee stock ownership is a good thing, and it can share the fruits of enterprise development. Of course, if you have to pay for the shares yourself, and it is almost compulsory, the mood will be greatly reduced.
According to the whistleblower letter, they relied mainly on loans provided by Greenland to 266 shares of *** corresponding shares. According to the regulations, there are 4 trading opportunities per year for shares in the ESOP platform, and in the first three quarters of 2020 and 2021, the trading** has been stable at 27 yuan shares. However, when they later wanted to trade shares and get their investment money back, they found that the trade** had been reduced to 1 yuan share.
Interestingly, at the beginning of 2023, Greenland also notified the shareholding employees that they could pay 10% of the 3 yuan share in three installments. But until the beginning of this year, it was not paid.
Now the employees are gone.
On the report letter, Zhang Yuliang's name is prominently listed. He is 68 years old and has been the leader of the company for more than 30 years. A few years ago, Zhang Yuliang's retirement was once brought up to say that because Greenland was restructured from state-owned assets, and now there are major state-owned shareholders holding shares, according to the regulations of state-owned enterprise executives, Zhang should have retired a long time ago, but he is still in the front line of management.
In the real estate industry, the presence of green space is not so prominent, and in comparison, Zhang Yuliang is not as high-profile as other real estate tycoons. Greenland was founded in 1992, when the relevant departments of Shanghai raised 20 million yuan to form Shanghai Greenland Corporation in order to improve the urban environment of Shanghai. The first general manager of the company was Zhang Yuliang, who was born in the system.
Although it has a state-owned background, Greenland is self-financing and takes a market-oriented path. Under the operation of Zhang Yuliang, Greenland made its fortune by undertaking the renovation of Shanghai's old city and entered the real estate market. By 1997, Greenland had become one of the leading real estate companies in Shanghai.
When it comes to employee stock ownership, Greenland has been carried out very early. In 1997, Zhang Yuliang introduced this mechanism in order to attract and retain talents and improve vitality. In the end, Greenland employees will take about 18% of the shares, and the rest will remain in the hands of state-owned assets. By 2003, in the context of the restructuring of state-owned enterprises, Greenland Employee Shareholding Association received 59% of the shares and became the company's largest shareholder.
In the following ten years, Greenland's equity was still pulled between state-owned assets and employee stock ownership associations. Before Greenland introduced social capital in 2013, the state-owned equity ratio had an absolute upper hand.
In 2015, Greenland was listed on the A-share market through backdoor trading, and Zhang Yuliang, who has a soft spot for employee stock ownership, has become a big winner this time. At the same time as the listing, Greenland completed the mixed-ownership reform, forming a tripartite shareholding structure of state-owned assets, employee shareholdings and social capital. In addition, Greenland, the above-mentioned employee shareholding platform, has become the largest shareholder of Greenland, holding about 29% of the shares. On behalf of state-owned assets, there are two local state-owned enterprises in Shanghai, and each of them has a shareholding ratio that is not as good as Greenland. It is worth mentioning that the two state-owned enterprises claim to be financial investments, but do not actually intervene in the daily operation of Greenland, and the two parties are not acting in concert. In this way, Greenland has a considerable right to speak, and standing behind it is the employee stock ownership representative headed by Zhang Yuliang.
Since then, Greenland has become a company with no controlling shareholder and no actual controller, and the management is actually responsible.
In the past, green space had a nickname in the industry, called "red roof" green space. It has something to do with its origins. However, in terms of mechanism, Greenland is much more flexible than traditional state-owned enterprises, and Zhang Yuliang regards employee stock ownership as a magic weapon for Greenland's rise, which is a point he is very proud of. In fact, when the first implementation of the staff did not cooperate, at that time had to stipulate that all middle-level cadres or high-level cadres must invest a certain amount of shares, otherwise they will be dismissed.
The current situation of Greenland is somewhat similar to that of Vanke. After the Baowan dispute that year, Guowei Railway became the largest shareholder of Vanke, accounting for no more than 30%. Vanke's employee shareholding platform, Ying'an Partnership, is also one of the major shareholders. In fact, Vanke is also a company without a controlling shareholder or actual controller, and a typical mixed-ownership real estate enterprise. The management, headed by Yu Liang, has the actual power to run the company. Ten years ago, Zhang Yuliang's challenge goal at that time was Vanke, and he briefly surpassed it around 2015. The difference is that Zhang Yuliang does not have another Wang Shi on his head, and he completely dominates the expansion path of Greenland.
In terms of the scale of real estate sales, Greenland, which briefly surpassed Vanke, has been declining year by year. At the same time, Zhang Yuliang's obsession with diversity is getting deeper and deeper. In addition to real estate, Greenland is also involved in infrastructure, finance, consumption, automobiles and property, and even within the real estate business, the proportion of commercial real estate has risen for a time. Although the stall is large, except for the revenue contributed by the infrastructure sector, the rest of the business seems to be not loud. On the other hand, the sales gap between Greenland and the leading real estate enterprises in the main real estate industry is getting wider and wider.
An important reason given by Greenland for this public report is related to the downturn in real estate. The general environment has changed, and the "reform practice" of employee stock ownership naturally has to change with it. In fact, Greenland has not had a good time in recent years. In 2022, Greenland had a liquidity crisis, when a trust loan of 1 billion yuan was overdue. Later, Greenland rolled over a number of overseas debts and barely got through. In terms of market capitalization, when Greenland was listed, it rushed to 300 billion, but now it has shrunk to one-tenth.
It's just that compared with several more miserable top bosses, Zhang Yuliang's situation has not attracted so much attention.
At the beginning of last year, Zhang Yuliang finally mentioned a buzzword in the business world - asset-light. He said that asset-light will be one of the core strategies of greenfield transformation and the development direction in the next few years. It seems that the bigwigs have become very pragmatic, and the scale of the pile, ranking grabbing, and territory puzzle in the early years have been replaced by today's ** focus, even if it is the red top.
How long Zhang Yuliang can work is unknown. He once compared himself with Dong Mingzhu, Gree is also similar from state-owned assets to mixed reform, Dong Mingzhu can still do it, why can't I do it? In the past many years, Greenland has reaped the dividends of restructuring, and Zhang Yuliang has also changed from an unknown cadre in the system to a wealthy man whose net worth has skyrocketed. Now, Greenland is indeed inseparable from this banner, but after this report of the turmoil, Zhang Yuliang may weigh the move of employee stock ownership.