Wenruisi.com.Because of a land transaction in 2015, the former "godfather of online games"** became the second largest foreign "landlord" in the United States.
According to the latest 2024 "Top 100 Landowners" list in the United States released by Land Report magazine, ** has 19With 80,000 acres of land, it ranks 82nd, making it the second-largest non-U.S. citizen in the U.S., behind the sixth-ranked Canadian Irving family.
With the opening of the forest land investment business, ** and its grand real estate investment map have also resurfaced.
Invest in U.S. woodlandsWhat directly sent *** to the list was a land transaction that was completed as early as 2015. At that time, ** acquired about 800 square kilometers of woodland in Oregon from Fidelity National Financial Ventures for $85 million.
Although the deal was completed eight years earlier, it wasn't until December 2023 that Oregon tax records revealed that the beneficiary of the deal was Shanda Asset Management, which shares the same name as the holding group in Singapore.
According to the data, the most valuable part of the woodland is the "Bull Springs Skyline Forest", adjacent to the Deschutes National Forest in central Oregon and just minutes away from the emerging mountain town of Bend, with a land area of 32,995 acres, accounting for 20% of the total land area in Oregon. It belongs to Crown Pacific Real Estate, a subsidiary of Shanda.
It is understood that since the acquisition, Bull Springs Skyline Forest's ** has soared to 1US$2.7 billion (US$3,800 per acre), although it has fallen back to US$95 million (US$2,800 per acre), if it is currently listed, its proceeds will be enough to cover the full cost of acquiring all the assets of Shanda's Crown Pacific Properties.
According to Shanda's official website, in addition to Oregon in the United States, ** also has forest land assets in Ontario, Canada, with a total land area of 700,000 acres, becoming one of the largest forest land owners in North America. According to public information, ** owns about 500,000 acres (about 2,000 square kilometers) of forest land in Ontario, Canada.
Timberland investment has become a new boom in real estate investment in recent years, with many ultra-wealthy investors looking to hedge against inflation and buy real estate to turn to farmland and other rural properties. This has also further pushed the tide of agricultural land in the United States** to rise. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average value of arable land in the U.S. in 2023 is 81%, which has been more than a third since 2020.
In addition to their timberland investment, the couple have purchased a number of landmark properties in the United States. Among them, in 2018, it spent $39 million to purchase the Vander Bildt Building on East 69th Street in Manhattan. Then, in 2021, he bought the Seeley Mudd Estate in the suburbs of Los Angeles for $25 million.
The purchase of Seely Mulder Manor is somewhat related to ***'s dedication to the field of brain science in recent years. In early December 2016, the company announced the establishment of a $1 billion program to support brain science research, with the first donation to the California Institute of Technology in the United States1$1.5 billion for basic brain research.
Built in 1934, the Seeley Mulder Estate has been the residence of the president of the University of Southern California for nearly 40 years. From the Seeley Mulder estate, the couple has easy access to their Tianqiao and Christsy Chen Institute (TCCI) at Caltech.
Just past December 2023, Tianqiao Brain Science Research Institute officially announced that it would invest an additional 1 billion yuan in "artificial intelligence (AI) + brain science".
Left hand science and technology, right hand real estateFrom the above dynamics, it is not difficult to see the investment areas and preferences of *** and Shanda today.
Nowadays, although Shanda's official website has opened a special section to introduce its brilliant achievements in the interactive entertainment sector, it is clear that "investment" is Shanda's core business, which mainly includes public market investment, venture capital, real estate investment, etc. No matter what field it is, becoming a "king maker" is an important goal for Shanda at present.
However, compared with its past achievements in the Internet industry, Shanda's development performance in the investment field is relatively low-key.
In terms of public market investments, equity investments are the mainstay, with companies in which Shanda currently has a stake include Lending Club (NYSE: LC), Community Health Systems (NYSE: CYH), Sotheby's (NYSE: BID) and Legg Mason (NYSE: LM).
In terms of venture capital, Shanda has invested in 67 early-stage ventures** under 40 general partners, mainly in areas such as gene editing, robotics, anti-aging and brain-related science and technology, as well as AI technology.
In terms of real estate investment, it focuses on the investment and operation management of domestic and foreign science and technology innovation parks and commercial office buildings, and its current business covers Shanghai in China, Silicon Valley in the United States, Tokyo in Japan and other regions, with a total area of nearly one million square meters and an asset valuation of nearly 10 billion yuan.
Despite the relocation of Shanda's headquarters to Singapore with the delisting of Shanda Games, China remains one of Shanda's core markets. In China, Shanda focuses on only two things: investment in the science and technology industry and the operation of science and technology innovation parks.
Shanda Capital is the core sector of Shanda (China)'s investment in science and technology innovation industries, and has invested in 156 innovation and entrepreneurship projects so far, with an annualized investment return of more than 40%. It mainly focuses on early-stage entrepreneurial project investment in the fields of TMT, artificial intelligence and financial technology, including starting point Chinese network, winger game, ink weather, entrepreneur, delicious and so on.
It is understood that Shanda Capital is currently managing 5 branches, namely Android**, Youjia**, Culture**, Dark Horse** and Internet Finance**. At the same time, a new phase of venture capital** is being raised.
The operation of Shanda Science and Technology Innovation Park is handled by Shanda Tiandi Asset Management. It is understood that Shanda Tiandi Asset Management has a total of 10 projects under management, and a total of 6 projects are currently under management, of which four are located in Shanghai, China. Yuanchuang Valley, Shandatiandi Global R&D Center, Shandatiandi Shengchuang Center, Shandatiandi Shengmao Center, and the other two are Karuizawa in Japan and Evergreen Center in Silicon Valley in the United States.
From the perspective of project distribution and business layout, the development of Shanda Tiandi today does not follow the planning path of the year.
In 2013, Shanda, which has been immersed in the Internet industry for 14 years, officially announced its entry into real estate and created an innovative model of "Shanda World". At that time, Shanda intended to promote the "Shanda Tiandi" model to first- and second-tier cities, and was ready to expand overseas (European and American markets).
As for why Shanda has slowed down the pace of real estate investment, it is not yet known why. The market speculates that Shandatiandi, as an industrial park operator, must at least have land, capital and industrial resources if it wants to replicate quickly, and all three are indispensable, but obviously, there are not many cities and projects that can meet the above three requirements, which also restricts the development of Shandatiandi.
In addition, in recent years, China's real estate market has continued to face regulation and has continued to enter the deep water area, and it may be a good thing to slow down for *** and Shanda, which are extremely sensitive to risks.
The cultural and creative industries are ebbingIt is understood that as early as 2008, Shanda began to form a team to enter the first real estate market layout. Within Shanda, its business is mainly divided into content platforms (such as games, ** and literature, etc.), channel platforms (such as Shengpay, advertising, Youyou, cloud computing, etc.) and capital platforms. Shandatiandi is a content platform.
Since then, Shanda has tried to intervene in the real estate market by using tourism as a breakthrough and building a game theme park. But in the end, Shandatiandi was required to focus on "cultural and creative city community development and operation".
The real force was in 2013, and "Shanda Tiandi" became the core subject of Shanda's entry into real estate.
According to the best plan, in Shandatiandi, the virtual and real worlds will be connected to realize "virtual world reality" and "real world virtualization", and Shanda will provide corresponding support in cloud computing, big data, payment, advertising, customer service, etc., and turn Shandatiandi into an ecosystem.
This idea, even today, is a rather "advanced" operational concept, and the biggest difficulty lies in the implementation.
"Shanda Tiandi - Youth" is the first work of Shanda Tiandi, located in Zhangjiang South District, Pudong, Shanghai. With a total construction area of 700,000 square meters, the project will not only provide commercial, residential and related infrastructure, but also "build a new comprehensive ecosystem of cultural and creative industries" around the needs of young cultural and creative talents and teams in entrepreneurship, creativity, work, life and entertainment.
According to the plan, all cultural and creative enterprises under Shanda Group, upstream and downstream of the industrial chain and other related cultural backbone enterprises, innovative and innovative creative and Internet small and micro enterprises, entrepreneurial teams and studios will all settle in "Shanda World".
With the completion of Shanda Tiandi, Shanda's headquarters has also moved to the relevant building.
We hope to shape this place into a gathering area for Internet, technology, media and culture-related industries, especially to create an ideal incubation space and acceleration platform for small and micro creative entrepreneurial teams and studios. At that time, Fu Xiaojun, then president of Shanda Tiandi Company, once said. It is reported that the park also contains a commercial and entertainment complex of nearly 100,000 square meters.
From the virtual to the real, Shanda's ideas still revolve around interactive entertainment. At that time, there was a market view that the creation of Shanda Tiandi was an extension of Shanda's layout in space, and it also opened up a new outlet for Shanda's content resources. In 2010, Shanda planned a new industrial base in Zhangjiang, Shanghai, called "Rainbow City", which was also based on the same purpose.
However, the follow-up Shanda Games came to an abrupt end, and Shanda Network gradually lost its advantages in the whole industry chain in cultural content, which also led to Shanda World entering the throes of transformation.
From the current projects in operation of Shanda Tiandi, it is not difficult to see that brain science, artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing, biomedicine, integrated circuits, etc. are the main business formats, and there is no longer the shadow related to interactive entertainment.