Zhang Xin, right, speaks as Pan Shiyi looks on during a news conference in Hong Kong in 2016. … [+]
Soho China, one of China’s largest and best-known real estate developers, said today co-founding billionaire couple Pan Shiyi and Zhang Xin have stepped down from their leadership roles as chairman and CEO “in order to focus on supporting the arts and philanthropic pursuits.”
Soho said Huang Jingsheng, an independent non-executive director, had been appointed as non-executive chairman effective today, replacing Pan. Xu Jin and Qian Ting, long-time executives, would become co-CEOs, succeeding Zhang.
The moves come after U.S. investment firm Blackstone Group offered to buy a majority of the Beijing-headquartered company in a transaction worth $3 billion last year. The purchase later fizzled on “a lack of progress.”
Blackstone had offered HK$5 a share; Soho China closed at HK$1.36 yesterday. Shares shot up by nearly 10% today at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange after the new leaders were announced.
Pan and Zhang will remain on the board as executive directors.
The high-profile changes at Soho China come as China’s economy faces slowing economic growth in connection with the Covid-19 pandemic and heightened geopolitical tension between China and the United States under current Communist Party leader Xi Jinping. China’s real estate industry faces years of stress following overbuilding and debt that have cut heavily into the fortunes of the country’s richest property developers.
Xi, who is seen as seeking a third term as the party’s most powerful figure this year, has also promoted “common prosperity” in a push to narrow an income gap between rich and poor in the world’s most populous nation. China, currently the world’s No. 2 economy, is home to the world’s second-largest number of billionaires after the United States.
Founded in 1995, Soho China as of last year owned approximately 1.3 million square meters of real estate, largely in Shanghai and Beijing. Distinctive projects with architect Zaha Hadid, who died in 2016, helped to put the couple on the global real estate map.
Pan and Zhang are worth a combined $2.8 billion on the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List today.
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