The latest female second generation came to the stage.
Recently, Tongce Medical announced that the actual controller Lu Jianming will step down as chairman and will be replaced by general manager and financial director Wang Yi. At the same time, a young figure named Lu Zixuan emerged as the company's non-independent director.
The outside world may not know that Lu Zixuan, who was born in 1993, is the daughter of Lu Jianming, the actual controller of Tongce Medical. Her story is similar to that of most second-generation entrepreneurs. She was sent overseas by her father to study when she was young. After completing her studies, she returned and worked in a company owned by Tongce Medical for many years. This is her first time among the executives of a listed company.
Quietly, this scene is being staged intensively. More and more second-generation people born in the 1990s are coming to the forefront, involved in or taking the helm of listed companies with a market value of tens of billions or even hundreds of billions. Shi Wenling, chairman of Chunli Medical, who was born in 1998, and Li Side, Li Ka-shing’s post-90s granddaughter, are involved in the family business...
More and more new generations in China have taken over the scepter of their fathers and made their debut.
31 years old, she has just become a senior executive
Everything starts with her father, Lu Jianming.
Lv Jianming was born in Xinchang County, Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province in 1965. At the age of 19, he was admitted to the Chinese Department of Hangzhou University (now Zhejiang University) with a dream of becoming a writer. After graduation, Lu Jianming worked for the Zhejiang Provincial Disabled Persons' Federation for several years. At that time, the tide was booming. In 1995, he resigned from public office and established Zhejiang Tongce Real Estate Development Co., Ltd., earning his first pot of gold in his life. There is an episode in
: In 2005, Lu Jianming named his resort project located deep in the West Lake after his daughter Zixuan. In an interview, he once said that "Zixuan" means forget-me-not in Chinese culture, and that his daughter's happiness is the most precious thing to him.
later crossed over from real estate to medical care, which originated from an investment by Lu Jianming.
In 2006, Hangzhou Stomatological Hospital was restructured. It was the largest public dental hospital in Zhejiang at that time. Lu Jianming purchased 100% of the hospital's equity through his subsidiary Baoqun Industrial, with a transaction price of 102 million yuan.
Baoqun Industrial took over st Zhongyan in 2004. Afterwards, after asset reorganization, Hangzhou Stomatological Hospital was injected into a listed company, and st Zhongyan was renamed "Tongce Medical". Soon, 42-year-old Lu Jianming ushered in a bright moment, and the first listed company in China with medical services as its main business was born.
In addition to acquiring dental hospitals, Tongce Medical has also entered the fields of assisted reproduction and ophthalmology. After being listed for more than ten years, the company's market value once exceeded 100 billion yuan at its peak. However, amid concerns about "concentrated purchasing of dental implants" in 2021, Tongce Medical's stock price has fallen back, and its market value is now about 19 billion yuan.
joined the business world, and Lu Jianming never forgot to give back to his alma mater. Tongce Medical announced at the 120th anniversary of Zhejiang University in May 2017 that it would donate a total of 200 million yuan for 10 consecutive years to support the school's discipline construction and development. At the same time, Lu Jianming personally donated a number of precious ancient and famous trees to his alma mater.
At this donation ceremony, her 24-year-old daughter Lu Zixuan appeared. She received a bachelor's degree in economics and a master's degree in computer science from University College London.
After 2018, Lu Zixuan successively appeared in Tongce Group’s press releases as assistant to the president of Tongce Medical and assistant to the general manager of the financial business department. In addition to serving as a director of a listed company this time, she also serves as a director of Zhejiang Tongce Holding Group and Zhejiang Tongce Ophthalmology Investment Management Company.
At this point, this second-generation female born in the 1990s quietly walked to the stage.
The second generation of post-90s entrepreneurs has begun to appear
A group of post-90s successors are coming to China’s business world.
Let’s start with the pharmaceutical industry. The latest scene appeared this week. Zhendong Pharmaceutical issued an announcement stating that Li Anping resigned from many positions including chairman of the board due to personal reasons, and company director Li Kun served as chairman. It is worth noting that Li Kun is Li Anping’s son.
was born in 1990. Li Kun studied at Shanxi University as an undergraduate and later received a master's degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Since joining Zhendong Pharmaceutical, he has served as general manager of e-commerce, general manager of corporate marketing, and vice president of the company.
Another well-known "second generation drug" comes from Renhe Pharmaceutical.Yang Xiao, the son of Yang Wenlong, the actual controller of Renhe, was born in 1990. Before officially becoming the chairman of Renhe Pharmaceutical at the age of 32, he had been serving as a director and general health sales director in the company. Earlier, he had served as a director at the Institute of Philosophy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Postdoctoral workstation management position.
However, the controlling shareholder of Renhe Pharmaceutical is Renhe Group, the chairman is still Yang Wenlong, and Yang Xiao is the vice chairman of Renhe Group.
Shi Wenling took over as chairman of Chunli Medical from her father Shi Chunbao when she was 24 years old. According to the Beijing Business Daily, he was the youngest chairman of an A-share company at the time. According to the data, Shi Wenling, who was born in 1998, graduated from Ohio State University in the United States and worked in the user growth department of ByteDance.
The second generation born in the 1990s is no less impressive in the field of new energy. At the beginning of this month, Ganfeng Lithium Industry announced that it had appointed Li Chenglin and Wang Bin as vice presidents of Ganfeng Lithium Industry. Li Chenglin is the son of Li Liangbin, the actual controller and chairman of the company.
was born in 1996. Li Chenglin graduated from the University of Southern California with a major in economics. Starting in 2022, he joined Ganfeng Lithium Industry and served as manager of the company's investment department and assistant to the president. This position change is also seen as a signal to cultivate second-generation successors.
In addition, Li Ka-shing’s granddaughter born in the 1990s has also been involved in the family business. In June last year, Li Ka-shing’s granddaughter Li Side became the manager of the business development department of Cheung Kong Enterprises and participated in a 4 billion acquisition.
Born in Hong Kong, China in 1996, Li Side had grown up next to Li Ka-shing and later went to the UK to study. In 2017, Li Side returned from studying abroad. In the past few years, Li Side has successively joined the boards of directors of many important family companies such as the Li Ka-shing Foundation. Under Li Ka-shing's arrangements, he has gradually penetrated into the family's business territory.
In fact, there are many such cases like Septwolves Zhou Liyuan, Xtep Ding Jiamin, Holiland Luo Hao, Huayou Cobalt Chen Xiaojun, Shunhao Co., Ltd. Wang Yulin, Haichuan Intelligent Zheng Ying, Morningside Airlines Wu Xingyu... They have all completed their succession or frequently appear in important positions in the company. On occasions, the transfer of power is gradually realized.
Succession wave
Common problems for Chinese enterprises
This is a unique scene at the moment.
Since the average birth year of the founders of China’s top 100 family businesses was the late 1950s, the founding generation started their business in the 1980s and 1990s, and most of them are now in their 60s to 70s.
Therefore, family inheritance is faced by more and more companies. In traditional Chinese concepts, the hope that "a son will inherit his father's business" is often the first choice of many entrepreneurs.
This can be seen from the four major families in Hong Kong. Li Ka-shing, Kwok Desheng, Lee Shau-kee and Cheng Yu-tung have stepped back behind the scenes one after another. Without exception, their successors are all descendants of the family.
These second generations are often planned to have a relatively consistent growth path: they graduated from prestigious overseas schools in their early years and learned finance, management and other experience. After returning from school, he entered the family business and started at the grassroots level, moving through various business departments and gradually moving towards the center of power.
"It is easy to conquer a country, but difficult to defend it." Not every second-generation successor can smoothly overcome every hurdle. At the beginning of this year, Meibang Apparel announced that Zhou Chengjian’s daughter and Meibang Apparel chairman Hu Jiajia announced her resignation, and Zhou Chengjian was re-nominated as a director. When the company was in adversity, my father took over the reins again.
A survey by McKinsey shows that looking at family businesses around the world, the second-generation inheritance rate in Western countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States is only about 30%. By the third generation, the inheritance rate is even less than 15%. In fact, only a minority of the second generation can successfully complete the business inheritance. Their children are not suitable or unwilling to take over, which blocks the inheritance of most family businesses.
Then another option emerged: leaving the money to professionals to take care of it, thereby realizing the intergenerational inheritance of family wealth. As Zong Qinghou once expressed a point of view in an interview, "China's private enterprises will eventually be like developed countries. If the second generation is willing to take over, they will take over. If they are not willing to take over, professional managers will manage the company."
Chenyi Investment once According to a set of statistics, only 15% of unlisted family businesses are prepared for successors; more than half of listed family businesses have control transfers within 5 years of listing.Most family entrepreneurs decide to sell the business before retirement. In some mergers and acquisitions cases this year, some founders of their fathers finally decided to sell the company because it was difficult to find a successor. The wheel of the
era is rolling forward, and how to complete inheritance is becoming a required course for Chinese enterprises.
