with the back-door listing made possible by being a majority shareholder of a listed company known as maanshan dingtai rare earth & new materials co. ltd., sf express took a leap forward as shenzhen's express delivery giant as it entered the shenzhen stock market thursday.
now that sf express is a majority shareholder, maanshan dingtai rare earth & new materials co. ltd. will change its name to s.f. holding co. ltd. on friday, but will maintain the original stock code, according to souhu.com.
a news report by the shenzhen economic daily estimated that the personal fortune of wang wei, founder of sf express, will exceed 100 billion yuan (us$14.56 billion) after his company's listing.
last year was a significant period for sf express, as wang made it onto forbes' list of tycoons in october, ranked among the top five on the chinese mainland.
wang surprisingly jumped from 32nd place on the 2015 list to fourth place last year with a total fortune of us$18.5 billion, following pony ma, cofounder and ceo of tencent.
according to cyzone.cn, a magazine focusing on entrepreneurship and startups, jack ma, ceo of alibaba, most admired wang's extraordinary competence in managing the 70,000 staff members at sf express.
wang originally comes from shanghai and has only a high school degree. he came to guangdong province in 1993 at the age of 22 and started doing business in dyeing and printing in shunde.
while working in shunde, wang noticed that the cities around the pearl river delta region were in great need of products and goods exported from hong kong, which made him wonder if the “delivery business” could offer him business opportunities.
wang borrowed 100,000 yuan from his father as the initial capital to found the company named sf and rented an office in hong kong.
with the huge demand for delivery services, wang rapidly set up branches and delivery locations all across guangdong.
at the beginning of the booming age of logistics, setting up delivery locations was fundamental for express companies to expand their "territory."
in only a few years, sf express had rapidly expanded and basically gained control over all express deliveries to and from hong kong by 1997.
however, since every branch company was responsible for its own business as a separately registered company, these branches appeared to be uncontrollable in 1998 and some even became involved in smuggling.
thus, wang started to reclaim his authority over the branch companies in 1999 and successfully turned the franchise system into a direct sales model. the ceo then moved the headquarters to shenzhen in 2002.
wang managed to seize another opportunity to expand in 2003 when china's aviation industry was fatally stricken by sars.
