Wanda Group

Wanda Group, or the Dalian Wanda Group, is a Chinese multinational conglomerate founded in Dalian, Liaoning and headquartered in Beijing. It is a private property developer and owner of Wanda Cinemas and the Hoyts Group. With investments within Mainland China and globally, the Dalian Wanda group has investments across many industries including construction, entertainment, media, industrial manufacturing, financial services, high technology, hospitality, real estate, retail, healthcare, and sports. It ranked 380th on the Fortune Global 500 List in 2017. Also in 2017, its assets amounted to 700 billion yuan and an annual revenue 227.4 billion yuan ($35.29 billion). Wanda Cultural Industry Group is one of China's cultural enterprises, includes movie theaters as well as sports and film production assets, and contributed 28% or $10.85 billion to overall revenue. Wanda Group ranks 28th on the 2020 China Top 500 Private Enterprises List. History The company was founded in Dalian, Liaoning, in 1988 as a residential real estate company by businessman Wang Jianlin. Incorporated in 1992, the company was "one of the first shareholding companies in the People's Republic of China" after the economic reform. The company started to use the name "Wanda" since then. "Wàn" means ten thousand, and "Dá" means to reach or attain. In combination, the company's name is a slogan aspiring to be able to reach everything. Diversification push Since 2005, Dalian Wanda and other prominent Chinese real estate companies such as Evergrande have made numerous forays into "alternative, income-generating businesses away from the property market". The Financial Times noted that Dalian Wanda was the "most aggressive" company in pursuing this strategy, pointing to its 2012 acquisition of U.S. cinema chain AMC Theatres and 2013 purchase of British yachtmaker Sunseeker. It noted that it was also "building theme parks across China, and has a joint venture with Tencent and Baidu to set up an e-commerce platform".