The man behind JD.com graduated from Yale with a net worth of 20.5 billion! There have been scandals with celebrities
Author丨City City Shen Miao
Editor丨Lao Na
Nearly a year later, the case of JD.com founder Liu Qiangdong is still fermenting. While people are paying attention to the case itself, they are also focusing on the history of the JD Group. There is an anecdote that has been circulated to this day: In 2010, Liu Qiangdong wanted to start self-operated logistics and wanted to raise US$75 million, but JD.com’s heavy assets The model is generally not recognized. At this time, a big boss stood up and said: "Either you don't invest, or you let me invest 300 million."
This big boss is Zhang Lei. On the 2019 Hurun Global Rich List, Zhang Lei’s personal net worth is 20.5 billion yuan.
Zhang Lei’s investment in JD.com allowed Liu Qiangdong to obtain precious financing and made himself famous.
300 million becomes 3.9 billion
Become famous in one battle
Zhang Lei, founder and CEO of Hillhouse Capital.
The story of Zhang Lei and Liu Qiangdong finally ended with Hillhouse investing US$255 million in JD.com.
Zhang Lei’s reason at the time was: “This is a business that requires money. If you don’t burn enough money, you won’t be able to see your core competitiveness in the logistics and supply chain systems.”
Four years later, JD.com was successfully listed on Nasdaq, and Zhang Lei’s US$300 million became US$3.9 billion.
Zhang Lei became famous in one battle. In fact, Zhang Lei’s investment vision has already shown his unique investment vision before JD.com.
After returning to China in 2005 to found Hillhouse Capital, Zhang Lei’s first investment was Tencent. At that time, Tencent had not long gone public, with a valuation of less than US$2 billion. Its most famous product was QQ. After conducting market research, Zhang Lei believed that social traffic would be the next direction, so he led Hillhouse Capital to start buying Tencent shares in large quantities. Today, Tencent has become Asia’s Internet giant with the highest market value, exceeding US$400 billion. Later, Zhang Lei once said: "Looking back now, I am surprised to find that Tencent stocks are so cheap."
Compared with "Internet celebrity" investors such as Shen Nanpeng and Xu Xiaoping, Zhang Lei is not well-known. But in fact, he currently holds more than 400 billion yuan worth of funds in his hands, and has invested in companies all over the world. His Hillhouse Capital has been compared with the top investment funds on Wall Street, and he himself is regarded as one of the few Chinese who have entered the mainstream level of the global capital pyramid.
2
The top scholar from a small town
Admitted to Renmin University to study at Yale
Zhang Lei was born in Zhumadian City, Henan Province in 1972. He is the top scorer in liberal arts in the college entrance examination in Henan Province and majored in international finance at Renmin University of China. He is a typical top scorer in a small town. Zhang Lei also has a senior brother from the same middle school: Shi Yigong.
Zhang Lei, a top student at Renmin University, later went to study at Yale University. Here, Zhang Lei obtained a master's degree in business administration and international relations. The name of his later company, Hillhouse Capital, comes from the idiom "lofty building", and its English name "HillHouse Capital" is taken from Yale University's HillHouse Avenue.
Yale gave Zhang Lei much more than just the experience of studying abroad and a degree. Here, he gained the favor of David Swenson, chief investment officer of Yale Fund, and was recruited by him to teach him various investment techniques. Svensson is a godfather figure in the American investment community. From then on, Zhang Lei began to lay the foundation for his own business in the future.
In 2005, Zhang Lei returned to China and founded Hillhouse Capital. Swenson allocated $20 million from the Yale Investment Fund to him as a starting fund, and later added an additional $10 million. Officially, this start-up capital allowed Zhang Lei to become an early investor in Tencent. To this day, Zhang Lei also says that the two people who have the greatest influence on his investment philosophy are Buffett and Svensson.
Popular searches due to tidbits
He once donated 300 million to the National People's Congress
The only time Zhang Lei, who has always been low-key, became a hot search was because of being an entertainment star.
In October 2017, a self-media in the entertainment industry broke the news that Peng Yuyan came out as gay, and the other party was Zhang Lei, the boss of Hillhouse Capital, a big boss in the domestic financial circle. Many so-called people in the financial circle broke the news with certainty, saying that the entire financial circle in Beijing had heard about it. As soon as the news came out, it immediately detonated the Internet and quickly became a trending topic on Weibo.
Then some self-media began to sort out whether there was any overlap between the two, and discovered that Peng Yuyan had endorsed advertisements for brands such as Blue Moon, a well-known laundry detergent brand, and Airbnb, the world's largest homestay rental community, and Adidas. Behind these well-known companies, there is Hillhouse Capital.
Peng Yuyan’s studio immediately stood up to refute the rumors, saying that it was purely fabricated and had been handed over to lawyers for processing. Peng Yuyan's agent also posted a clarification on WeChat: "The cost of spreading rumors is too low now. Give me half a dozen hairy crabs to calm the panic! If nothing else, just go to bed!"
Zhang Lei has nothing to do with this. Said that many people did know this low-key investment tycoon for the first time. Four months before this, Zhang Lei had just donated 300 million yuan to his alma mater, Renmin University of China, to establish the "Renmin University of China Gaoli Education Development Fund." In his speech, he said the passage that was later quoted many times to introduce Gaoling Capital -
"Have you ever used WeChat, ridden Mobike, or used Didi to take a ride? Have you bought anything on JD.com? These companies are all invested by Hillhouse”
If you want to explore more interesting capital stories, you can also follow the public account Shijie (ID: ishijie2018)