Jingdong founder Liu Qiangdong's personal headline update stopped at 10:52 on Aug. 30, 2018.
One night after that, a night banquet featuring him, change turned him from high profile to silence. For 60 days, except for the initial appearance of the Jingdong Group "normal work" and the appearance of the British royal wedding in mid-October, Almost all important occasions and honors Liu Qiangdong were absent: 2018 WAIC(World Artificial Intelligence Conference) did not have him, Tianjin 2018 Summer Davos Forum did not have him, 40 years of reform and opening up private entrepreneurs without him.
2018 is a special year for Liu Qiangdong. This year he is 45 years old, Zhang Zetian 25 years old, Jingdong 20 years old. All this, because of Liu Qiangdong's silence and become silent.
01 "tough case"
It all came out of the blue.
On September 1, the first day of summer vacation, Chinese schoolchildren and their parents went to sleep with complicated feelings. They never dreamed that Liu Qiangdong had been arrest in the United States on suspicion of sexual invasion. As people denounced the opening of the first lesson, Liu Qiangdong was arrested, detonating public opinion, and saving CCTV from drooling.
For three consecutive days, Jingdong issued three statements, first claiming that the rumors were false; however, the restatement gave up the statement that "no wrongdoing was found"; A third statement, published only on Jingdong's official English website, admitted that Liu Qiangdong was suspected of sexual invasion, and said the day-to-day operations of Jingdong were unaffected.
On the morning of September 4, Liu Qiangdong signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Ruyi holding Group at Jingdong headquarters; in the afternoon, Liu Qiangdong attended the signing ceremony of the cooperation agreement between Changsha City government and Jingdong Group.
Liu Qiangdong shows up at Jingdong and Ruyi holding Group
Since then, Liu Qiangdong rarely seen in public, even absent in late September of the two heavyweight meetings.
On September 17, 2018, WAIC(World Artificial Intelligence Conference) opened in Shanghai, the Internet elites such as Ma Yun, Ma Huateng, Li Yanhong, Lei Jun and other stars gathered, the Jingdong side said Liu Qiangdong will be absent from the conference, but did not specify the specific reasons; September 18-20, Tianjin 2018 Summer Davos Forum, there is still no Liu Qiangdong figure, but in the beginning of the 2018 Winter Davos Forum, Liu Qiangdong with Zhang Zetian held a special meeting in Davos, English, banquet guests.
On Sept. 21, U. S. police said they had completed an initial investigation and received reports to investigate the detention of arrest, suspected of allowing bail by sexual invasion, to return to China without charge, and then referred the case to prosecutors. Us prosecutors say they have to review all the evidence before deciding whether to charge Liu Qiangdong.
So far, U. S. prosecutors have yet to make a "decision," calling it a "tricky case." The US prosecution did not say more about why it was tricky and how difficult it was.
The American media on the other side of the ocean are also paying attention to what happened to Liu Qiangdong that night.
At 10:36 US time on Nov. 2, Minnesota's biggest circulation newspaper, < Star Tribune >, published a report entitled "Ming University Student tells Police she begged the billionaire," I don't want to do that. " More details of the case came to light.
< Star Tribune > quoted sources as saying that the night of the incident, the female college student was asked to attend a dinner party and was drunk until she asked Liu Qiangdong to take a taxi home for her. The car came, but she didn't know it belonged to Liu Qiangdong. After she got into the car, Liu also got on the car. On the way, the girl realized that the car was not heading for her home. The girl asked to get out of the car, after "resistance", the girl returned to the car, and Liu Qiangdong made "physical contact" to him. "I begged him to stop, but she wouldn't listen."
The source said that at about 11 pm, the car was parked in the women's apartment building near Mingda. The girl got out of the car, Liu Qiangdong followed; the girl opened the door, Liu Qiangdong still followed. In the apartment, Liu Qiangdong told the girl that she could be like the former wife of the Chinese-born Australian media executive Rupert Murdoch, Wendi Deng Wendi. After a tear in the apartment, "I was sleeping by him," the girl later sent a message to her friend in Wechat.
Jingdong has yet to respond to the < Star Tribune] report, and Liu Qiangdong himself has lost his voice on social media for a long time. Caitlin Hurley, a spokesman for the University of Minnesota, declined to discuss the allegations, and U.S. prosecutors have yet to make a decision.
According to other media reports, Liu Qiangdong's lawyer, Jill Brisbois, said in a recent statement: "Richard insists on his innocence, cooperates fully with the investigation, was released by the police soon, and has no restrictions on his travel, nor has he been asked to bail."
"We believe that once a decision is made and all the evidence is disclosed to the public, his innocence will be apparent."
To this day, the case is still complicated.
02. "keep the clouds open and see the moon light."
The case did not come to an end, but the impact on the surrounding continued. Zhang Zetian should be the most tormented one.
More than half a month after the incident, there was speculation about Zhang Zetian's situation. On the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival on September 24, "Xiaotian" first spoke in Time line, "as long as the family is together, it is complete." Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! Only wish to keep the clouds open to see the moon ".
The case did not develop in the direction of "the clouds open and see the moon". On the same day, Reuters reported that the victim of Liu Qiangdong's case was publicly chatting with a friend's social app on the night of the incident. The content of the chat showed that Liu Qiangdong forced the victim to have sex with him and mentioned that he was very drunk. Liu Qiangdong started to touch her and other details in the car. Liu Qiangdong's lawyer, Jill,
Brisbois said the allegations were inconsistent with the evidence Liu wanted to disclose after the case was closed.
Zhu Jun's sexual harassment client @ string and her friends saw the Reuters report, "trembling with anger, too cruel, really cruel." Now, the Zhu Jun case has been heard.
In fact, Liu Qiangdong went to the United States with his wife and children, but Zhang Zetian was busy with other things in Boston. Although the booze office came back on the same day, he went straight back to the hotel to rest because he was tired of the boat car.
Since the marriage, the couple have been following each other, and there is no shortage of photos of Zhang Zetian looking at Liu Qiangdong with adoration on the Internet. On October 10, some netizens posted photos of suspected encounters between Liu Qiangdong and Zhang Zetian in the streets of London, and the two were dressed up for leisure. Liu Qiangdong tightly hugged the waist of her sister milk tea. This is Liu Qiangdong's case, the husband and wife are photographed in the same frame for the first time.
Two days later, Queen's granddaughter Princess Eugene married, Liu Qiangdong and his wife Zhang Zetian dressed up at the scene. "is she a princess of Japan?" said a British netizen who did not know her sister, milk tea, in a comment on live broadcast.
In Chinese netizens, Zhang Zetian is more beautiful than the Japanese princess, although Liu Qiangdong "don't know if she is beautiful." Zhang Zetian has a lot of photos of herself on her Instagram. Since the case of Liu Qiangdong, she has never updated her ins. again.
03 Jingdong's new action
"Ze Qiang" silence, Jingdong is groping.
In early 2018, Jingdong shares hit an all-time high of $50.68, opening a good start for Jingdong's full-year net profit of 2018 to become a full-time employee. In the first quarter of this year, Jingdong made a net profit of $one billion five hundred and twenty five million.
In a good situation, institutional investors in the sell-off Jingdong, Jingdong share price also plummeted.
In the second quarter of 2018, the number of Jingdong institutions reached 585, the highest in all years. In the third quarter, only 100 institutions owned Jingdong, with the total number of shares sharply reduced from six hundred and seventeen million six hundred and ninety nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine to twenty five million seven hundred and sixty five thousand and ten shares. The share-holding ratio plummeted from 21.64% to 0.90%; There are only 10 new institutions and only 24 additional institutions.
The biggest concern was Hillhouse's upswing. In June, Hillhouse, which has close ties to Jingdong, slashed its Jingdong stake by $600m in the quarter, while adding $900m to Alibaba, according to Gronghui.
Hillhouse, one of the main sources of capital for Jingdong's frenzied expansion, invested $300m in the early days of Jingdong to help it build its logistics, before persuading Tencent to give up its own ecommerce and set up a partnership between Jingdong and Tencent.
What did Jingdong do wrong? Apparently not because Jingdong CEO was suspected of sexual invasion. A fallback-style mistake is that Jingdong misjudged pinduoduo's strategy.
Jingdong, which advocates "consumption upgrades", does not see much of the "urban encircling the city". 36 Kr quoted a person close to Jingdong as saying that Liu Qiangdong had internally conveyed the attitude that: the fight is more than the flow of the strange technology, the core of retail is still the supply chain and logistics. Despite this, JD.com has launched a "Jingdong fight" that has little difference from the multi-multiple mode, but it has not tasted the "taste of the true fragrance", and many of them have already opened up a large sinking market by relying on "singularity and skill". .
On July 26, pinduoduo landed on NASDAQ at a price of $19. On the first day of the listing, pinduoduo jumped 40% to close all day, closing at $26.7, with a market capitalization of $35.1 billion, which is equivalent to 2 / 3 of Jingdong's then market capitalization.
It is not too late to mend the sheep. After all, Jingdong's core competitive advantage-supply chain and logistics health-is safe, but it's not realistic to reverse the 2018 downturn with "Jingdong version pinduoduo," and instead start thinking about something else and trying to do more.
Notably, Jingdong announced the launch of its personal express business. Jingdong began to build its own logistics system in 2007, "burn money" more than ten years, Jingdong logistics has now built a huge logistics network, with tens of thousands of people of the distribution staff scale, the basic advantages are obvious. The problem is that Jingdong logistics originally located in the B-end, now facing the "access department", Shunfeng's C-terminal market, whether to get a piece of the market is still an unknown; The good news is that the personal delivery industry is still growing, and it's not too late for Jingdong to get in touch with the personal delivery business.
For Jingdong, the personal express business is a "counterpart professional", while the second-hand housing business is a "cross-border". On October 22, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the launch of the real estate business by Jingdong, it was officially announced that it loved me to cooperate with my family to launch the second-hand housing business. Said in the future both sides will cooperate in second-hand housing, rental, long-term rental apartment and other areas of data sharing. Before that, Jingdong had reached a strategic partnership with Zhuge, a real estate intelligence search engine.
Against the backdrop of a sluggish housing market, the market potential of second-hand housing needs to be developed, and Jingdong does not want to miss the cake. But it remains to be seen whether this "bend" will become a profit growth point for Jingdong.
The most surprising thing is Jingdong's move into private equity.
China Foundation Association data show, a name named Jinghedu (Dongguan) equity investment management co., Ltd., caused concern in the industry, because of its behind the figure of Liu Qiangdong. Until then, Jingdong had invested mainly through its own investment companies, as well as through household investments controlled by Zhang Zetian.
According to Tianyan, the majority shareholder of the capital investment is Guangdong Metropolitan Liren Industrial Co., Ltd., with 3 million yuan, holding 60 percent of the shares, and one shareholder, Suqian Huiyuan Investment Management Co., Ltd., with a 20 percent stake. Suqian Huiyuan is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Jingdong, a subsidiary of Jingdong Group, with Liu Qiangdong as general manager.
So far, just completed the long-term record of Beijing has not yet released investment information.
There are only two months left in 2018. Will Liu Qiangdong's case further affect the future of Jingdong?