Boss pursuing his and China’s vision
Print Edition
CHINA National Chemical Corp (ChemChina) boss Ren Jianxin, the man behind China’s largest overseas bid, is in many ways a traditional industrial boss: a government background, Communist Party colors and a degree in chemical plant mechanics.
But Ren, 57, is also a different breed; a dapper executive in an open shirt, aggressively pursuing some of the world’s biggest names as he builds up a company he started in 1984 as an industrial cleaning venture with a 10,000 yuan (US$1,520 at today’s rates) government loan.
Yesterday, state-owned ChemChina made a US$43 billion bid for Swiss seeds and pesticides group Syngenta, the boldest overseas takeover move by a Chinese company.
For most outside China, Ren is the biggest dealmaker they may never have heard of. Now he is sealing ever larger deals in the pursuit of his vision, and China’s.
Only a year ago, Ren-led ChemChina spent US$8 billion for Italian tiremaker Pirelli. Last month, ChemChina led a consortium that agreed to pay about US$1 billion for German industrial equipment maker KraussMaffei.
“At ChemChina, we have seen a management team capable of doing deals. Ren and his team seem to have built a lot of political confidence in their ability to execute deals,” said Keith Pogson, Asia Pacific Financial Services Partner at consultants Ernst & Young.
Ren had his eye fixed on building a state chemicals powerhouse since the mid-1980s when, aged 26, he took a government loan to start a factory making industrial solvents.
From there, a startup that was technically state owned, he built up his company by absorbing financially stressed chemical plants that had been under the Ministry of Chemical Industry, which was dissolved in 1998. ChemChina was officially established in 2004.
It has kept that entrepreneurial trait. Ren has hired professional managers to operate his companies, winning ChemChina a reputation as China’s most international and market-oriented state-owned enterprise.
In large part, ChemChina’s relatively small size — just a tenth of that of domestic peer Sinopec Corp — and its less sensitive acquisition targets have allowed it to be selective, strategic and almost independent.
“We only target good companies,” Ren told journalists last year, following the Pirelli takeover, which took three years to negotiate.
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