Wanhua Industrial Group Co., Ltd. is a Chinese holding company. It was the parent company of Wanhua Chemical Group and BorsodChem until 2018. Yantai Municipal People's Government, via Yantai Guofeng, still owned 39.497% stake of the company as of 2017. The government also sold 25% stake of the company to a consortium of Pemex and Deutsche Bank in 2007.
History
Predecessors
Yantai synthetic leather factory
The predecessor of Wanhua Group Corporation, was Yantai synthetic leather factory ( or ). The plan to build the factory was approved by the in 1978. The construction started in 1980 and completed in 1983. The manufacturing technology was imported from Japan (from according to C&EN) and was the first synthetic polyurethane leather factory of China.
In 1988, the ownership of the factory was transferred from the to the Yantai Municipal People's Government.
Wanhua Group Corporation
In 1995, the factory was re-incorporated as a limited company as , or in short, Wanhua Group Corporation ().
In 1998, a subsidiary Yantai Wanhua Polyurethane (now Wanhua Chemical Group) was formed. The subsidiary owned the methylene diphenyl diisocyanate production line of the factory. However, Wanhua Group Corporation retained several production line such as the supply chain of liquid chlorine, sodium hydroxide, pure water, steam vapour and electricity. The subsidiary became a listed company in January 2001.
In October 2001, Wanhua Group Corporation formed another subsidiary Wanhua Industrial Group (see section below). In 2015, 39.497% shares of Wanhua Industrial Group was transferred from Wanhua Group Corporation to its parent State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) of the Yantai Municipal People's Government, making Wanhua Group Corporation and Wanhua Industrial Group were sister companies.
As of 2019, Wanhua Group is a live company. It owned the shares of Yantai Wanhua Hospital as well as other assets.
Wanhua Industrial Group
Foundation and privatization
In October 2001, Wanhua Group Corporation formed another subsidiary Wanhua Industrial Group (founded as , known as since 2008) as part of a debt-to-equity swap. Central Government owned bad banks managers China Huarong () and China Cinda () were the minority shareholders. Cinda and Huarong later sold the shares of Wanhua Industrial Group.
According to the company itself, Wanhua Group Corporation injected all the assets to Wanhua Industrial Group at the time of the debt-to-equity swap, which including the shares of Yantai Wanhua Polyurethane, Yantai Huali (), Wanhua Microfiber (), etc.
Wanhua Industrial Group was the direct parent company of the listed company Yantai Wanhua Polyurethane since 2001 and effective in March 2003. Wanhua Industrial Group still owned 47.92% shares of the listed company as of 31 December 2017, before another company shake up in January 2018.
Yantai Huali was a combined steam and electric power supplier of the listed company.
In 2007, the Yantai city-owned Wanhua Group Corporation sold a further 25% stake of Wanhua Industrial Group to a consortium of Pemex, Deutsche Bank and one other investor. After the deal, as of 2007, Wanhua Group Corporation owned 50.50% shares of Wanhua Industrial Group, the aforementioned consortium, via a BVI company Prime Partner International Limited, owned 25%, and the rest (24.58%) was owned by Yantai Huali.
By 2005, Yantai Huali was significantly (37.60%) owned by Wanhua Industrial Group. It was followed by Wanhua Group Corporation for 31.94% shares as well as employee stock ownership for the rest of the shares. But since December 2006, Yantai Huali was majority owned by the managers of the listed company. Yantai Huali acquired 15.04% shares of Wanhua Industrial Group from Huarong in 2005 and 9.54% shares from Cinda in 2006. The change in ownership of Yantai Huali, as well as acquiring the shares of Wanhua Industrial Group, was considered as an indirect employee stock ownership of the listed company.
In 2013, Wanhua Industrial Group recapitalized another RMB4 billion and diluting the stake of the existing shareholders.
BorsodChem acquisition
Wanhua Industrial Group was interested to buy Hungarian company BorsodChem in the late 2000s. By 2009, Wanhua Industrial Group already acquired about two-thirds of mezzanine capital of the BorsodChem.