Internal research regarding Chinese M&A

The data is based on that published by EY, Ginkgo
Tree Advisors, and PwC as described above, plus our own
research. We recorded a total of 99 companies in which
Chinese investors acquired an ownership interest between
2014 and October 2016, as verified with publicly available
information such as business, industry, or press releases.

In addition to aspects such as target company, buying organi –
zation, industry, level of participation, and company value,
we checked the ownership and control rights given to the
Chinese investors. (For a detailed explanation of the own-
ership and control rights of Chinese enterprises, cf. Szepan
2016: 198-222. )

However, it was not always easy to classify transactions
clearly in terms of ownership type. The underlying defini –
tion of “state” or “private” refers to companies in which
state (j ingnei guoyou faren) or non-state investors (fei –
guoyou faren) hold more than 50 percent of the owner-
ship and control rights. This can be seen in listed compa-
nies on the basis of annual reports, some of which are only
available in Chinese.

Chinese private companies sometimes
refer to themselves as such (minying qiye). Each year, the
All -China Federation of Industry and Commerce (ACFIC)
also publishes China Top 500 Private Enterprises (ACFIC,
25. 8. 2016). There are also special awards for private enter-
prises and private entrepreneurs in China. This publicly
available information helps to determine who actually
owns and controls the Chinese investors. However, state-owned
enterprises may have ownership interests in maj ority-pri –
vate companies; it can therefore be assumed that there is at
least some state capital in play in their investments, too.

A separate category named “state-owned (SASAC) ” includes
companies and their subsidiaries that are controlled by the
State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Com-
mission (SASAC) , which means that they are owned directly
by the Chinese central government (so-called Yangqi). The
SASAC lists these companies on its website. There were a
total of 103 Yangqi in August 2016 (SASAC, 3. 8. 2016).

Internal research was unable to turn up any information about the
ownership structures of some Chinese investors, however.
These fall into the “n/a” category.