Type Private Website www.shanda.com Founded 1999 Number of employees 50 | Industry Investment Management Founder Chen Tianqiao Headquarters Shanghai, China Parent organization Shanda Group Limited | |
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Key people Tianqiao Chen, Chrissy Luo, Robert Chiu Subsidiaries Eyedentity Games, Ku6 Media Video games The Legend of Mir 2, Crazy Arcade, La Tale, Dragon Quest X, Dragon Nest | ||
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Shanda Group (Chinese: 盛大集团 pinyin Shèngdà jítuán) is a privately-owned global investment company with its global headquarters in Singapore. The company invests across a variety of asset classes including venture capital, private equity, public markets and real estate with a primary focus on the financial services, technology, healthcare and real estate sectors.
Contents
History
Origins
Shanda was first established in December 1999 [1] by husband and wife Tianqiao Chen and Chrissy Luo, together with Danian Chen, as an online games company Shanda Interactive Entertainment Limited with an initial investment of approximately US$50,000 [2].
1999-2005
Between 1999 and 2005, Shanda Interactive Entertainment Limited led the development and growth of the online games industry in China, pioneering the free-to-pay model that has since become the worldwide industry standard. Alongside the growth in its games business, Shanda also expanded into other areas including online literature, online video, third party payment and cloud computing.
The company enjoyed considerable success, attracting investment from the likes of Softbank, and eventually conducted a successful IPO on the NASDAQ (where it traded as SNDA) becoming the first Chinese online games company to be listed in the United States and the largest internet company in China by market capitalization.
2005 - 2011
Between 2005 and 2011, Shanda continued its focus on the media and technology sectors, investing in companies including internet portal Sina.com [3], video company Ku6.com, and others. It also incorporated online literature company, Cloudary Corporation, creating the world’s largest Chinese- language original content platform.
In 2009, Shanda Games (GAME) was spun off from Shanda Interactive Entertainment Limited via an IPO [4], in what was the largest ever U.S. IPO of a Chinese private sector company at the time.
2011 - 2015
From 2011 onwards, Shanda increasingly began focusing on investments, with the establishment of Shanda Capital in 2011 for venture capital investments in China and Shanda World in 2012 for real estate development, operations and investments.
In 2012, the founders privatized Shanda Interactive Entertainment Limited (SNDA)[5][6], marking the then largest take-private transaction of a US-listed Chinese company, and later in the same year, relocated its its global headquarters from China to Singapore.
Between 2013 and 2014, Shanda began monetizing its major operating assets, which included the sale of Cloudary Corporation to Tencent [7][8], and its remaining stake in Shanda Games (GAME) to Ningxia Zhongyin Cashmere International Group and Yili Shengda Investment Holdings [9].
As of 2015, the company was one of the largest land owners in North America with over 700,000 acres of timberland in the United States and Canada.
2016 onwards
Over the course of 2016, Shanda undertook a number of significant investments in publicly listed companies, becoming the single largest shareholder in Community Health Systems Inc (NYSE: CYH), LendingClub Corporation (NYSE: LC), and Legg Mason Inc. (NYSE: LM).
Philanthropy
In November 2016, Tianqiao Chen and Chrissy Luo announced the establishment of the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute. The institute, which will receive an initial investment of US$1 billion from its founders, aims to take an interdisciplinary approach to support brain research and will bring together global university and research institutions to focus on brain discovery, brain treatment, and brain development.