PAG: The Hidden Investor Behind Xu Jiayin and Wang Jianlin
Shan Weijian, known as the "barbarian", is about to make another move.
On October 9, sources stated that PAG is conducting exclusive negotiations with the liquidators of China Evergrande to acquire a majority stake in Evergrande Property Services, and the two parties are already discussing the final terms.
This private equity giant, known as the "Little Blackstone of Asia", has made its latest move in the fragmented Chinese real estate market after seizing control of Wanda Commercial Management.
From Wang Jianlin's Wanda to Xu Jiayin's Evergrande, PAG has always stayed behind these fallen top richest individuals. This private equity firm does not operate physical industries, nor does it stand in the foreground. It only takes the most valuable assets at the worst time and at the cheapest price.
This time, what it has set its sights on is the only asset of the Evergrande system that can still be sold at a price.
From a Runner-Up to the Only Buyer
On October 9, the identity of the "only buyer" of Evergrande Property Services was finally revealed.
Market sources indicate that it is PAG that signed an exclusivity agreement with the liquidators of China Evergrande to launch exclusive negotiations for the acquisition of a 51.016% controlling stake in Evergrande Property Services.
Sources said that the two sides are currently negotiating the final terms, the negotiations are still ongoing, and it is uncertain whether the transaction can be reached. If the deal is completed, it will help increase the capital recovery rate for creditors of China Evergrande.
As of the close of trading that day, Evergrande Property Services closed at HK$1.205, with a market value of about HK$13 billion.
Looking back at this year-long "arduous search for a proper owner", PAG has actually always been a supporting role.
In January 2024, the High Court of Hong Kong issued an order to liquidate China Evergrande. In August 2025, the liquidators hired UBS and CITIC Securities to search for buyers; in September of the same year, Evergrande Property Services announced the launch of the sales process.
The first protagonist who really stepped to the front stage was Guangdong Tourism Control Group, a provincial state-owned enterprise under the Guangdong Provincial Government. On April 14, 2026, it signed a 30-working-day exclusivity agreement with Evergrande Property Services. However, the two sides ultimately failed to bridge the gaps in due diligence and pricing, and the negotiations were terminated on June 25. Evergrande Property Services' share price plummeted by more than 20% to HK$0.78 on that day. At that time, PAG's name only appeared in the list of potential bidders in market rumors.
Three months later, the transaction restarted, and the protagonist was replaced from a local state-owned enterprise to a private equity institution. PAG appeared on the list again, alongside Warburg Pincus and Trustar Capital.
Now, PAG has stood out from the list and become the only buyer in this transaction.
The key to PAG's transformation from a "runner-up" to the "only buyer" is that it meets the strict requirements of the transaction for the buyer better than any other party.
The liquidators want to realize the assets as soon as possible to strive for recovery for about US$45 billion in overseas debt claims. However, state-owned enterprise buyers are constrained by compliance and layers of approval procedures, and their bidding discipline is relatively conservative. In contrast, as a pure private equity institution, PAG is not burdened by the approval chain, and has the characteristics of flexible bidding, high discount tolerance, and sufficient patience for the return cycle.
More importantly, it has a precedent for integrating similar targets. It is found that in July this year, a subsidiary of PAG, acting as a consultant, facilitated the transaction of 50.01% equity in Fangyuan Living Services, which can be regarded as a pre-practice in the property management M&A field.
Why Does PAG Want to Buy?
From the perspective of the value of the asset itself, this transaction is impeccable. The 2026 interim report of Evergrande Property Services shows that the company's operating revenue in the period was about 6.943 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 4.45%; the attributable net profit was about 517 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9.48%; the managed area was about 603 million square meters, firmly ranking among the top three in the industry; the proportion of third-party revenue is close to 100%, which means that it has basically got rid of its dependence on its parent company Evergrande and has independent profitability; the available funds are about 4.244 billion yuan.
Property management business has stable revenue and small capital expenditure, which is a typical cash cow. This is exactly why Evergrande Property Services is regarded as "the only asset of the Evergrande system that can still be sold at a price".
Price is what PAG cares most about. The current market value of Evergrande Property Services has evaporated by more than 90% compared with the peak value of over HK$206.4 billion, and the liquidators previously realized only about US$255 million, with an overseas creditor recovery rate of less than 1%.
Under the reasonable acquisition range of 6 to 8 times price-to-earnings ratio in the property management industry, calculated based on the net profit of about 1 billion yuan in 2025, the corresponding valuation of 51% equity is roughly between HK$30 billion and HK$40 billion; if converted according to the current market value, the consideration for this proportion of equity is about HK$66 billion.
The price difference of tens of billions of Hong Kong dollars in between is the core logic for PAG to dare to make a move, using a cheap enough price to buy a high-quality property management company with stable cash flow and clean assets. More importantly, exclusive negotiations instead of public auctions further shift the bargaining chips to the buyer.
Of course, PAG's plan is far more than a single financial investment. If it successfully takes the controlling stake, it can use the 600 million square meters of managed area to form a "commercial management + property management" linkage with the commercial operation system of Wanda Commercial Management that it has already controlled, replicate the model of China Resources Mixc Lifestyle, and provide customers with a complete closed loop from commercial operation to community services. This not only strengthens its real estate territory, but also adds a heavyweight bargaining chip to its ongoing Hong Kong stock listing narrative.
This also just responds to previous speculations from the outside world: PAG took over Evergrande Property Services in order to achieve a backdoor listing for Zhuhai Wanda Commercial Management. Although insiders described it as "reasonable but factually unfounded", it is undeniable that a cheap, clean and controllable platform may be the simple logic behind PAG's move at this time.
However, PAG still has tough nuts to crack if it wants to truly take over this asset. According to the 2026 interim report of Evergrande Property Services, the aftermath of the 13.4 billion yuan deposit incident has not completely subsided. The 2.089 billion yuan receivables from related parties have been fully provided for impairment, and the impairment provision of the whole group has reached 3.244 billion yuan.
How to sort out the complex capital transactions with the parent company is an unavoidable problem for both the buyer and the seller. The 2021 acquisition of Evergrande Property Services by Hopson Development fell through, and the crux lies precisely in this. The next progress announcement after the expiration of the exclusivity period on October 27 will determine whether this round of negotiations leads to a signing or repeats the script of June.
For PAG, the real test is not whether it can afford the price, but whether it can find the balance point that only a hunter can accurately grasp between risk and price.
The Logic of Distressed Asset Hunters
To understand why PAG always makes moves when others are most desperate, we must return to its helmsman — Shan Weijian.
This investor known as the "King of Chinese Private Equity" had an extremely tough start in life. He graduated from primary school right when the turbulent era arrived, and did not attend school for a full ten years. In 1969, when he was less than 16 years old, he was sent to the Gobi Desert in Inner Mongolia and stayed there for six years.
In such a harsh environment, he still found time to read books. When there were really no books to read, he even read a pesticide manual for about two weeks.
In 1979, he graduated from the English major of Beijing Institute of Foreign Trade as a "worker-peasant-soldier student", then became the first international student from China in the history of the University of San Francisco, and successively obtained a master's degree in economics and a doctorate in business administration from the University of California, Berkeley, studying under Yellen, who later became the US Secretary of the Treasury.
This experience shaped his core investment philosophy: "Once you have experienced hardships, especially hunger, you will feel that no matter how big the difficulty is, it is no big deal, because you have learned to be patient."
This kind of patience later ran through the rhythm of every move he made. He did not rush for gains or losses for the time being, but waited for the most appropriate opportunity, and steadily took over when others could not hold on.
Shan Weijian's real masterpiece of fame was during the 1998 Asian financial crisis, when he led Newbridge Capital to acquire a 51% controlling stake in the troubled Korea First Bank for US$500 million, and sold it to Standard Chartered Bank for US$3.3 billion five years later.
After that, he led Newbridge to take over Shenzhen Development Bank, a "problem bank", which was the first and so far the only foreign institution to hold a controlling stake in a Chinese joint-stock bank, and finally sold it to Ping An Insurance to obtain a return of about 15 times.
In 2010, he co-founded PAG with Gao Tianle and Jon-Paul Toppino, integrating the three major sectors of credit and markets, private equity, and real estate into a unified platform.
He has a repeatedly emphasized view: Investment does not focus on "tracks", because tracks mean following the crowd and chasing hot spots. On the contrary, those traditional industries that are not regarded as tracks have a more relaxed competitive landscape.
This judgment precisely explains why PAG always focuses on areas that are neglected by the market and mispriced by the crisis — they are not under the spotlight, but often hide undervalued real value.
To truly grasp this value and implement it at the operational level is PAG's iconic "controlling acquisition". Shan Weijian once explained that the exit of minority equity investment is highly dependent on whether the enterprise can be listed. Once the IPO is blocked, investors will be locked in; and having control is "like driving a car, the driver decides when to stop and which highway exit to take".
For this reason, almost all of PAG's investments have a distinct feature of "bottom fishing + controlling stake + transformation". Around 2005, it bought an office building in Seoul at an 8% discount, and the net operating revenue increased by 109% after renovation; in 2017, it privatized Yingde Gases and integrated it with Baosteel Gas into "Gas Power"; in 2018, it acquired Cushman & Wakefield, promoted its merger with DTZ and listed it on the New York Stock Exchange; in 2023, it joined hands with Mapletree to acquire the CIG Centre in Hong Kong for HK$5.6 billion, which was more than 60% lower than the expected price two years ago.
What best illustrates PAG's logic is still Wanda. This is a "three-time move" spanning several years.
In 2021, when Zhuhai Wanda Commercial Management sought a Hong Kong stock listing, PAG joined 22 institutions to invest 38 billion yuan, of which PAG contributed US$2.8 billion, which is its largest investment in China so far, and embedded a bet-for-terms clause: if the listing is not completed by the end of 2023, Wanda needs to repurchase the shares.
As a result, Zhuhai Wanda Commercial Management failed in its four listing applications. At the end of 2023, when Wanda faced repurchase pressure, PAG chose to increase its stake. In March 2024, it took the lead in joining CITIC Capital, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, Mubadala and other institutions to inject about 600 billion yuan to establish Dalian Xindameng, with investors holding a total of 60% of the shares, and Wanda Commercial Management's shareholding ratio dropped from 70.15% to 40%. PAG thus took control of the world's largest commercial property management platform.
Then came the second and third moves. In 2025, PAG joined Tencent, JD.com, Sino Life and others to acquire 100% equity of 48 Wanda Plazas under Wanda for about 50 billion yuan, and the State Administration for Market Regulation unconditionally approved the transaction in May of that year. In 2026, Wanda Plazas in Zhanjiang, Shanghai Songjiang, Quanzhou Puxi and other locations were delivered one after another, and the Shanghai Anya behind the undertaking platform is exactly the capital under the PAG system.
From the commercial management platform to the physical plazas, PAG's harvesting is advancing step by step. As of 2026, among the 529 operating Wanda Plazas, more than 470 no longer belong to Wanda, and there are only about 60 self-owned plazas left.
The management of Zhuhai Wanda was reshuffled at the same time. In July 2025, Xiao Guangrui, a former veteran of Wanda, resigned as CEO of Dalian Xindameng and Zhuhai Wanda Commercial Management, and was succeeded by Huang Dewei, a partner of PAG; the board of directors of Xindameng has 6 seats for the capital side and 4 seats for Wanda.
At the same time, Wang Jianlin's personal wealth has shrunk from 140.84 billion yuan in 2024 to 40.52 billion yuan in 2026, and his ranking on the New Fortune 500 Rich List has dropped from 9th to 93rd.
The former richest man has gradually transferred his core assets, control rights and even personal wealth to the person who handed him a check at his most difficult time.
From Wanda to Evergrande, PAG's plan is actually in the same line. What it buys is never the enterprise itself, but the asset price that is mispriced by panic and stable cash flow.
Wanda Commercial Management under Wang Jianlin is such a case, the rental flow generated by 500 plazas is a "hen that lays golden eggs"; Evergrande Property Services under Xu Jiayin is also such a case, 600 million square meters of managed area, nearly 100% third-party revenue, and 4.2 billion yuan of available funds are all real values that are severely undervalued in the crisis.
PAG's patience comes from its LP structure. Top global long-term capital such as pension funds and sovereign wealth funds value the ability to traverse cycles, which gives Shan Weijian the confidence to mobilize tens of billions of yuan of funds quickly in times of crisis and not rush for short-term exits.
However, the outside world's evaluation of Shan Weijian's style of play has always been divided. Some call him a "vulture" who takes advantage of others' misfortunes, while others think he is a "white knight" who steps forward in the crisis.
Shan Weijian's own answer is very pragmatic: "We can neither be 'white knights', why should I use other people's money to generously spend others' money to save others; nor am I a 'barbarian', I don't want to hit someone when they are down. I just saw an opportunity, I think I can make money for investors, so I do it."
From the teenager who couldn't even find books to read on the Gobi Desert, to the person who took away the core assets behind Wang Jianlin and Xu Jiayin, Shan Weijian's forty years of experience just shows that in the logic of capital, crisis is never the end, but the signal for hunters to enter the market.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Viewpoint", author: Viewpoint New Media, 36Kr published it with authorization.