identity is controversial again, the company's vice chairman said shein is a singapore company
2024-09-15
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on september 13, according to singapore media reports, at the global artificial intelligence summit in saudi arabia, the host asked marcelo claure, vice chairman of shien group, about his investment in "this large chinese company". he immediately corrected and said: "shein is not a chinese company, it is a singaporean company, just relying on china's manufacturing and supply chain."
regarding the identity of shein, claure has denied shein's connection with china more than once in public. in january last year, at the critical moment when shein was laying out its latin american supply chain, claure brought in capital and invested $100 million in shein in the name of the family fund. he was appointed as the chairman of latin america by shein founder xu yangtian.
in october of the same year, claure was promoted to vice chairman of shein group, making the former chief operating officer of softbank group the second-most important person in the group after xu yangtian.
shortly after he took over the no. 2 position at shein, a media interviewed claure and asked him if shein was a chinese company. claure's answer was "no idea".
in addition to claure, another core executive of shein, global executive chairman donald tang, also publicly denied shien's chinese identity and said that shein is a company with american values.
in may this year, at the milken institute global conference in the united states, the host asked tang wei the same question during the dialogue session: "is shein a chinese company?"
tang wei gave a "high eq" answer. from the perspective of birthplace and supply chain, shein is a chinese company, because shein was born in china and its supply chain is in china. from the perspective of the headquarters and the location of core personnel, shein is a singaporean company, and the ceo's office, finance and other core departments are all located in singapore. from the perspective of the market and corporate values, shein's users and market are in the united states, and we will also be proud to be an american company.
but he concluded that shein's values, mission and vision are consistent with those of the united states: entrepreneurship, innovation, individual expression, rule of law and fair competition.
“i think if you look at it that way, we are an american company,” tang said.
this statement immediately attracted the attention of domestic and foreign media. the financial times reported that two chinese business columnists revealed that shein had urged them not to report tang wei's speech for fear that it would cause "misunderstanding" among regulators.
subsequently, the milken institute deleted the video of tang wei's speech from its website and official vimeo channel.
it is not difficult to see that shein’s executives are as sensitive as a muscle reaction when it comes to identity issues. they try to find the optimal solution among the triple identities of “china, the united states and the new”, but this often leads to new controversies and even affects their own listing process.
as early as the beginning of 2022, reuters reported that shein had moved its headquarters to singapore, and its founder xu yangtian had obtained permanent residency in singapore. he also conducted multiple rounds of recruitment locally and actively expanded the scale of the singapore headquarters. at the same time, shein also intensively cancelled the registration of domestic companies. among the 10 companies that xu yangtian had worked for in china, 9 were cancelled.
media analysis said that shein's original intention of becoming a singaporean citizen was to bypass domestic regulation and seek to go public in the united states, but the result was quite embarrassing. at the end of last year, shein was repeatedly reported to have secretly submitted a listing to the u.s. securities and exchange commission (sec), but was subsequently obstructed by u.s. regulators and several congressmen, which led to investors selling shares at low prices.
this year, shein was revealed to have switched to the uk and submitted its application to the london stock exchange in june. tang wei also visited senior officials of the london stock exchange and british politicians many times. the latest news shows that several shein stock underwriting institutions are selling stocks to retail investors, city institutions, etc.
according to outside interpretation, it is not a common practice for a company to sell shares to individual investors before listing, unless the investor needs to recover funds quickly. in other words, investors do not have much patience for the prospect of shien listing in london.
from the development history, it is an indisputable fact that shein was founded in nanjing, grew up in china, and rose rapidly relying on the domestic supply chain. in order to be listed in the united states, shein moved its headquarters to singapore, which is a pragmatic strategy. however, after falling into difficulties in the united states and the uk, shein has few targets left for listing, and perhaps it should not continue to waver.
source: taiwan strait network
