A Car Billionaire Enriches His Empire—for a Price
Li Shufu does a lot of tinkering to maximize value in Volvo and other subsidiaries. But he’s losing sight of a bigger challenge in the process.
He may look like he’s got it all figured out.
Photographer: Qilai Shen/BloombergChinese billionaire Li Shufu has made a habit of shuffling around the pieces of his sprawling empire to find the best value. Yet none of that grand strategizing has addressed his main problem: a growing pile of debt.
Every few months, Zhejiang Geely Holding Group Co., the parent company of Hong Kong-listed Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd. and Sweden’s Volvo Car AB, comes up with yet another plan for its various subsidiaries. Whether it’s listing them on public markets or monetizing assets, creating new brands to boost valuations or merging various parts and units, the goal, it seems, is often the same: shifting value from one corner to another, and maximizing the efficiency of all the capital that's being put to work.