Ming Mei

Ming Mei is co-founder and chief executive officer of GLP, and also serves as founder and chief executive officer of the alternative asset manager GLP Capital Partners (GCP). He holds MBA degrees from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University and the Business School of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and a bachelor’s degree in finance from the Indiana University Kelley School of Business.

In December 2008, the GLP group announced the sale of all of its wholly owned company in China and its 20% stake in its Japanese joint venture to GIC Real Estate (GICRE) for US$1.3 billion, with the transaction to be paid entirely in cash. According to the Economic Observer, the soon-to-be-established SMG fund was jointly capitalised by GIC Real Estate, former GLP chairman and global chief executive Jeffrey H. Schwartz, GLP Asia chief executive Ming Mei, and the senior management teams of GLP China and Japan, and would have full authority to operate and manage the acquired assets. Ming Mei, interviewed at the time in his capacity as Asia chief executive of the SMG fund, said the deal was a win-win for buyer and seller; the transaction also included all of GLP China’s debts, and upon completion the GLP group could both absorb its debts in China and have more than 1 billion in cash to offset loans. He also said the SMG fund would focus on real estate within the logistics chain, and believed that the development of China’s domestic consumer market and urbanisation would create considerable business room for warehousing and logistics, and that the continual demolition of old factories as cities expanded and the replacement of old warehouses also offered room for development; he further mentioned that the platform could in future bring in funds such as China’s national social security and pension funds, providing investors with a stable rate of return.

On March 15, 2014, Vanke invited GLP’s then chief executive Ming Mei to give a lecture at Vanke’s headquarters. According to the later recollection of Zhang Xu, Vanke Group executive vice president and chief operating officer, at Vanke’s year-end media meeting on November 10, 2017, Ming Mei described his vision for logistics, saying that logistics in China was only just beginning to develop and that there would be demand for more than 200 million square metres of warehouses in the future; Vanke’s side “grew more and more excited the more it listened”, and in 2015 formally launched its logistics real estate business.

On July 14, 2017, a Chinese consortium made up of Vanke, Ming Mei, Hopu Investment, Hillhouse Capital and Bank of China Group Investment issued a joint announcement with GLP, stating that the consortium and the GLP board had reached agreement on the full privatisation of the Singapore-listed company at a price of S$3.38 per share (about 16.67 yuan), for a total transaction value of about S$15.9 billion (about 78.441 billion yuan); upon completion of the privatisation, Vanke would become GLP’s largest shareholder with a 21.4% stake. According to the Economic Observer, the total size of the transaction was about 79 billion yuan. GLP was formally delisted from the Singapore Exchange on January 22, 2018, completing the privatisation; at the same time Vanke announced that it had completed its investment in GLP and become its largest shareholder.

On January 30, 2018, Huanpu held a completion and handover ceremony for phase one of its first science and innovation park in Beijing; the phase-one park was the BMW Beijing R&D Centre, and Ming Mei attended the ceremony. Huanpu Science and Technology Industrial Park is GLP’s science and innovation park brand; since its launch in 2011 it had laid out nearly 20 science and innovation park projects nationwide, and GLP’s goal was to make Huanpu an industrial segment on a par with logistics. As of early 2018, GLP had entered 38 Chinese cities, with a total of 257 parks of various kinds and a total floor area of 29.6 million square metres. GLP has four main business platforms: logistics, Huanpu industrial investment, financial holdings, and equity investment.

Under Ming Mei’s leadership, GLP has built an industrial ecosystem around new economy assets, focusing on three areas: supply chain, big data and new energy, with global assets under management reaching US$80 billion. In logistics and supply chain, GLP introduced and has continually upgraded modern logistics warehousing standards. GLP began building data centres in 2018 and, combining mature asset management with operations, grew rapidly to become one of the major data centre operators. In addition, GLP has built capabilities in solar, wind, energy storage and integrated new energy services, using new energy to improve the environmental performance of industrial and computing facilities and helping customers achieve their carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals.

Ming Mei is also a co-founder of Cowin Capital, and has invested in and served as a director of a number of listed and private companies, including China Merchants Capital, Li & Fung and Hongkong Land. He also co-founded and invested in Value Retail China Ltd., which develops and operates the Bicester Village series of shopping villages in China.