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Chinese publishing giant the China Publishing Group (CPG) has realised an eight-year ambition and taken its publishing wing public on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. CPG president Dr Tan Yue told The Bookseller its value has risen above 10.6bn Yuan (£1.24bn) since the launch on Monday (21st August), when 12 different units of the business, largely focused on digital publishing, were floated.
Meanwhile, speaking to The Bookseller at the Beijing International Book Fair, the CPG chief revealed that his company has been attempting to acquire a UK publishing house, but that talks on a sale came to an end just a month ago. Dr Tan Yue declined to name the UK publisher it had tried to buy, but did reveal that it was a publicly listed company, and that talks to acquire it had been initiated by CPG in 2014.
"From our side everything was straightforward, but it was their internal issues [that meant the sale didn't go through]," he said, via an interpreter. "We have told this company we remain interested." The appeal of the unnamed company to CPG is that is has "quite an extensive distribution network in Europe" which CPG would like to access for its own products, he said, as well as "a great technologist on board".
Publicly listed Quarto recently revealed that an "attractive" unsolicited bid had been made for the company, but shortly afterwards announced that the bid had in fact fallen through after discussions had failed to progress to the Board's satisfaction. However, it described as "speculation" a Publishers Weekly report that a Chinese publisher had been the suitor and the timings of the Quarto takeover bid are incongruent with those set out by Dr Tan Yue for the company CPG were in talks with.
There are many reasons for CPG to go public, Dr Tan Yue said, with the biggest driver "living in the digital world - going public, you share the risk and get finance to expand the digital businesses." Major digital projects underway at CPG include a digital archive being developed at the Zhonghua Book Company and a reference book app developed by the Commercial Press.
Having funds for acquisition was also a factor in going public, he added. "We are interested in the Western market, Europe and the United States, because they remain very strong in publishing and we would like to build on that kind of impact. We are also very interested in the countries and markets along the Belt and Road [the Silk Road countries targeted in a China government initiative named 'One Belt, One Road']. Also, we are currently looking at the African market, which we have never done before - a lot of African people are learning Chinese."
The CPG chief said that going public would bring "tremendous change" to the CPG's publishing operations. "Traditionally the finance was not strictly supervised, now we will be under strict supervision and show our work to our shareholders every quarter," he said/ "Each quarter we have to do a better job with our inventory."
In the future, CPG may also take its other businesses public, he added. As well as its 40 publishing companies, CPG owns chain bookstores, distribution, exhibition and logistics businesses.