Who’s Pan Dong?: Meet the publicity-shy Chinese-Canadian soap tycoon

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In 2010, Pan Dong and her husband Luo Qiuping called prominent Chinese investor Zhang Lei.

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Pan, a Canadian citizen with residency in Hong Kong according to Forbes, and Luo had met Zhang four years early when their company, Blue Moon Group Holdings Ltd, was primarily selling liquid hand soap. The company was still small but Luo and Pan had since developed a novel liquid laundry detergent. Zhang, the head of Beijing-based Hillhouse Capital Group, was well known for his early and winning bets on fledgling Chinese companies, such as Tencent and JD.com.

He spied potential in Blue Moon’s liquid detergent and was reportedly undeterred by the industry standard of the time. As a New York Times story from 2015 noted, most multinational companies only sold powdered detergent in China, assuming consumers wouldn’t pay more for liquid versions. Zhang, worth US$3 billion himself according to Forbes, disagreed. He invested heavily in Blue Moon and encouraged its push into liquid detergent.

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Today, according to Bloomberg, Blue Moon is known as “China’s P&G”, after U.S. consumer products giant Proctor & Gamble Co., developing, manufacturing, and selling personal hygiene products, cleaning products, and detergents.

In 2020, it recorded revenue of roughly HK$7 billion ($1.1 billion) and profit totalling HK$1.3 billion ($209 million). “Blue Moon is a classic example of how a local brand beats multinationals in emerging markets,” Zhang, the forward-thinking investor, concluded in his book “The Value”.

Blue Moon’s success has also rocketed Pan into the global billionaire ranks. Blue Moon, which is incorporated in the Cayman Islands but headquartered in Guangzhou, China, went public last December, and Pan retains 77 per cent of the company. Forbes, in its global billionaire rankings, lists Pan in the No. 297 spot, with a net worth of $8.3 billion.

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Pan’s rise is typically framed as a teacher-to-billionaire story. According to her company bio, she holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in organic chemistry from Wuhan University. She taught organic chemistry at the university level in China for 10 years and later completed an MBA through Michigan’s Lawrence Technological University. Her company bio does not mention any connections to Canada.

She joined Blue Moon as chief technology officer and is, according to the company, primarily responsible for its technological development. Pan, 55, has been Blue Moon’s board chair since 2007, while Luo, her husband, a certified chemical engineer who also holds a master’s degree in organic chemistry, has been chief executive since 2008.

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According to Forbes, three of Canada’s top ten billionaires are Chinese entrepreneurs.

Another is Huang Chulong, the 62-year-old chair of the Galaxy Holding Group, an umbrella company covering a slew of Chinese businesses in sectors as varied as finance and investment, real estate development, hotels, shopping centres, property management, energy, and design. Huang founded the company that became Galaxy in 1988. Forbes now pegs his net worth at $6.8 billion.

The extent of Chulong and Pan’s Canadian connections is not apparent. Chulong is a resident of the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, where Galaxy is based. Multiple emails sent to the company were not returned.

A Blue Moon spokesperson said Pan, who lives in Hong Kong, had a “packed schedule” and wasn’t available for an interview. The spokesperson did not reply to a follow-up email asking about Pan’s connection to Canada.

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Bruce Dickson, who has written extensively on the relationship between China’s ruling Communist Party and the country’s private sector entrepreneurs, says Chinese business people largely avoid talking to the media. “A lot of them try and keep a low profile,” Dickson, a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, in Washington D.C., said in an interview.

He pointed to Jack Ma, the famous Chinese entrepreneur behind the e-retail giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and the fintech goliath Ant Group, as an example of the communist country’s complex relationship with its billionaire entrepreneurs. In a speech last fall, as Ant was preparing to go public, Ma criticized the country’s financial regulators. Ant’s IPO was halted and Ma, a very public figure, has largely disappeared from public view.

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Joseph Tsai, Ma’s Alibaba co-founder and the third Chinese entrepreneur among the top ten Canadian Forbes billionaires — net worth $11.6 billion — has said Ma has taken up painting and is leading a “normal life”.

“One of the informal rules of the game in China, not just for entrepreneurs, but more generally, is that you don’t publicly criticize the party and government leaders, especially at the central level,” Dickson said. “That’s just simply not done.”

Dickson also wondered aloud if Chinese-Canadian entrepreneurs might now be even more reticent about speaking publicly, given that China is upset at Canada over the detention of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei Technologies Co.’s chief financial officer. Meng is in the final stages of her fight against extradition to the U.S. on a fraud charge, more than two and a half years after her arrest set off a major diplomatic standoff between China, the U.S. and Canada.

“It used to be that the Canadians were the privileged foreign group in China, especially because they weren’t American. And the Chinese government and many of the Chinese people just loved Canadians,” Dickson said. “But it may be that (Chinese-Canadians) don’t want to talk to the media, especially Canadian media, because… their background is now a further complication.”

Financial Post