Zhuhai Wanda Commercial Management has replaced its leader with a woman.
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A profound transformation in the direction of commercial real estate has reached a critical point.
Recently, Zhuhai Wanda Commercial Management quietly underwent a personnel reshuffle. Xu Fen, a veteran who has served Wanda for 20 years, officially took over the CEO position from Huang Dewei, a partner at PAG (Pacific Alliance Group).
Zhuhai Wanda Commercial Management’s official WeChat account confirmed this change in a post on January 19. Xu Fen, as the CEO of Zhuhai Wanda Commercial Management, delivered the group’s 2025 annual work report.
People familiar with Wanda said this is a reflection of investors— including PAG— granting Wanda more autonomy.
The market once questioned whether this commercial giant could maintain its operational capability after the likes of PAG invested 60 billion yuan and Wang Jianlin’s stake was diluted to 12.3%. This latest appointment clearly provides a different answer.
Xu Fen, starting as a financial manager at Nanning Wanda, fought her way up to president of the northern region. In Wanda’s results-driven, efficiency-only system, executives with a finance background naturally have a “muscle memory” — a heightened sensitivity to every percentage point in rental collection rate and every expense on energy efficiency.
This sensitivity is exactly what PAG wants to see most after putting down 60 billion yuan in real capital. In the past, Wanda’s logic was scale-driven; now, the rules have shifted to being return-driven. Xu Fen’s promotion clears the last communication barrier between capital and veterans.
Of course, PAG does not plan to rely solely on Wanda’s old guard on this critical battleground for existing assets.
COO Chen Qi, who works alongside Xu Fen, has held key positions at CapitaLand, Longfor, CIFI, Excellence, and other systems. If Xu Fen represents Wanda's original strong execution, then Chen Qi brings market-oriented, detailed operation and commercial ecosystem thinking.
With the massive base of over 530 malls, even a 1% increase in per-unit efficiency brings astonishing profit returns. PAG needs Xu Fen to guard Wanda’s roots while Chen Qi sows the seeds of the market.
This “combination punch” comes at the right time. In the past two years, the commercial real estate sector has experienced roller-coaster-like fluctuations. The suffocating feeling caused by debt volume and asset devaluation has taught every practitioner one lesson: the era of telling stories based on scale is dead. From 2026 onwards, only the ultimate control of costs and operational depth can serve as the stabilizer for performance.
The timing of PAG and other consortiums loosening their grip on execution rights is impeccable.
In the past two years, Wanda deftly maneuvered through a whirlpool of debt. Though the 60-billion yuan capital injection gave a sigh of relief to the industry chain, consumption fluctuations in Q4 2025 have once again brought capital’s “muscle memory” of asset package security to the fore. That familiar pain instantly reminded everyone: without extreme operational efficiency, even the largest asset package will become a heavy burden.
For PAG, Huang Dewei stepping down as CEO marks the end of phase one— the bomb-disposal and reorganization. Now, what they need are professional operators who can squat at the frontlines and squeeze out every yuan of rent.
This is a hunt for survival rights in the next decade. Everyone is betting that 2026 will be the "Year One of Specialization" for commercial management.
As the halo of personal heroism fades away, it is being replaced by precise management. After 2026, Zhuhai Wanda Commercial Management will no longer pursue a single-dimensional resource expansion, but move toward an ecological balance of complete separation between ownership and operation. This will be a more resilient governance system. In such a system, decisions are less likely to go off track due to individual errors, and operations are less likely to come to a halt due to funding chain fluctuations.
Zhuhai Wanda Commercial Management is trying, in the cold winter of the stock era, to use professional certainty to hedge against an uncertain tomorrow. This, perhaps, is the real and most brutal face of commercial evolution.
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