Dalian Wanda Group has not defaulted on debt anywhere in the world, and its operations have been normal this year with revenue of more than 200 billion yuan ($30.3 billion), the Chinese conglomerate said on Thursday on its website.
Wanda said that an online story titled "Wanda Chairman Wang Jianlin meets his Waterloo" disregards the facts and constitutes "malicious slander" of the group and Wang. The story was published by a self-media account named Baoyouqu on Monday.
"As to the Bandar Malaysia project, Wanda was introduced by relevant departments to invest there. Wanda only sent a team to conduct an on-site investigation in March and did not negotiate a price, so it is groundless to report that Wanda's quotation is twice that of the others," it said.
Wanda demanded the author making this claim to provide evidence backing up such statements.
The story also claimed repeatedly that Wanda's assets had declined. The company asked the author to prove that its assets had "shrunk more than half." The company said in the statement that Wanda's core asset is its Wanda Plaza shopping malls, of which 50 have been launched this year.
"Is there a second firm in the world that sees such high-speed growth? Are 230 Wanda Plazas to be ignored?" the company asked in the statement.
Wanda also denied having liquidity problems, saying that its revenue in 2017 could exceed 200 billion yuan.
The claim that two senior executives had resigned was "ridiculous," the statement said, because the two vice presidents, Yin Hai and Chen Ping, actually retired early.
Wanda will continue to pay social insurance contributions for the two until their legal retirement ages, and it will maintain their stakes in the company and share annual dividends with them. The author also claimed that several years ago, Wanda's investment in a twin-tower project in Kunming, capital of Southwest China's Yunnan Province, was related to disgraced former provincial Party chief Bai Enpei. Wanda denied the connection, saying that the property was a vital project in a local financial zone and Wanda was the first company to make an investment, which was seen as a role model.
Wanda cannot ignore such "malicious defamation" and it will pursue legal action against the anonymous author, it said.
