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Dunes Resort Club and TPC Myrtle In Command of The Grand Strand Beach, along with other assets. “It’s a Yiqian Funding bought 22 courses in big change for the golf business,” says a bid to attract Chinese golfers to the Dou, president of Founders Group East Coast International, the company he and Purchased course Dan Liu, chairman of Yiqian Funding, created to manage the courses. “Maybe we are crazy. Maybe we bought too many courses. But I think the market is at the bottom and will come back.” Yiqian Funding, the biggest course owner on the Strand, is diverging from the well-worn path of Chinese investors who’ve driven up property prices in big cities from Sydney to Vancouver. Liu and Dou are gambling on a smaller market and a novel strategy. As younger Americans shun a sport that Jack Myrtle Beach, S.C. Nicklaus called too slow, too hard, and too expensive, Yiqian Funding plans to lure players and investors from China. Even as the Strand’s Myrtle Beach, once a haven for bingeing college stun dents, upgrades its image with fancy resorts, the prospect of thousands of Chinese flocking here seems far10 miles fetched. The region’s 320,000 residents include fewer than 1,000 Chinese Americans. It takes at least 15 hours, moving to Myrtle Beach in August. plus one stop, to fly to Myrtle Beach from Shanghai. “It’s very difficult to The Chinese investors didn’t intend get here,” says Mike Buccerone, presito own golf courses. Dou, a New dent of East Coast Golf Management, Yorker who came to the U.S. from which operates six courses on the China 25 years ago for graduate school, Strand. “You have to fly over a lot of searched coast to coast for real estate places—California and Las Vegas— deals before he and Liu settled on the where the Chinese like to go.” Strand. Its mild winters, coastal granOne factor that may encourage deur, and abundance of land to expand Chinese golfers to make the trip: As appealed to them. part of a campaign against corruption During a 20-year construction boom and extravagance, China’s government that started in 1986, the number of has closed unauthorized golf courses courses along the Strand doubled, and punished officials who used driven by demand for condos that line public funds to pay for “It’s very difficult to the fairways. At the peak in 2000, their rounds. golfers played about 4.2 million get here. You have Liu, 38, a college rounds a year on the Strand. to fly over a lot of places—California The number has been stuck at dropout, software proand Las Vegas— grammer, and serial 3.4 million since 2012, and golf where the Chinese course values have plunged. When entrepreneur, brushes like to go” off the naysayers. “Never Liu and Dou discovered they could say never,” he says. buy a golf course for a few million In six years he turned dollars, about the same price as an Yiqian Funding, based in apartment in Shanghai, they were Nanjing, into a company sold. “Price was most important, with more than 6,000 employees that and location,” says Liu, whose company arranges $1.2 billion in home and busimade its purchases from September to ness loans annually. Dou says Liu plans April. “It’s beautiful.” to add as many as 1,000 branch offices Liu and Dou are making improvein China to sell golf vacations and real ments to several courses and have estate in Myrtle Beach. He’s also planstarted construction on about ning to develop an oceanfront hotel 80 homes. They purchased about and is building a home at his World 2,000 lots for houses and condos and Tour Golf Club. He and his family are sold 20 units to Chinese for $200,000 to
$300,000 in June. “Maybe the golf business isn’t so good, but you can make money from the real estate,” Dou says. Jane Zheng, a broker at Keller Williams Realty who’s helped Chinese investors buy retail property and housing in Myrtle Beach, agrees. Home prices began to rise in 2013, but they haven’t kept pace with Florida and Nevada, leaving room for growth. “Myrtle Beach has a lot to offer, but the Chinese don’t know about this place,” says Zheng, a former pharmaceutical research scientist from New Jersey. “Dan’s group will do a good job to let Chinese know and appreciate it. They know how to sell in China.” —Vince Bielski The bottom line Yiqian paid $105 million for 22 golf courses in South Carolina, hoping to lure Chinese players and condo buyers.
Compensation
Complicating the Calculation of CEO Pay The SEC wants to add new metrics to illuminate an elusive figure “Shareholders are not going to understand this type of analysis”
How much did Jeff Immelt earn last year? In General Electric’s annual proxy statement, the figure is $9.6 million, which seems modest by today’s standards for the chief executive officer of America’s eighth-largest company. On the same page, you’ll find a much higher tally: $37.2 million. That’s his “total pay,” a figure that the Securities and Exchange Commission has required companies to report since 2006. It includes long-term compensation such as stock options and pensions and is presented as an effort to clarify a murky number. “Shareholders need intelligible disclosure that can be understood by a lay reader without the benefit of specialized expertise or the need
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