Capital tycoon takes over 60 billion yuan supermarket empire

Author: Li Huilin Editing: Chen Xiaoping Image source: Internet

New CEO goes missing, capital steps in urgently.

On the evening of March 8, Gao Xin Retail announced that CEO Li Weiping has not been reachable to date, and “for a long period without leave, he has been unable to perform his duties,” the board of directors decided to remove all his key positions.

The CEO position is now held by Chairman Hua Yuneng, who is also the fourth CEO of Gao Xin in the past two years.

Hua Yuneng

Currently 52 years old, Hua has a rather special background, as he is the co-founder of Dehong Capital.

In 2025, Dehong invested 13.1 billion HKD to become Gao Xin’s controlling shareholder; Gao Xin hired former Hema executive Li Weiping in November with an annual salary of 3.36 million, but Li went missing in February.

At present, Dalian Carrefour is at a critical stage of restructuring, with the main leader absent, forcing Hua Yuneng to step from behind the scenes to the front stage.

Personally taking charge

Hua Yuneng has always been low-profile and rarely appears publicly. This time, stepping to the front, the situation is quite challenging.

He oversees Gao Xin, which operates over 500 large and medium-sized supermarkets, currently facing operational difficulties. From April to September 2025, revenue was 30.5 billion yuan, shrinking about 12%, with a loss of 123 million yuan, and an estimated annual revenue of around 60 billion yuan.

Hua must lead this retail giant to quickly reverse its predicament.

By November 2025, he had clarified the direction at an investor meeting—accelerate store restructuring and continue opening new stores.

“I don’t believe a core business would close stores every day; I believe development is the hard truth.” Hua Yuneng outlined Gao Xin’s transformation blueprint:

In the next three years, based on “healthy products + joyful experience + attentive service,” to create a retail model that balances experience and efficiency for all customers within a three-kilometer radius.

According to the plan, by March 2027, over 200 stores will have completed restructuring.

Originally, Hua Yuneng did not intend to personally execute the operations.

He was involved in selecting Li Weiping, who comes from procurement, with 20 years of retail management experience, making him more suitable for operational implementation. Gao Xin and Li Weiping also signed a three-year service agreement.

Unexpectedly, Li, who took office just over two months ago, was reported missing, with news indicating he may be assisting police investigations. Hua Yuneng had no choice but to coordinate and oversee operations temporarily.

Since March 2024, Gao Xin Retail has faced enormous operational pressure, heavy transformation tasks, compounded by shareholding changes. In just two years, four CEOs have served: Lin Xiaohai, Shen Hui, Li Weiping, and Hua Yuneng.

Clearly, frequent leadership changes damage organizational morale. From this perspective, Hua’s part-time role may not be just a temporary arrangement.

Investment background

Hua Yuneng is skilled in investing but has no direct experience managing large chain supermarkets.

He founded Dehong Capital, an international private equity firm focused on the Asian market, established in 2017, with a team originating from the private equity giant KKR’s Asia core team.

Before founding Dehong, Hua was a partner at KKR, responsible for Greater China. Earlier, he worked in Morgan Stanley’s private equity division.

With 25 years of investment experience, Hua has led or participated in numerous projects involving top companies like Ping An of China, COFCO Meat, Yuehai Feed, and Asia Farming.

Despite this, investing 13.138 billion HKD to acquire Gao Xin remains a major move, his first foray into large supermarkets, and involves direct operational team building.

Hua Yuneng personally holds two core positions, showing the importance he attaches to this project.

He does not receive a salary from Gao Xin; his core identity remains an investor, not a retail operator. Dehong’s main goal is to transform Dalian Carrefour, sell it at a good price, and earn capital gains through a “buy — transform — sell at a premium” model.

“Only through post-investment management can value be created; otherwise, it’s just buying and selling,” explains Wang Wei, a member of Dehong, on the team’s M&A logic.

Hua Yuneng’s team has handled projects like “Sun Valley,” which exemplifies this approach.

Sun Valley was originally Cargill’s animal protein business, suffering losses for ten years. Dehong carried out refined operations, turning losses into profits in the first year, and successfully sold it to Shengnong Development in 2025.

The project took only two years to recover over 1.3 billion HKD in cash.

Compared to that scale and operational difficulty, Gao Xin’s challenge is much greater and will test Hua Yuneng’s ability and willpower significantly.

Gradual reform

Since taking over a year ago, Hua Yuneng’s reforms at Dalian Carrefour have gradually taken shape.

In terms of business format, Gao Xin plans to combine “superstores + medium-sized stores + front-end warehouses + membership stores” to suit different consumption scenarios. Over the next three years, online sales are expected to account for 40%-50%.

The core store restructuring focuses mainly on improving product differentiation.

Hua Yuneng’s planned measures include launching new products, phasing out slow-moving items, streamlining homogeneous products, upgrading fresh food processing capabilities, and deepening integration with local traditional brands.

Currently, signals from management are mostly positive.

By September 2025, Gao Xin had completed full-store restructuring of three stores in East China, with customer numbers increasing by double digits; three stores in South China saw over 20% growth in fresh and processed product categories after restructuring.

It is also reported that the newly opened Kunshan Chaoyang and Wuwei stores fully adopted the restructuring approach in layout, flow design, and product selection, becoming models for the new generation of superstores.

Sales of fresh and processed products in these two new stores each exceeded 30%, significantly higher than the overall average.

Meanwhile, Hua Yuneng is pushing cost reduction and efficiency improvements, such as Gao Xin launching a nationwide joint procurement project for pork, leveraging volume to lower prices, and focusing on developing private label products.

Specifically, the “Super Savings” series emphasizes cost performance, while the “Runfa Selection” series targets consumers’ demand for high quality at affordable prices. Over 500 products across more than 50 categories have been launched under these two brands.

Nevertheless, restructuring over 200 stores remains a tough challenge, with no systematic successful precedent in the industry—Yonghui’s restructuring still incurs losses.

The success of Gao Xin’s restructuring is crucial to the outcome of Dehong’s billion-dollar investment. As both investor and operator, Hua Yuneng currently has no retreat.