News | Bertelsmann Investments | Beijing, 08/16/2012

Annabelle Long Makes China’s ‘Investors Top 50’ Ranking

Annabelle Yu Long and her work with the Bertelsmann Asia Investment Fond (BAI) have earned high praise: CBN Weekly, one of China’s most influential business publications, has included Long, who heads the Corporate Center in Beijing, in its prestigious ranking of the country’s 50 best investors – the “Investors Top 50.” A senior Bertelsmann executive who has since September 2009 served as Chief Executive of the Bertelsmann China Corporate Center and Managing Director of Bertelsmann Asia Investments, Annabelle Long prevailed over several hundred nominees from many noted venture capital firms in China.

CBN Weekly used “Investor Rank”, a selecting principle similar to Google’s “Page Rank” for ranking search results. The key criterion in Investor Rank is not revenue from past investments, but the connections and degree of mutual trust among the VCs. Here, Annabelle Long had very convincing scores down the line. The specific indicators considered in the “Investors Top 50” ranking were the VC portfolio and the continuity of investment in the portfolio. Other criteria included the innovativeness of the projects or industries the candidates invested in.

The Bertelsmann Asia Investment fund, for one, has kept investing in attractive and innovative holdings since it was founded in 2008, mostly in Education, Training and New Media, and Business Process Outsourcing. Annabelle Long and her team managed to identify interesting investment objects with considerable growth potential.

They include Secoo, a second-hand luxury goods circulation platform that has sites both online and offline. The platform caters to two major trends in modern-day China: the booming demand for luxury goods on the one hand, and rapid growth in e-commerce on the other. Another project that sparked BAI’s interest is Chuanke, an education marketplace for a wide range of offerings from tutoring to vocational and professional training and even personal development and lifestyle courses. Finally, the BAI team has high hopes for UXP, a leading online used car examination auction platform that gives potential buyers the option of taking a closer look – at least virtually – at the cars on offer.

CBN Weekly is a member of China Business Networks (CBN). With activities extending to radio, television, daily newspapers, weekly magazines, websites and opinion research institutes, CBN is China’s largest provider of financial and business information. Its holding company is the Shanghai Media Group, the country’s second-biggest media group.

Annabelle Long has a great affinity for the media, having begun her career as a news anchor for the Chengdu Peoples Broadcasting Group – after earning her Bachelor from the University of Electronic Science and Technology in Chengdu and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business – in 1994. Two years later, she became a producer and news anchor for the Sichuan Broadcasting Group. After various positions in the U.S., she joined Fremantle Media and Random House in New York in 2005 under the Bertelsmann Entrepreneurs Program. In 2007 she was appointed to head Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments in Beijing, and the very next year, Long was named Managing Director Bertelsmann Asia Investments (BAI).