On 11th April, Tianhai Investment, an A-share listed company of HNA, announced that it intends to purchase 100% equity of Beijing Dangdang Information Technology Co., Ltd. and 100% equity of Beijing Dangdang Kewen E-commerce Co., Ltd. by issuing shares and paying cash. The total price of about 7.5 billion yuan.

Cao Lei, director of the China Electronic Commerce Research Center, said in an interview that the reasons for HNA’s high-priced acquisition of Dangdang can be considered from three aspects. First of all, Hainan Airlines, as a traditional enterprise, has the need for the transformation of the Internet. It needs a comprehensive e-commerce platform such as Dangdang as a carrier. Secondly, HNA has diversified industrial resources from tourism, hotels, and cross-border supply chains. Dangdang has hundreds of millions of registered users and tens of millions of active users. If it can activate user resources, it can be used with HNA. The effective combination of industrial resources will produce great value. In addition, from the perspective of a listed company, the acquisition of Dangdang will have a strong conceptual stimulus for the capital market.