In 1993, Guangdong Nenking Real Estate Development Co., Ltd founded. It was the predecessor of Nenking Group.
On 28 March 1998, Nenking Holdings Group Co., Ltd founded.
In 2010, Nenking acquired Shaanxi men's basketball club and named it the "Long-Lions".[3][4]
On 12 August 2016, Hong Kong sports powerhouse "Eastern Sports Club" announced that Nenking got the title sponsorship of the Club", which including Football Team and Basketball Team.[5] "Eastern" was facing a financial crisis before this and Nenking, acting as the white knight, poured around 30 million HK$ into "Eastern".[6]
On 7 March 2017, "Rupert Hoogewerf's Global Rich List 2017" released. Nenking's founder and chairman Zhong Naixiong was on the list for the first time for 1.5 billion US$ (≈ 10.5 billion CN¥) wealth, ranking 1479.[7][8]
In April 2020, Nenking Group officially became the owner of the Football Club Sochaux-Montbéliard, one of the founding members of the French League.[15][16] "This sale to the group whose founding president is Mr. Zhong Naixiong comes in accordance with the agreements previously made with Ledus" and Frankie Yau become president.
At the time, the club's newly-appointed Executive Director General Samuel Laurent said Nenking Group chairman Zhong Naixiong wanted to restore the club's status as a top-tier team in "three or four years".
During the 2022/2023 season, the club faced financial difficulties and needed a capital injection from Nenking in order to remain in the French Ligue 2. In July 2023, Nenking announced that they wouldn't inject capital and the DNCG (the organization responsible for monitoring and overseeing the accounts of professional association football clubs in France) relegated Sochaux to National (French Football 3rd Division) due to their financial problems. The club now faces a potential Bankruptcy. As a result, the FC Sochaux-Montbelliard would lose its professional football club status and would be relegated to the 6th Division. [17]
While Romain Peugeot, the great-grandson of the club's founder, had concluded an agreement for a takeover offer allowing the group to remain a 33% shareholder of FC Sochaux-Montbelliard,[18] Nenking did not respect his commitment to pay the 4 million euros planned.[19] The objective of the operation was to avoid the bankruptcy of the club and to allow it to return to the French Ligue 2 championship.
The club was founded nearly a century ago by French automobile company Peugeot and they won the top division league title in the 1934–35 and 1937–38 seasons, the French League Cup in 2004 and the Coupe de France, the country's premier knockout cup competition, in 2007. [20]
The Nenking company sold FC Sochaux on 25 August after causing a chaotic management situation that almost led to the demise of a club that was almost a hundred years old.
References
^集团概况 [General Situation] (in Chinese (China)). Nenking Group. Retrieved 2018-08-10.
^业务板块 [Business Segments] (in Chinese (China)). Nenking Group. Retrieved 2018-08-10.
^ ab陕西男篮主场正式搬至佛山 与艾弗森接触力邀加盟 [Shaanxi men's basketball team moved to Foshan, inviting Allen Iverson to join] (in Chinese (China)). Retrieved 2018-08-10.
^ ab陕西男篮南迁佛山 主场定在禅城区岭南明珠体育馆 [Shaanxi men's basketball team moved southward to Foshan, basing in Lingnan Pearl Gymnasium, Chancheng District]. Southern Metropolis Daily (in Chinese (China)). Retrieved 2018-08-10.
^【港超】內地企業南海能興入主 東方易名東方龍獅 [Nanhai Nenking took the main sponsorship, changing Eastern's name to "Eastern Long-Lions"]. Hong Kong 01 (in Chinese (Hong Kong)). 2018-08-03. Retrieved 2018-08-10.
^白武士鍾乃雄HK足球有價值 [White knight Zhong Naixiong: HK football has its value]. Oriental Daily News (in Chinese (Hong Kong)). 2016-11-22. Retrieved 2018-08-17.
