The era of multi-brand proliferation in China's auto industry is undergoing consolidation. Carmakers that had previously spun off brands and built separate teams to tell their individual stories in recent years are now gradually bringing them back under unified control. The strategy of "having many children to fight better" is being replaced by a "one group, one team" approach.

GEELY AUTO is the company that has moved the farthest in this wave of consolidation.

Business registration information shows that on June 9th, Zhejiang Zeekr Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. underwent a change, with Li Shufu stepping down as chairman and An Conghui resigning as legal representative. They were succeeded by GEELY AUTO Group CEO Gan Jiayue. Just four days prior, Lynk & Co Technology Co., Ltd. completed a similar handover, with An Conghui resigning as legal representative and chairman of Lynk & Co, succeeded again by Gan Jiayue.

Within a week, the legal authority over Geely's two major premium brands was consolidated into the hands of a single individual.

"This is a return to 'One Geely,' continuing the spirit of the Taizhou Declaration," a Geely representative responded on June 12th, stating that this change does not affect business operations.

In Geely's narrative, this is merely a routine conclusion. However, after this conclusion, the more difficult part is just beginning.

This handover held no surprises. When GEELY AUTO announced the privatization of Zeekr in May 2025, the new governance structure was already made public: An Conghui would become CEO of Geely Holding Group; Gan Jiayue would lead the merged GEELY AUTO Group, overseeing the Geely Galaxy and Zeekr Technology business units. Following Zeekr's delisting from the NYSE in December last year and its return to being a wholly-owned subsidiary of GEELY AUTO, this business registration change simply formalizes the authority and responsibilities decided a year ago onto the corporate entities.

Li Shufu has not exited the stage. He has only stepped down from his roles within the Zeekr operating entity; he remains Chairman of Geely Holding Group.

However, the choice of personnel itself carries a signal. Gan Jiayue joined Geely immediately after graduating from university in 2003, starting as a financial manager. He has managed the financial system and served as general manager of a procurement company, becoming Geely's first "post-80s" group CEO in 2021. His background in finance and supply chain aligns precisely with the core challenge of the latter half of this integration: strengthening cost control.

A Geely Holding Group vice chairman previously outlined synergy targets: saving billions in research and development costs, saving tens of billions more in procurement, and reducing both administrative and marketing expenses.

Following the merger of Zeekr and Lynk & Co, the R&D, procurement, and middle/back-office functions of the two brands are being integrated. Who leads this process will determine how deep the cuts can go.

What Gan Jiayue has taken on is Geely's most critical and must-not-fail business segment this year.

GEELY AUTO's sales target for 2026 is 3.45 million vehicles, with new energy vehicle sales expected to grow 32% year-on-year. However, the pressure is not evenly distributed among the brands: after the phasing out of purchase tax incentives, the Galaxy series, targeting the mass market, saw a 9.5% year-on-year decline in new energy sales in the first quarter, with entry-level demand being squeezed first. What supported GEELY AUTO's 17.5% gross margin in the first quarter were exports and premium models.

In other words, Geely's profits are increasingly reliant on the segment Gan Jiayue has just taken charge of.

The capital market has already credited this integration in advance. Since the beginning of this year, GEELY AUTO has recorded a gain of approximately 9.47%, making it the only one among ten major Hong Kong-listed automakers to see an increase, while the other nine, from BYD Company Limited to Seres Group, have all declined.

But the other side of this recognition is a more stringent evaluation standard. In the first quarter, GEELY AUTO's net profit attributable to shareholders fell 27% year-on-year, missing market expectations. Although core profit after excluding exchange gains/losses still grew, the cost pressures from the price war have spared no one. Gan Jiayue promised last year that post-integration, the group's overall efficiency would improve by over 5%. Investors will be checking this figure quarter by quarter.

Fortunately, Zeekr's current momentum is not bad. It delivered 34,377 vehicles in May, an 81.8% year-on-year increase, marking four consecutive months of both year-on-year and month-on-month growth, with the higher-priced 9-series and 8-series models accounting for nearly half. In comparison, Lynk & Co, which pursues volume, performed slightly less impressively, with May sales of 20,732 units, down 25% year-on-year, and its total sales for the first five months of this year also down 2% year-on-year.

However, targets are quietly being scaled back. In early 2025, Zeekr Technology Group proposed achieving sales exceeding one million units by 2026 and becoming the "BBA of China's new energy era." By this year, Zeekr's annual target is 300,000 vehicles, and Lynk & Co's is 400,000, totaling 700,000 units.

The crowdedness of the premium new energy market has exceeded expectations at that time. In May, both Harmony Smart Mobility and NIO Inc. had deliveries surpassing Zeekr's, with each competing for the same pool of users seeking vehicles priced above 300,000 yuan.

Reining in unrealistic slogans and spending money where it matters most is precisely the purpose of this integration.

A year ago, when the decision was made to merge Zeekr, a sentence from GEELY AUTO's Executive Director Gui Shengyue at a briefing succinctly captured the underlying reality of this integration: "Time waits for no one. The market no longer gives us room for error."