According to the annual Hurun rich list, Chinese property tycoon Wang Jianlin remains the nation’s wealthiest individual despite a 40 percent surge in wealth for his nearest rival, Alibaba founder Jack ma.
Dalian Wanda Group chairman Wang defended his top spot with a personal fortune of over $30 billion and fended off not only Ma, but also up and coming players like Baoneng's Yao Zhenhua and online gaming specialist Ding Lei of Netease.
The Hurun data on China’s wealthiest people is a good indicator of where money is being distributed in the communist country and highlights the growing financial power the nation’s billionaires are wielding, a trend that explains the recent surge in Chinese M&A activity across the world in the last few years.
Baoneng Group chairman Yao Zhenhua is the biggest mover and shaker on the rankings, with a meteoric 800 percent surge in his personal wealth to over $17 billion, taking him to third in the list. Yao has been fighting hard in a hostile takeover of the country’s biggest real estate developer, but trade is not where Yao made his fortune.
“We are seeing a new breed of wealth here in China,” says Stuart Poulson, Head of Corporate trading at Nikko-Desjardins Asset Management who oversee a $7 billion fund in the region. “These individuals are coming from a financial market background as opposed to the more traditional routes to the top, like manufacturing or exporting.”
“The country as a whole has to become more flexible to alternative income flows as materially the economy is slowing down as new government reforms come in. It’s all about the capital markets and other financial investments not just in China but overseas also, as we’ve seen with recent Chinese M&A activity in Germany,” Poulsen added.
The real estate developer on Yao’s portfolio is China Vanke Co Ltd and his wealth has grown as his stake in the company has increased; now becoming the largest single shareholder through Baoneng, who were a relatively unknown financial conglomerate previously.
The Hurun rich list revealed there are now nearly six hundred billionaires in China, with the world’s second largest economy now leading the U.S. in billionaires. The next target for China’s mega rich is to make it onto the global top twenty rankings, where they don’t have a single representative.
