I always thought its a Chinese...
Mukesh Ambani retained his position as India’s richest person with an estimated fortune more than double that of China’s wealthiest individual, according to surveys published today.
Ambani, the owner of India’s largest company by market value, is worth $27 billion, Forbes India said today in an e- mailed statement. Hangzhou Wahaha Group Co. Chairman Zong Qinghou topped the list in China with $12 billion, according to the Hurun Rich List.
Zong’s and Ambani’s diverging paths to ultra-wealth reflect China’s rise in just over three decades from a country that banned private enterprise to the world’s second-largest economy. Ambani and his brother Anil, who is India’s sixth-richest person according to Forbes, inherited Reliance Industries Ltd. from their father Dhirubhai. Zong left school at 18 and built Wahaha into a company with 30 billion yuan ($4.5 billion) of assets and 30,000 employees.
“In terms of the rich people here in China, the thing that’s unusual is that 30 years ago there really weren’t people of great wealth,” Bill Gates, the world’s second-richest man, said at a press conference in Beijing today. “So what you have is first-generation fortunes.”
Zong rose from No. 12 on last year’s Hurun list. Wang Chuanfu of Warren Buffett-backed BYD Co., the No. 1 in 2009, slipped to 12th as his fortune shrank 10 percent to $4.6 billion.
Gates, Buffett
Ambani’s fortune decreased by $5 billion from a year earlier as his company’s shares fell amid lower refining margins and stagnant gas production from India’s biggest field. Arcelor Mittal Chairman Lakshmi Mittal ranked second with $26.1 billion, followed by Wipro Ltd. Chairman Azim Premji at $17.6 billion, according to Forbes India.
Forbes and Hurun published their lists as Microsoft Corp. co-founder Gates and Buffett, the world’s third-richest person, are in Beijing for meetings with Chinese business leaders to raise awareness of philanthropy in China.
Buffett, the chairman of Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc., has donated the bulk of his fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and makes annual gifts to charities seeking to ease hunger, boost education in the U.S. and promote access to abortions.
Gates may attend a similar meeting in India in 2011.
“We may do an event in India but again, just a discussion to hear what’s going on there and I’m sure we’ll find out that there are a lot of similarities and a lot of differences,” Gates said.
New Billionaires
Zong, 65, founded Wahaha, which means “laughing child” in Chinese, in 1987. He built the company, formerly the sales department in a school-run business in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, into a nationwide food and beverage maker, fighting dozens of lawsuits against former partner Groupe Danone SA along the way. Wahaha isn’t publicly traded.
Shan Qining, a spokesman for Wahaha, said Zong is traveling abroad and isn’t available to comment.
Shenzhen Hepalink Pharmaceutical Co. Chairman Li Li and his family were ranked the second-richest in China with $6 billion, followed by Nine Dragons Paper Holdings Ltd.’s Zhang Yin with $5.6 billion, according to the Hurun report’s website.
Like Zong, Li and Zhang founded their companies.
“The marked difference (from India) is partly due to the different historical and cultural backgrounds and traditions in the two countries,” said Dong Xian’an, an economist at Shanghai-based Industrial Securities Co.
Rupert Hoogewerf, who founded the Hurun Report, said in an interview today that the organization identified 400 new Chinese individuals with fortunes exceeding 1 billion yuan this year, partly driven by stock sales on the ChiNext board for startup companies that opened 11 months ago in Shenzhen.
“We’ve seen ChiNext create a whole lot of new wealth that we didn’t even know existed,” Hoogewerf said.
Mukesh Ambani retained his position as India’s richest person with an estimated fortune more than double that of China’s wealthiest individual, according to surveys published today.
Ambani, the owner of India’s largest company by market value, is worth $27 billion, Forbes India said today in an e- mailed statement. Hangzhou Wahaha Group Co. Chairman Zong Qinghou topped the list in China with $12 billion, according to the Hurun Rich List.
Zong’s and Ambani’s diverging paths to ultra-wealth reflect China’s rise in just over three decades from a country that banned private enterprise to the world’s second-largest economy. Ambani and his brother Anil, who is India’s sixth-richest person according to Forbes, inherited Reliance Industries Ltd. from their father Dhirubhai. Zong left school at 18 and built Wahaha into a company with 30 billion yuan ($4.5 billion) of assets and 30,000 employees.
“In terms of the rich people here in China, the thing that’s unusual is that 30 years ago there really weren’t people of great wealth,” Bill Gates, the world’s second-richest man, said at a press conference in Beijing today. “So what you have is first-generation fortunes.”
Zong rose from No. 12 on last year’s Hurun list. Wang Chuanfu of Warren Buffett-backed BYD Co., the No. 1 in 2009, slipped to 12th as his fortune shrank 10 percent to $4.6 billion.
Gates, Buffett
Ambani’s fortune decreased by $5 billion from a year earlier as his company’s shares fell amid lower refining margins and stagnant gas production from India’s biggest field. Arcelor Mittal Chairman Lakshmi Mittal ranked second with $26.1 billion, followed by Wipro Ltd. Chairman Azim Premji at $17.6 billion, according to Forbes India.
Forbes and Hurun published their lists as Microsoft Corp. co-founder Gates and Buffett, the world’s third-richest person, are in Beijing for meetings with Chinese business leaders to raise awareness of philanthropy in China.
Buffett, the chairman of Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc., has donated the bulk of his fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and makes annual gifts to charities seeking to ease hunger, boost education in the U.S. and promote access to abortions.
Gates may attend a similar meeting in India in 2011.
“We may do an event in India but again, just a discussion to hear what’s going on there and I’m sure we’ll find out that there are a lot of similarities and a lot of differences,” Gates said.
New Billionaires
Zong, 65, founded Wahaha, which means “laughing child” in Chinese, in 1987. He built the company, formerly the sales department in a school-run business in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, into a nationwide food and beverage maker, fighting dozens of lawsuits against former partner Groupe Danone SA along the way. Wahaha isn’t publicly traded.
Shan Qining, a spokesman for Wahaha, said Zong is traveling abroad and isn’t available to comment.
Shenzhen Hepalink Pharmaceutical Co. Chairman Li Li and his family were ranked the second-richest in China with $6 billion, followed by Nine Dragons Paper Holdings Ltd.’s Zhang Yin with $5.6 billion, according to the Hurun report’s website.
Like Zong, Li and Zhang founded their companies.
“The marked difference (from India) is partly due to the different historical and cultural backgrounds and traditions in the two countries,” said Dong Xian’an, an economist at Shanghai-based Industrial Securities Co.
Rupert Hoogewerf, who founded the Hurun Report, said in an interview today that the organization identified 400 new Chinese individuals with fortunes exceeding 1 billion yuan this year, partly driven by stock sales on the ChiNext board for startup companies that opened 11 months ago in Shenzhen.
“We’ve seen ChiNext create a whole lot of new wealth that we didn’t even know existed,” Hoogewerf said.
