Bellerbys Economics - Mr Stephenson

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Top of the Class

Who is China's richest person?

According to Forbes magazine, it is 26-year-old Yang Huiyan from Hong Kong whose father owns Country Garden Holdings. Huiyan has been working for her father as a property developer in the booming Shanghai property market. It's unclear yet whether the recent credit restrictions in Shanghai will damage her position this year. Meanwhile, however, she is worth a staggering $17 billion (yes, that's billion not million - nine zeros everyone), giving her a DAILY income of $3 million.

Her father, now 53 and taking a backseat in the company, started life as a bricklayer in Guangdong province.

In second place is last years's winner, Zhang Yin, another woman, and the owner of the Nine Dragons Paper company. She is worth $10 billion.

In third place is Xu Rongmao of the Shimao Group which builds luxury estates - in fact, he's a billionnaire who builds homes for millionnaires!

Notice how investing in property is a pretty safe way to get rich - or at least as safe as it can be. Firstly, you save money by not paying rent; then as the property value rises, you can borrow more money to invest in more property. Also, you can use your property value as surety against a bank loan which will allow you to invest in even more property - or a business. Finally, there's the very lucrative re-insurance business where you use the value of your property as a guarantee against insurance deals - it's unlikely it will be ever required but you get paid a dividend for providing the service.

1 Comments:

  • Yes,that is true.Yang Huiyan is a major shareholder of Country Garden with 59.5% of shares.She might become the richest person in the Chinese mainland, exceeding Zhang Yin.

    By Blogger chenpeifang, at 11:00 am  

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