How China’s richest woman Yang Huiyan ost two thirds of her fortune as markets crashed
For China’s richest woman, the global financial crisis has been nothing short of a disaster.
By David Eimer in Beijing 11 October 2008
Yang Huiyan has watched her fortune lose more than two-thirds of its value as China’s stock markets plummeted along with those in the west. But such is the scale of the 26-year-old heiress’s wealth, that she is still the third richest person in China and remains Asia’s wealthiest woman.
The fortunes of China’s super-rich have diminished on average by 22 per cent since last year, according to the annual Hurun Report on the 1000 richest people in China, published last week. Mrs Yang, though, has suffered more than most. Her 70 per cent stake in the property company founded by her father was worth more than £8 billion in October 2007; now it has shrunk to below £3 billion.
She is one of China’s 101 billionaires, but is one of the very few who isn’t self-made. Mrs Yang was unknown until early last year, when her father Yang Guoqiang transferred the majority of his shares in his company Country Garden Holdings to her, just before the company went public in Hong Kong. She was instantly elevated to celebrity status in China and video of her opulent 2006 wedding ceremony was leaked to the internet.
But little is known about her or her publicity-shy father. Mr Yang was a rice farmer and part-time bricklayer in Shunde in southern China’s Guangdong Province, until he started buying up and developing vacant lots of land. He founded his company in 1997 and seems to have groomed Mrs Yang, the second of his three daughters, to play a part in the family business from an early age.
By the time she was a teenager, she was attending board meetings. Like most children of the rich in China, she went to university overseas, graduating from Ohio State University in the US in 2003. In late 2006, she married the son of a top official from the north-east after meeting him on a blind date.
Now, she sits on Country Garden’s board and works in the company’s logistics division.
But her status as the country’s richest female hasn’t made her a heroine for Chinese women. The fact that she inherited her fortune means most regard her simply as a very lucky woman with a very rich father.
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How China’s richest woman Yang Huiyan ost two thirds of her fortune as markets crashed
For China’s richest woman, the global financial crisis has been nothing short of a disaster.
By David Eimer in Beijing
11 October 2008
Yang Huiyan has watched her fortune lose more than two-thirds of its value as China’s stock markets plummeted along with those in the west. But such is the scale of the 26-year-old heiress’s wealth, that she is still the third richest person in China and remains Asia’s wealthiest woman.
The fortunes of China’s super-rich have diminished on average by 22 per cent since last year, according to the annual Hurun Report on the 1000 richest people in China, published last week. Mrs Yang, though, has suffered more than most. Her 70 per cent stake in the property company founded by her father was worth more than £8 billion in October 2007; now it has shrunk to below £3 billion.
She is one of China’s 101 billionaires, but is one of the very few who isn’t self-made. Mrs Yang was unknown until early last year, when her father Yang Guoqiang transferred the majority of his shares in his company Country Garden Holdings to her, just before the company went public in Hong Kong. She was instantly elevated to celebrity status in China and video of her opulent 2006 wedding ceremony was leaked to the internet.
But little is known about her or her publicity-shy father. Mr Yang was a rice farmer and part-time bricklayer in Shunde in southern China’s Guangdong Province, until he started buying up and developing vacant lots of land. He founded his company in 1997 and seems to have groomed Mrs Yang, the second of his three daughters, to play a part in the family business from an early age.
By the time she was a teenager, she was attending board meetings. Like most children of the rich in China, she went to university overseas, graduating from Ohio State University in the US in 2003. In late 2006, she married the son of a top official from the north-east after meeting him on a blind date.
Now, she sits on Country Garden’s board and works in the company’s logistics division.
But her status as the country’s richest female hasn’t made her a heroine for Chinese women. The fact that she inherited her fortune means most regard her simply as a very lucky woman with a very rich father.
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