China’s Former Richest Woman Sees 84% Wealth Plunge, Company Nears Crisis Point
Yang Huiyan — once Asia’s wealthiest woman — has lost more of her wealth than any billionaire since June 2021 as China‘s top property developer, Country Garden, grapples with a debt crisis.
Yang’s net worth has plummeted by 84%, or $28.6 billion, since its peak in June 2021, Bloomberg reported. The 41-year-old’s net worth is now $5.5 billion, per Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.
These losses come as Country Garden missed interest payments on two US-dollar-denominated bonds, according to various media reports, including a Reuters report on Wednesday. The company now has a 30-day grace period to avoid an official default.
The company’s Hong Kong-listed stocks have plunged by 20.4% since Monday. Yang derives much of her wealth from a 52.6% stake in the company, per a Monday report by the ratings agency Moody’s. She saw her wealth tank by about $490 million on Tuesday.
Before taking over as majority shareholder of the company from her father in 2007, Yang graduated from Ohio State University as part of the class of 2003 with a bachelor’s degree in marketing and logistics.
But Country Garden’s fortunes have waned since. The company remains China’s biggest property developer in sales, but its market value has more than halved since the start of the year, according to The New York Times.
In July, the company reported sales of 128.76 billion yuan, or about $17.8 billion, in the first six months of the year, marking a 30% decrease compared to the same period last year.
Yang, who became China’s richest woman at 25 after the company’s IPO, lost the spot of Asia’s richest woman in August 2022 to Savitri Jindal. Jindal, India’s richest woman, is the chairperson emeritus of the Indian conglomerate O.P. Jindal Group, per Bloomberg.
On July 30, Yang announced that she was giving away 55% of her shares in Country Garden to a charity founded by her younger sister in a payout valued at $826 million, per Bloomberg.
Source: Markets.businessinsider.com