BEIJING: China’s richest man saw his fortune balloon by nearly $17 billion — a sum larger than the GDP of Iceland — in the past year, business magazine Forbes said Monday.
Wang Jianlin, founder of real estate and entertainment conglomerate Wanda Group, saw his wealth rocket from $13.2bn to $30bn in the publisher’s 2015 China Rich List.
The windfall, which came despite sluggish growth in the world’s second-largest economy, was driven by the flotations of two of his company’s subsidiaries — even though he lost $3.6bn in a single day during China’s market turmoil this summer.
“It’s good to have money,” Wang said in a brief appearance at the announcement of the ranking.
At his average rate of accumulation last year he would have become more than $200,000 wealthier during his seven minutes on the stage.
The son of a Red Army captain, Wang was himself a soldier before he founded Wanda in the 1980s, building it up with military discipline. Its website says it is Asia’s largest private property owner.
Published in Dawn, October 27th, 2015
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