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Jiang Xin / VCG via Getty Images
Mukesh Ambani’s two-year reign as the richest person in Asia has come to an end.
Chinese bottled water billionaire and vaccine investor Zhong Shanshan has surpassed the Indian businessman to become the richest man on the continent, Bloomberg reported.
Shanshan’s fortune grew by more than $ 70 billion in 2020, putting his net worth at an estimated $ 77.8 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. He is now the 11th richest person in the world after Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. And while Ambani may have lost top spot in Asia, he’s not far behind: Reliance Industries president is still worth $ 76.9 billion.
The sources of Shanshan’s wealth are his roles as president of two major companies: bottled water maker Nongfu Spring and Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy Enterprise, which makes hepatitis vaccines and test kits. Nongfu Spring reported revenue of $ 3.5 billion in 2019, while Shanshan’s pharmaceutical company reported revenue of $ 171 million, according to Bloomberg.
In 2020, Shanshan’s net worth soared when he went public with both of his companies. Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy Enterprise went public on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in April, and the $ 1.1 billion initial public offering of Nongfu Spring in Hong Kong in September made Shanshan China’s third richest person of the night. in the morning.
The 66-year-old billionaire is known as the “Lone Wolf” because he is not involved in politics or business groups, according to Bloomberg. He rarely makes public appearances or speaks to the media, according to Chinese publication The Paper.
“I’m a lonely person and I don’t care what my colleagues think or do,” Shanshan once said, according to the newspaper.
Sheldon Cooper / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images
Born in 1954 in Hangzhou, Shanshan attended China Open University and worked as a newspaper reporter in the 1980s before founding the pharmaceutical company Yangshengtang Co., Ltd. In 1996, he founded Nongfu Spring and currently directly manages sales. , the brand and human resources as CEO, according to his corporate biography.
While now Shanshan has knocked him out of first place, Ambani is still the twelfth richest person in the world. In 2020, his fortune grew by more than $ 18 billion by securing a $ 5.7 billion investment from Facebook in its mobile telecommunications service and a $ 775 million investment from US private equity firm KKR. Briefly, in August 2020, Ambani was the fourth richest person in the world.
Representatives for Shanshan’s companies and Ambani’s company did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment for this story.
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