This Chinese Billionaire Has Lost Over 90% Of His Fortune

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The super-wealthy in China have not had a good few years, especially those who made their fortunes in the once-hot real estate market. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Hui Ka Yan's net worth, the chairman of the real estate developer China Evergrande, has decreased by about 93%. Hui was formerly the second-richest person in Asia, but according to Bloomberg, his wealth has decreased from $42 billion, when it peaked in 2017, to just $3 billion.

With $300 billion in liabilities, Evergrande is China's most indebted developer and has been at the center of the country's real estate problems since 2021. Selling his homes and private planes, Hui, also known as Xu Jiayin in Mandarin, utilized his money to support his struggling business. However, that was far from enough, and Evergrande was forced to default on its US dollar notes in December 2021 after frantically trying to find the money for months to pay back investors, creditors, and suppliers. The company's failure to deliver its initial debt restructuring plan the previous year raised more questions about its survival. Evergrande is enormous; it employed approximately 200,000 people in 2020, generated more than $110 billion in revenue, and controlled more than 1,300 developments spread across more than 280 cities.

For a long time, analysts have expressed concern that the failure of Evergrande could lead to greater risks for the Chinese real estate market, harming homeowners and the larger financial system. Up to 30% of the GDP is generated by the real estate industry and related businesses. Hui isn't the only one who has recently witnessed significant financial destruction, though. According to Bloomberg last month, Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and Twitter, has become the first person to ever lose $200 billion in wealth. The majority of Musk's fortune is invested in Tesla, whose shares fell 65% in 2022.