Only one percent of China´s billionaires incarcerated - Rupert Hoogewerf

Rupert Hoogewerf

Guo Guangchang was the latest of China´s tycoons to get in trouble with the authorities. But the number of billionaires getting into the anti-corruption net is actually pretty low, says Hurun China Rich List founder Rupert Hoogewerf to Reuters. Lower than the number of government officials.

Reuters:

Just over one percent of Chinese billionaires identified by the Hurun Report as the country's richest over the past 17 years have been jailed, charged or even executed mainly for bribery, embezzlement or economy-related crimes, the publication said. 

On its website, the Hurun Report said 35 of the more than 3,000 billionaires that have featured on its annual Hurun Rich List, dubbed by local media as a "slaughter list" since it was launched in 1999, have run into trouble with the law. 

The biggest number - 11 - were real estate tycoons, the report said, followed by nine finance industry executives. Shanghai and Beijing were home to most of the offenders, who on average were sentenced to jail at age 47 for 10 years, the report added. 

Hurun founder Rupert Hoogewerf told Reuters the number of billionaire offenders was lower than the number of government officials and executives at state-owned enterprises who have been arrested or are under investigation for corruption.

More at Reuters.

Rupert Hoogewerf is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´ request form.

Are you looking for more stories by Rupert Hoogewerf? Check out this list.  

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Zhou Qunfei, China´s ambitious richest woman - Rupert Hoogewerf

Rupert Hoogewerf

Zhou Qunfei, owner of Lens Technology, now China´s richest woman, is yet another rags-to-richest story from China. Ambition and success have been on her path, tells Hurun China´s rich list founder Rupert Hoogewerf to the Australian Financial Review. Ambition and taking risk is what most rich women have in common, he says.

The Financial Review:

Rupert Hoogewerf, founder of Hurun, who has spent most of the past 18 years in China researching the country's wealthy, says driven, ambitious risk-takers such as Zhou, regardless of their gender, thrived as China opened up its economy to the world in the 1980s and 1990s, and all of a sudden people were allowed and even encouraged to make money. 

"Women here have a lot of ambition," says the 45-year-old, who studied Chinese language and history in Britain before moving to Shanghai and setting up Hurun, which has become the definitive source of fortune rankings in the country. 

"This group of women at the top is representative of a much larger base of women entrepreneurs underneath, and that's where the real story is. I don't feel that same sense of entrepreneurship among my female friends in Britain or even, in some cases, in the US. There is this sense that there is an opportunity to be seized here. Let's just go for it."... 

"It turned out that [she is] probably the most successful self-made woman in the world," Hoogewerf  says. "This is somebody that nobody in the world knew about this time last year. It's a phenomenal story."

More in the Australian Financial Review.

Rupert Hoogewerf is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´request form.

Are you looking for more stories by Rupert Hoogewerf? Check out this list.    

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Expected: more superrich despite economic slowdown - Rupert Hoogewerf

Rupert Hoogewerf

A slower economic growth and dropping stock markets is not stopping the growth of superrich, says Rupert Hoogewerf, the founder of the Hurun China Rich List, in the Korea Herald. He expects a record high of 450 Chinese dollar billionaires, up 26% from last year.

The Korea Herald:

The trend of going global among the Chinese superrich is strong even as the Chinese economy is slowing down, he noted. 

“When people talk about going global, actually it means they want to buy technology to give strategic advantage to their (second-biggest) market. They want to buy (global) brands to give strategic advantage domestically,” he said. 

China’s leading companies, driven by tech giants, have pushed for strategic merger and acquisition deals in many countries, including Korea, since 2010. For instance, Chinese Internet giant Tencent bought a 28 stake in CJ Games, a game unit of CJ Group, with rising demand for Korean tech and consumer brands in China. 

“The strategic investments overseas give Chinese companies access and understanding of global companies,” Hoogewerf said. 

At the individual level, Chinese rich people are also turning to overseas markets by purchasing properties across the world. 

According to Hoogewerf, the trend is based on concerns about the Chinese yuan’s value. “The yuan is quite strong, but maybe not so in the future. The Chinese rich try to hedge risks by diversifying their assets. This has driven a very interesting phenomenon. We’ve seen Chinese buy properties across the world. China is one of the biggest real estate buyers in the U.S. now,” he said. 

The top three destinations for Chinese individuals’ real estate acquisitions in North America are Los Angeles, Vancouver and New York. In Asia, they favor Hong Kong and Singapore. In Europe, London is the only target city for property purchases. Most of these places are English-speaking countries, but there are also emerging places like Korea’s Jejudo Island in non-English speaking countries. 

According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, the total area of land on Jejudo owned by Chinese investors rose to 8.34 square kilometers valued at around 233 million last year, up from 1.42 square kilometers in 2011. 

“The reason why Chinese people like Jejudo is because the island is only an hour’s flight from Shanghai. Plus, it has exposure to the international market. Even then, the property price in Jejudo is still very cheap,” he said. 

Despite worsening economic conditions in China, the wealth expert forecasts that Chinese rich will be able to create more wealth, backed by being one huge market. 

“The number of successful Chinese has continued to grow without a big impact from worsening economic conditions and the big stock market crash. It is very strange timing. I think this is because China is one big market,” he said. 

“The growth of Chinese firms comes from the expansion of their market. The reason why American companies are still doing well for more than 100 years is because they have a big enough market (to survive). China has a bigger market.”

More in the Korea Herald.

Rupert Hoogewerf is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´ request form.

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The upward mobility of Chinese wealth - Tom Doctoroff

Tom Doctoroff

Branding expert Tom Doctoroff explains how luxury shopping is expanding in China. Wealth is branded, unlike in the past. Most millionaires in China are self-made, and they are learning how to behave, he tells in GQ.

Tom Doctoroff is a speaker in the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers´ request form.   

Are you looking for more branding experts at the China Speakers Bureau? Check our latest list here.

China has most female billionaires, but it's not enough - Zhang Lijia

Zhang Lijia

Most seven out of ten self-made female billionaires are Chinese, says the Hurun rich list, and author Zhang Lijia explains in The Guardian why despite that achievement women entrepreneurs still have a long march to go.

Zhang Lijia:

Yet despite the impressive achievements, Chinese female entrepreneurs lag behind their male counterparts. Only 11% of the richest people in China are women; with women representing only about 20% of all entrepreneurs. 

It's true that in 1949, when Mao's Chinese Communists, took power, women were granted equal rights and opportunities. Yet some old habits die hard and the business world remains male-centred. 

Yet for women, the most pressing problems include participation in politics, which seriously lags behind other countries. Only 21.4% of the representatives in our parliament, the National People's Congress, are women, which is short of the 30% of female political participation set in 1995 by the UN, and a woman's promotion in the government too often still depends on her male bosses – who tend to give women subservient roles. 

So sadly, there's still a long march before women can truly hold up half of the sky.

More in The Guardian 

Zhang Lijia is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need her at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch or fill in our speakers' request form.

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Most wanted for China's rich: a foreign passport - Rupert Hoogewerf

No villa's, no expensive cars or another concubine, but a foreign passport tops the wishlist of China's wealthy, says Rupert Hoogewerf, founder of Hurun's Rich List to AP. An insurance p0licy for when things go wrong. AP:

There is also a yawning gap between rich and poor in China, which feeds a resentment that makes some of the wealthy uncomfortable. The country's uneven jump to capitalism over the last three decades has created dozens of billionaires, but China barely ranks in the top 100 on a World Bank list of countries by income per person. Getting a foreign passport is like "taking out an insurance policy," said Rupert Hoogewerf, who compiles the Hurun Rich List, China's version of the Forbes list. "If there is political unrest or suddenly things change in China -- because it's a big country, something could go wrong -- they already have a passport to go overseas. It's an additional safety net." Among the 20,000 Chinese with at least 100 million yuan ($15 million) in individual investment assets, 27 percent have already emigrated and 47 percent are considering it, according to a report by China Merchants Bank and U.S. consultants Bain & Co. published in April.

More in AP Rupert Hoogewerf is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.

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China's billionaires double - Rupert Hoogewerf

Rupert Hoogewerf

The number of billionaires in China (in US dollar terms) has doubled over the past two years, Hurun founder Rupert Hoogewerf told The Telegraph. The number of super rich is exploding according the the latest China Rich list. The Telegraph:

The Hurun rich list, which has been tracking China's tycoons since 1999, on Wednesday said it had counted 271 dollar billionaires in China last year, up from 130 in 2009.

China now has the second most billionaires in the world, after the United States with more than 400.

"The numbers are growing much faster than people expected," said Rupert Hoogewerf, the founder of the list, who added there could be the same number of billionaires again who are off his radar, keeping their assets as quiet as possible.

"In the past few weeks, I have also been speaking to a number of people who have cashed out of their first empires and are busy building their second," he said. "Many billionaires are also much more comfortable in their skins. The shareholder structures of their companies are becoming clearer and clearer and many of them are also co-opted into the political system." Mr Hoogewerf said part of the reason for the huge increase in the numbers of super-rich had been a wave of stock market flotations, despite the financial crisis.

More in The Telegraph Rupert Hoogewerf is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. Do you need him at your meeting or conference? Do get in touch.

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Retail galores among billionaires - Rupert Hoogewerf

Retail galores via Wikipedia

Real estate might be dominating much of the economic debate in China, retail seems increasingly a good way to become a billionaire as consumption grows, shows the latest Hurun Rich List, composed by Rupert Hoogewerf. Real estate is still the largest wealth creator, despite the change. He estimates that this year the number of billionaires in China is for the first time larger than in the US.

The Wall Street Journal lists some of the winners in retail: 

Take Zong Qinghou, the 65-year-old chairman of the China’s leading beverage company Hangzhou Wahaha Group, who rode the country’s thirst for bottled water, fruit juice and milk-tea to $12 billion in total assets and the top spot on Hurun’s list – up from number 12 last year. Domestic demand for food and beverages gave rise to four others who ranked in the country’s top 100 billionaires, including fifth richest Yan Bin, who owns the rights to sell energy drink Red Bull in China.

The food-and-beverage crowd aren’t the only ones prospering from the rise of the Chinese shopper. Of the 1,365 Chinese individuals worth over $150 million, Hurun says 95% earned their riches on the backs of domestic consumers.

Web users catapulted Robin Li Yanhong, the 42-year-old co-founder and chief executive of search engine Baidu, to fifth (tied with Yan at $5.3 billion). Ma Huateng, founder of Internet portal Tencent, trails only slightly behind with $4.7 billion. Meanwhile, Zhang Jindong, founder of household appliance retailer Suning, is positioned at seventh with $5 billion, thanks to a stronger market for washing machines and air conditioners.

Fatter wallets have also given the Chinese the chance to buy more clothing, helping to increase the wealth of apparel makers, such as Zhou Chengjian, founder of clothing retailer Metersbrowne, who hit number 25 with $3.5 billion, and Ding Shizhong, chairman of sporting goods company Anta, whose $3.1 billion put him at 37th.

More in the Wall Street Journal.

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Hurun by Fantake via Flickr

Rupert Hoogewerf is a speaker at the China Speakers Bureau. When you need him at your meeting or conference, do get in touch.

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