The past few years have not been great for China’s wealthy, particularly those who built their fortunes in the country’s once hot real estate market.
Data show that Chinese billionaire Hui Kayan, chairman China Evergrande Real Estate Development CompanyHe lost more than 93% of his wealth, according to the Bloomberg Agency’s index of the world’s wealthy.
Once the second-richest person in Asia, the fortune of Hui has fallen from $42 billion at its peak in 2017 to about $3 billion today, the agency said.
Evergrande, China’s largest debt developer with $300 billion in debt, has been at the center of the country’s real estate woes since 2021. Hui, also known as Xjian, used his personal wealth to prop up his beleaguered company, and fSelling homes and private jets.
But that wasn’t enough, as Evergrande defaulted on its US dollar bonds in December 2021 after struggling for months to raise cash to pay off creditors, suppliers and investors. Over the past year, the company has failed to implement its initial debt restructuring plan, which has led to more concerns about its future.
The company is one of the largest real estate developers in China, with about 200,000 employees, and during the year 2020 it was able to achieve sales of more than $110 billion. It also owns more than 1,300 real estate development projects in more than 280 Chinese cities, according to CNN.
Analysts have long worried that a collapse of Evergrande could spell broader risks for China’s real estate market, hurting homeowners and the broader financial system. Real estate and related industries account for up to 30% of the Chinese state’s gross domestic product.
But Hui isn’t the only one who has witnessed massive wealth destruction recently. Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and Twitter, has become the first person to lose $200 billion of his wealth over the past year, according to Bloomberg last month. But the bulk of Elon Musk’s wealth is tied up in Tesla, which has seen its shares drop 65% in 2022.