A ranking of billionaires showed today, Thursday, that the wealth of the richest woman in Asia has halved due to… Real estate crisis in China which severely weakened the sector.
Chinese-born Yang Huiyan’s fortune was worth $23.7 billion last year, but is now estimated at $11.3 billion, according to Bloomberg’s billionaire rankings.
Yang Huiyan is the major shareholder in Country Garden, one of the largest developers in China, which last year recorded the highest revenue in the sector despite the real estate crisis.
Some exhausted groups are struggling during the crisis for their survival, including the “Evergrand”, which is under a large debt of nearly 300 billion dollars.
Country Garden is in relatively better financial health, but the group is nonetheless trying to increase liquidity as final payment maturities approach. However, markets viewed the group’s sale of new shares on Wednesday to raise funds as a sign of weakness.
Yesterday, Country Garden shares lost 15% of their value on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, reducing Yang Huiyan’s personal fortune.
According to official media information, the forty-year-old Chinese has become a billionaire since she inherited shares from her father, the founder of Country Garden, in 2005.
The reform of China’s housing system in 1998, which created a real market for real estate, led to a boom in this sector, which benefits from social norms that make owning property a prerequisite for marriage.
But the massive indebtedness of real estate developers was seen in recent years by the government as a major threat to the country’s economy and financial system.
To reduce the sector’s indebtedness, Beijing has gradually tightened the conditions for real estate developers to obtain credit loans since 2020, which has led to the drying up of funding sources for groups already heavily indebted.
This was followed by a wave of defaults, including by the Evergrande Group. The Chinese group, a former leader in the real estate market, is expected to reveal the features of its restructuring plan in the coming days.