Asia’s once-richest woman lost 84% of her wealth — more than any billionaire since the COVID-19 pandemic — as China’s property sector teeters on yet another crisis.
Wealth-X; Country Garden Danga Bay/Facebook; Shayanne Gal/Business Insider
Yang Huiyan, the chair of Chinese property giant Country Garden, lost about $29 billion of her wealth since June 2021.
According to Bloomberg, she lost $490 million on Tuesday alone as her company missed interest payments.
Country Garden’s sales plummeted by 30% year-on-year in the first six months of 2023.
Yang Huiyan — once Asia’s wealthiest woman — has lost more of her wealth than any billionaire since June 2021, as China’s top property developer Country Garden grapples with a debt crisis.
Since its peak in June 2021, chairperson Yang’s net worth has plummeted by 84%, or $28.6 billion, Bloomberg reported. The 41-year-old’s net worth is now $5.5 billion, per Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index.
These losses come as Country Garden missed interest payments on two US-dollar-denominated bonds, according to various media reports, including a Reuters report on Wednesday. The company now has a 30-day grace period to avoid an official default.
The Foshan-based company’s Hong Kong-listed stocks have plunged by 20.4% since Monday. Yang — who derives much of her wealth from a 52.6% stake in the company, per a Monday report by ratings agency Moody’s seen by Insider — saw her wealth tank by about $490 million on Tuesday alone.
Before taking over as majority shareholder of the company from her father in 2007, Yang graduated from Ohio State University as part of the class of 2003 with a bachelor’s degree in marketing and logistics.
But Country Garden’s fortunes have waned since. The company remains China’s biggest property developer in sales, but its market value has more than halved since the start of the year, according to the New York Times.
In July, the company reported sales of 128.76 billion yuan, or $17.8 billion, in the first six months of the year, marking a 30% decrease compared to the same period last year.
Yang — who became China’s richest woman at 25 after the company’s IPO — lost the spot of Asia’s richest woman in August 2022 to Savitri Jindal. Jindal is India’s richest woman and chairperson emeritus of the Indian conglomerate O.P. Jindal Group, per Bloomberg.
On July 30, Yang announced that she was giving away 55% of her shares in Country Garden to a charity founded by her younger sister in a payout then valued at $826 million, per Bloomberg.
Country Garden and Yang Huiyan did not respond to requests for comment sent by Insider.