Savitri Jindal of India, who has a fortune worth $11.3 billion, surpassed Yang Huiyan on Friday on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
As China’s real estate crisis hits the country’s developers, including her Country Garden Holdings Co., Yang Huiyan is no longer the wealthiest lady in Asia.
India’s Savitri Jindal, who has a wealth of $11.3 billion thanks to her conglomerate Jindal Group, which is active in industries including metals and power generation, surpassed Yang on Friday in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. She also lost ground to another Chinese mogul Fan Hongwei, whose chemical-fiber company Hengli Petrochemical Co. is the source of his wealth.
Yang, who became one of the youngest millionaires on the earth in 2005 after inheriting her father’s interest in the real estate firm, has experienced a spectacular collapse. She has held the title of richest woman in Asia for the last five years, which reflects the quick expansion of China’s real estate market.
Her fortune has decreased by more than half this year to $11 billion, and last week, when her Country Garden, China’s largest property developer, announced that it needed to seek equity at a discount, the stock fell to its lowest level since 2016, the drop accelerated. About 60 percent of Country Garden and a 43 percent share in its management-services division are owned by Yang, who is now in her early forties.
Jindal, 72, is the 10th richest individual in India’s population of 1.4 billion and the richest lady in the country. Shortly after her husband, the company’s founder OP Jindal, died in a helicopter accident in 2005, she was appointed chairwoman of the Jindal Group. The corporation also works in cement, energy, and infrastructure. It is India’s third-largest steel producer.
In recent years, Jindal’s net worth has fluctuated significantly. After the Covid-19 pandemic caused a drop in value to $3.2 billion in April 2020, it rose to $15.6 billion in April 2022 as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Fan, 55, has also suffered a decline in her wealth this year, but she has fared better than some other Chinese billionaires. It exemplifies the breadth of her corporate empire, which began as a state-owned textile plant in Wujiang, in the eastern Jiangsu province, that went bankrupt.
Fan, an accountant by trade, and her husband Chen Jianhua founded Hengli Group in 1994. The company then expanded into polyester, petrochemicals, oil refining, and tourism. Last year, the company generated revenue of 732.3 billion yuan ($109 billion). The Bloomberg wealth index pegs Chen’s net worth at $6.4 billion.
(Source: Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index)
Prasanta Patnaik