Evergrande Group’s founder Hui Ka Yan is no longer a billionaire – From $42 billion to less than $1 billion

Hui Ka Yan, who’s also known as Xu Jiayin, is the founder and chair of the Chinese property giant, Evergrande. Unfortunately, he’s no longer a billionaire, and his net worth has dropped to $979 million. The shares of his debt-laden real estate firm are now trading at just HK$0.24 (3 cents) each. Since its trading resumption in late August, shares of China’s Evergrande have plummeted by 86 percent.

Billionaire Hui was once Asia’s second-richest person with a net worth of $42 billion in 2017. However, his wealth has drastically declined by 98% since then. Currently, his company is the most indebted developer in the world and is facing a court hearing in Hong Kong on October 30th. The hearing is regarding a petition to liquidate the firm.

In an unexpected turn of events, Ding Yumei, Hui’s wife, was listed as a third-party independent in an August filing, implying that a divorce and property division was happening. Ding Yumei possesses a 6 percent share in Evergrande, amounting to roughly $24 million, through a vehicle established in the British Virgin Islands and fully owned by her since Evergrande was listed in Hong Kong in 2009.

Who’s Hui Ka Yan?

He was born into a destitute country family in 1958, and his youth was influenced by the Great Leap Forward – an initiative started by Mao Zedong to expedite the industrialization of a Chinese economy that relied heavily on agriculture, yet resulted in a famine that resulted in mass deaths.

Mr Hui’s mother passed away from sepsis when he was only eight months old, so he was brought up by his grandmother in a village in the middle of Henan province.

After completing his university studies in 1982, he worked as a steel technician for the following ten years. Later, he took a job as a salesman for a real estate company in Guangzhou, southern China. This is where he established Evergrande in 1996.

As China’s economy flourished, the company grew quickly by taking on a great deal of debt.

Having served as a Communist Party member for over thirty years, in 2008 Mr Hui was selected to join the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a prestigious group of government personnel and corporate executives that serves as China’s highest council for advice.

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