Shanghai’s Billionaires Owe Their Fortunes to Real Estate

Real estate investors, manufacturers and professional investors are the wealthiest people in Shanghai, according to Shanghai Wealth Report 2012, which tracks the wealth of China’s super-rich.

The report, which was published on Friday by Hurun Report and the Australia-based independent financial adviser Gao Fu Wealth Management detailed China’s biggest billionaires and the sources of their wealth.

Not surprisingly, the largest chunk of Shanghai’s super-rich made their bucks in the real estate industry. Comparing the billionaires by sources of wealth, thirty percent of the ciy’s high net worth individuals listed real estate as the source of their wealth, either as investors or developers, twenty-seven percent attributed their fortunes to manufacturing, and only fifteen percent claimed finance as their primary business.

Commenting on the importance of real estate to the city’s wealthy, Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman and chief researcher of the Hurun Report noted, “This year’s report shows that property is the biggest source of wealth in Shanghai, while globally, most wealth comes from professional investment.”

Despite its reputation as the nation’s business capital, Shanghai’s super-rich individuals account for 12.9 percent of the national total, ranking it third in China in terms of the number of rich and super-rich individuals. Beijing and Shenzhen ranked first and second respectively, with Beijing reporting 460,000 high net-worth individuals with assets worth 100 million yuan or more. (Wait a minute… I thought most people in Beijing worked for the government and had measly salaries. Oh yeah, never mind).

In case you are curious here are a few facts about Shanghai’s wealthy from the report:

• Shanghai has 370,000 people with assets of RMB 6 million or more, or one-in-65 people if you count the city’s popuulation as 23 million
• There are 140,000 people in Shanghai with more than RMB 10 million, an increase of 6.1 percent over 2011
• The city has 8,200 fortunate individuals with assets worth RMB 100 million
• And in case you are wondering who just tried to run you down with that Ferrari on Nanjing Lu, it is most likely one of Shanghai’s has 250 people with assets of RMB 2 billion or more.

Pig-feed king Liu Yongxing, chairman of East Hope Group, and Zhou Chengjian, head of local casual fashion brand Metersbonwe, are the richest individuals living in Shanghai, with personal fortunes of RMB 41 billion and RMB 32 billion respectively.

The top Shanghai real estate billionaires were number three ranked Zhang Zhirong of Glorious Property with assets of RMB 25.5 billion and Xu Rongmao of Shimao with assets of RMB 25 billion.