Recently, the Times released the 2021 British rich list.
In addition to a brief interpretation of this rich list, we will focus on the performance of Chinese on the rich list in this article to see which Chinese are on the list.
Overall, the list shows that in the past year, despite widespread economic turmoil caused by the pandemic around the world, the wealth of Britain's wealthiest group has increased by more than a fifth.
According to the data, the wealth of UK billionaires has grown by 21.7% (up around £106.5 billion) over the past year to £597.2 billion.
The number of billionaires in the UK also broke records, reaching 171.
At the same time, as shown in the chart below, the threshold for entering the top 50 and top 100 is also rising year by year.
According to the Times analysis, looking at the 20 most common sources of wealth on the wealth list, the first is real estate, finance ranks second, and hedge funds rank third.
After the outbreak of the epidemic in 2020, the retail and Internet industries ushered in a positive situation, ranking sixth and seventh in this year's list.
On the British side, Sir Leonard Blavatnik, a Ukrainian-born and London-based billionaire, became the new richest man in britain this year, with a personal fortune of around £23 billion.
In 2013, he sold his stake in Russia's TNK-BP oil company, earning £4.93 billion.
Blavanik's business empire also includes Warner Music, which sold his stake for £1.37 billion in 2020 after Warner Music went public in the US.
In second place, Homegrown Property Developers David and Simon Reuben have seen their total assets increase by £5.46 billion to £21.46 billion over the past year.
In third place are Indian billionaires Sri and Gopi Hinduja, whose wealth has grown by £1 billion and are mainly in the real estate, healthcare and oil and gas industries.
After talking about the overall situation of the British rich list, let's take a look at the Chinese on the list.
According to the Times, Li Deyi, a businessman from Hong Kong, China, and his family have accumulated a wealth of 2.731 billion pounds because they have invested in real estate in London for many years, ranking 60th in the total list of britain's richest people, ranking first among chinese.
It was followed by Christina Wang and her family, who have invested in retail and hospitality in London for 20 years and have a fortune of £1 billion, ranking 165th overall, ranking second among the Chinese.
The third place is the Chinese financier Huo Yan, who founded a wealth management company in London for 16 years, with a total wealth of 748 million pounds, ranking 217th, ranking third among Chinese.
In addition, today we will also talk about the first Chinese in history to enter the British rich list - Ye Huanrong.
Next we say one by one:
1. Li Deyi: One of the largest private landowners in London
Hong Kong businessman Lee Tak Yi and other families are the richest Chinese in the UK with a net worth of 2.731 billion pounds, ranking 60th in the wealth list.
Li Deyi is also the only Chinese to enter the British real estate rich list.
Lee Tak Yee is the younger son of Lee Man Wah, the founder of Heng Fung Hotel In Jotun, Hong Kong, and is now a major shareholder of Heng Fung Hotel and Heng Fung Centre in Hong Kong, with a 90% stake.
The Lee family holds more than 300 properties in hong kong, Tokyo, Geneva and London.
It is worth noting that Li Deyi has a large number of real estate assets in the UK, and in London alone, he owns more than 200 properties, which is also an important reason for him to reach the top of the British Chinese rich list.
In 1994, Lee acquired the historic Langham Estate for £51 million, owning 13.8 acres of property in London's West End, stretching from Oxford Street to Oxford Street to euston Road in the north, which were originally the territory of the Earls of Oxford in London.
Lord Howard de Walden inherited the territory at the end of the 19th century and expanded it further, changing hands several times, and now includes office buildings, restaurants, retail and so on, which is a prime location in the heart of London.
According to reports, Through the real estate management company he set up and the shares of the trust company he holds, Li Deyi has continuously absorbed British property assets and enabled his family to establish his own real estate "kingdom" in the West End of London.
In the UK alone, Lee once collected more than HK$1 billion in rent each year.
In addition, Lee was a majority shareholder of Shaftesbury, the largest holder in London's Chinatown.
In 2017, Mr. Lee invested an additional £500 million to pocket more than 20% of Shaftesbury's shares.
Shaftesbury is one of the largest owners of Chinatown, Carnaby Street and Covent Gardens in London's West End, with over £2.6 billion worth of shops, visits and residences.
In Chinatown alone, Shaftesbury has 91 restaurants and 49 shops, nearly 160 apartments and more than 20,000 square feet of office space.
Last year, Mr. Lee sold his 26.3% stake in Shaftesbury for £436 million, marking the largest commercial property transaction in the UK since the COVID-19 pandemic.
It is worth mentioning that the assets owned by Li Deyi and his family are very large, in addition to the assets currently announced, there are many hidden assets that have not been exposed, and the British media has therefore called it the largest private landlord outside the British royal family.
In fact, due to the impact of the new crown epidemic, the assets of the Li Deyi family have shrunk.
From the wealth list, his family's assets shrank by 119 million pounds, and the overall ranking dropped from 52nd last year to 60th this year, but Li Deyi still became the richest Chinese in the UK with a wealth of 2.731 billion pounds.
2. Christina Wang "Queen of Bond Street"
Christina Wang, daughter of wealthy Chinese businessman Fu Yunxi, is a celebrity in Singapore's fashion industry.
Born in 1948, Christina Wang founded the fashion retail group Club 21 in 1972, bringing European and American brands such as Armani, Donna Karan and Common des Garcons to the Singapore market.
She has a deep friendship with the fashion industry, in addition to being a girlfriend with top fashion designer Donna Cullen, she also uses her business talent to run the retail business for Armani in the UK.
She is also known as the "Queen of Bond Street" for owning a number of properties on Bond Street in London.
She also single-handedly founded como hotels.
Como Hotel was a gift to her daughter, who combined her initials CO with the initial MO of her eldest daughter Melissa Ong's name to form the brand's name.
The British media specifically mentioned that Christina Wang is very low-key, hundreds of times more low-key than the first-ranked Li Deyi, so there is not much introduction to her on the Internet.
Interestingly, her husband has a lot of information.
Christina Wang's husband, Wang Xingxing, was born in Malaysia and is originally from Nan'an, Fujian Province, and settled in Singapore with her family at the age of 4. In his early years he travelled to the UK to study insurance and after graduation worked for European international insurance companies.
He returned to Singapore in 1972 and married Christina Wong the following year. Two years later, Wang joined his father-in-law's Kuo International, where he was responsible for the company's hotel and real estate business.
Under his auspices, Kwok Became the controlling shareholder of Hilton Singapore, Concorde Hotel, Four Seasons And more. He then co-founded Hotel Properties with his father-in-law.
In addition to the hotel industry, Wang Xingxing has also ventured into the entertainment industry and entered the Chinese mainland investment. In 2008, Wang Xingxing introduced the F1 Grand Prix to Singapore and founded the Singapore Racing Company (Singapore GP) for this purpose.
3. Huo Yan Shuxiang Mendi did not take the usual path
As one of the world's best Chinese fund managers, Huo Yan was born into a family of Chinese intellectuals, his grandfather Huo Bingquan was the head of the physics department of Tsinghua University, and his parents were physics professors at Fudan University.
Huo Yan is a graduate of Fudan University's Class of 89, and soon after graduation, he went to the United States for further study.
Huo Yan's career began in 1993. In 1993, at the age of 25, he received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Princeton University.
After graduation, he was faced with two choices, one was to continue the physics research that his parents were engaged in, and the other was to apply the mathematical and physical knowledge he learned to the capital market.
At the time, quantitative strategies were on the rise on Wall Street, attracting a large pool of physics talent. Huo Yan also realized that quantification would eventually play an important role in securities trading, so he resolutely abandoned the academic path and joined JPMorgan Chase's fixed income self-operated division.
In 2005, Together with JPMorgan Colleague Masao Asai, Huo Yan set himself up and founded Capula Investment Management at Knightsbridge, London, England, with a starting capital of $5 million.
Mr. Huo has said his success stems from investing in the U.S. Treasury market and in Europe's sovereign debt market. During the global financial crisis in 2008, Huo Yan used his relative value strategy to successfully achieve counter-trend appreciation in the financial tsunami.
Huo Yan also said that his main job in the investment market is to identify market opportunities, assess when there is risk in the market and when to avoid risk.
At the end of 2009, Huo Yan and his wife Fang Xue also established the Huo Family Foundation in London, dedicated to the development of children's charity.
In 2010, Huo Yan raised $2 billion to set up a "black swan fund" focused on tail risk hedging, which specializes in profiting from unpredictable "black swan events" that have a huge impact on the world economy.
At the time, the European debt crisis was raging, providing a good opportunity for the fund, and in fiscal 2010, the Capra fund's income doubled, and Huo Yan received about $44 million in dividends.
4. Ye Huanrong The first Chinese in history to enter the British rich list
As the founder of the Chinese supermarket "Rong Ye Xing", Ye Huanrong is the first Chinese in history to enter the British rich list.
And when it comes to Ye Huanrong, we have to say the story of his "from £10 to £70 million".
Born in 1940 in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, Yip Huan Wing's family moved from Guangdong to Hong Kong after his family was left behind.
Ip then completed his studies in Hong Kong and came to England from Hong Kong in 1959 with a £10 pocket.
Ye Huanrong's first job in London was as a dishwasher. Two years later, he and two friends went it alone and opened a Chinese restaurant in London together.
After the Chinese restaurant opened, the business was very hot, and then he opened two other restaurants and takeaway shops in a row.
After opening a restaurant and tasting the sweetness, Ye Huanrong began to think about developing in other fields.
This time, he set his sights on the source suppliers of restaurants, and he wanted to start from the source, monopolize the supply channels of all Chinese restaurants, and open a Chinese supermarket with all categories.
The name of this supermarket is Rongyehang.
In 1977, Ye Huanrong's younger brother Ye Lixin came to England from Jamaica, and the three Yip brothers formed the Yip Brothers Company, and they soon turned Rong Ye Hong into the largest Chinese supermarket in the United Kingdom, mainly providing food and spices for Chinese restaurants and takeaway shops, and also selling to Chinese families.
In 2010, Ip was awarded the Order of The British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II for his outstanding business achievements.
It is worth mentioning that Ye Huanrong is keen to give back to the Chinese community, in order to encourage and fund outstanding Chinese students from China, the United Kingdom or overseas who have financial difficulties to study in British higher education, Rong Ye Bank has specially set up the "Ye Huanrong Brothers Scholarship".
Ye Huanrong also requires that his children must be able to speak Chinese, and after his 4 children graduate from college, they will be sent back to China to study for a year Chinese, in his view, "Chinese must be able to Chinese, and must not forget their ancestors." ”
British investors write at the end
Success is not easy, it requires hard work and luck.
Nowadays, more and more Chinese people have dreams and struggle in foreign lands. Overseas Chinese are striving to exert their influence and enhance their social status.
In addition to the Chinese rich mentioned above, the younger generation of Chinese people are now also forging their own path.
Whether they have received local education overseas or have received many years of education in their home country, this generation of young people is free to play their own value in business, finance, science and technology, art and other fields.
The Chinese are wandering outside and cutting through thorns. They strive to get out of Chinese circles and melt cultural differences into their lives.
Diligence and hard work are the excellent traditions of the Chinese nation, and this is an important reason for the success of overseas Chinese, both in the past and at present.
It is not easy to drift, and praise for overseas Chinese.