Wealth of China's richest jumps almost 50 percent

SHANGHAI, Nov 3 (Reuters) The combined wealth of China's 40 richest people jumped 46 per cent from a year earlier to 38 billion US dollars, thanks in part to successful stock-market listings, according to the Forbes China Rich List released.

''The growing number of Chinese listings on stock markets around the world is an extension of China's rapidly expanding influence in world trade and investment in general,'' Forbes said yesterday in a statement, adding that over a quarter of those on the list are less than 40 years old.

Forbes said Wong Kwong Yu, whose name in Mandarin Chinese is Huang Guangyu, chairman of China's top electronics retailer GOME Electrical Appliances Holding Ltd., topped the list with net worth of 2.3 billion US dollars.

Shares in GOME have fallen 2.8 percent in the last two days, after the influential Beijing-based Caijing magazine reported that regulators were investigating whether Huang had secured loans illegally.

New entrants to the list include Zhong Sheng Jian, founder and CEO of Yanlord Land Group Ltd., which listed in Singapore in June.

China's richest woman and number five on the Forbes list is Cheung Yan, co-founder and chairman of Chinese paper packager Nine Dragons Paper Holdings Ltd. with net worth of 1.5 billion US dollars. Nine dragons listed in Hong Kong in March.

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