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Insecure billionaires in China’s IPO booms and busts
Beijing — It took just three weeks for Ding Lieming to quintuple his net worth and become a freshly minted billionaire. Six months later, almost half his fortune was gone. A tale of bold bets gone bad? Nope, just business as usual in the Chinese stock market. The wild ride for Ding, chairman of Hangzhou-based Betta Pharmaceuticals, illustrates the latest upheaval surrounding wealth creation in China: tycoons who rapidly gain — and then almost as quickly lose — billionaire status amid swings in the country’s initial public offerings. The IPO booms and busts, fuelled by a mix of government intervention and unbridled speculation, are becoming more frequent in China as authorities accelerate approvals for newly listed shares. While the offerings have made billionaires out of at least 23 tycoons in the past 12 months, their collective net worth has dropped from a peak of $55bn to $35bn as of June 20, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The numbers are a stark reminder of the f...
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