Want Want Group (旺旺集團) chairman Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明) remains the richest man in Taiwan, with a fortune of US$10 billion, according to the Hurun Report Global Rich List 2015, released yesterday.
The ranking of US dollar billionaires around the world is compiled by Chinese magazine Hurun Report and sponsored by Chinese luxury home builder Star River Property.
A total of 48 Taiwanese are included on this year’s list, including former vice president Lien Chan (連戰), who has a fortune of US$6.1 billion.
Lien is the first Taiwanese politician to be included on the list, Hurun Report said.
Among ethnic Chinese, the richest person is Li Ka-shing (李嘉誠), chairman of Hong Kong’s Cheung Kong Holdings (長江實業), who has a fortune of US$32 billion.
In China, a Chinese solar energy tycoon has replaced e-commerce giant Alibaba’s (阿里巴巴) founder Jack Ma (馬雲) as the country’s richest person with a fortune of US$26 billion, the report showed.
Li Hejun (李河君), founder and chairman of Beijing-based Hanergy, saw his wealth nearly triple from a year ago, according to the Hurun Report’s Global Rich List 2015.
He is now the wealthiest person in China and his global ranking climbed 108 notches to No. 28, according to the list.
Ma claimed the title in mainland China last year after Alibaba completed the world’s biggest initial public offering with its US$25 billion listing on the New York Stock Exchange in September last year. He dropped to third place in the country with a fortune of US$24.5 billion, it said.
Ma was overtaken by Li and property baron Wang Jianlin (王健林), owner of the sprawling Dalian Wanda Group (大連萬達集團) whose net worth was estimated at US$25 billion, the report said.
Li’s Hanergy Holding Group Ltd was established in 1994 and spans the hydropower, wind power and solar energy industries, according to the company’s Web site.
Bill Gates, co-founder of US technology giant Microsoft, remained the world’s richest person on the Hurun global list with a net worth of US$85 billion. He was followed by Mexican telecoms tycoon Carlos Slim (US$83 billion) and US investment guru Warren Buffett (US$76 billion), the luxury magazine publisher said.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is ranked seventh with a fortune of US$44 billion.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained