Asia's billionaire club shrinks, Rachman Halim among richest
Asia's billionaire club shrinks, Rachman Halim among richest
Agence France-Presse, Singapore
Asia's richest individuals have been hit severely by the global economic crunch, with 14 glittering names from the region getting dropped from a U.S. business magazine's yearly global list of billionaires.
But Hong Kong's Li Ka-shing , who goes by the humble nickname "Superman," kept his status as Asia's richest person with a net worth of US$7.8 billion, down from $10 billion last year, Forbes magazine said Friday.
Globally, the 74-year-old self-made tycoon with interests ranging from utilities to telecommunications ranked 28th on the 2003 Forbes World's Billionaires List, predictably headed by U.S. software king Bill Gates.
The number of billionaires in Asia in 2003 shrank to 61 from 70 last year, and 14 who were on last year's list were absent in the current edition.
Six of those dropped were Japanese, reflecting the malaise in the world's second biggest economy, but Asia had some good success stories.
Thailand beverage entrepreneur Chaleo Yoovidhya, whose sugary Red Bull energy drink keeps millions of people perked up, was promoted to the list.
Malaysia's media and telecommunications magnate Ananda Krishnan was also cited for raising hundreds of millions of dollars from the public offering of his cellular phone firm Maxis.
"A weak dollar helped keep some fortunes aloft, but, overall economic woes continued to plague much of Asia," Forbes said in a press statement.
"Real estate values fell further, exports contracted and bankruptcies are on the rise," it said, noting that 32 Asian billionaires saw their net worth decline.
Even as he topped the list in Asia, Li still has a substantial distance to cover if he hopes to catch the world's richest individual, Bill Gates, whose net worth came in at $40.7 billion, down from $52.8 billion in the previous year.
The founder of Microsoft Corp. also topped the list of the planet's richest individuals last year, and is one of 222 Americans out of the 476 billionaires from 43 countries on the current list.
The collective wealth of billionaires on the list this year is $1.4 trillion -- the equivalent of the gross domestic product of the United Kingdom, Forbes noted.
Ranked behind Li in Asia is Japan's Nobutada Saji, whose family-owned business, dominant in the beverage sector, earned him a wealth of $7.1 billion, followed by Hong Kong developers Walter, Thomas and Raymond Kwok of Sun Hung Kai Properties, assessed to be worth $6.6 billion.
Next on the list is India's software mogul Azim Premji, who controls the Wipro group and has an individual worth of $5.9 billion, according to Forbes.
Japan was still the Asian leader on the Forbes list, taking 19 positions, followed by 11 in Hong Kong and seven in India.
Singapore has five on the list, Malaysia four, South Korea, the Philippines and Thailand two each, and Indonesia one, businessman Rachman Halim who owns the country's largest cigarette maker, PT Gudan Garam, with net worth of $1.4 billion.