Hui Ka Yan

Briefly China's richest man in 2009, Hui is the founder of Evergrande Real Estate, a Guangzhou-based real estate developer whose shares trade on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The company has more than 18,000 employees and projects (mostly residential) in 60 Chinese cities. The company pushed into commercial real estate by acquiring Kasia Plaza. It also moved into hospitality with the opening of the Chongqing Evergrande Hotel. In March 2024 securities regulators fined his property developer Evergrande Group $580 million, and Hui personally $6.6 million, for defrauding investors and colluding with others to inflate the group’s revenues by 564 billion yuan ($78.4 billion). After a Hong Kong court approved Evergrande’s liquidation to pay back debts totaling around $300 billion, Hui’s net worth has plummeted to around $700 million, a pittance compared to his peak estimated fortune of $36 billion back in 2019. The disgraced magnate hasn’t been seen in public since September 2023.