Sunday, October 28, 2012

The Family Business

Wealth in China is now not a new issue for SOYMB. We have blogged on it several times.

The mother of China’s prime minister in one investment in her name, in a large Chinese financial services company, had a value of $120 million five years ago, the records show.
Many relatives of the Chinese prime minister, Wen Jiabao, including his son, daughter, younger brother and brother-in-law, have become extraordinarily wealthy during his leadership.  The family have assets worth at least $2.7 billion. In many cases, the names of the relatives have been hidden behind layers of partnerships and investment fronts involving friends, work colleagues and business partners.

The family’s ventures sometimes received financial backing from state-owned companies. At other times, the ventures won support from some of Asia’s richest tycoons. The New York Times found that Wen’s relatives accumulated shares in banks, jewelers, tourist resorts, telecommunications companies and infrastructure projects, sometimes by using offshore entities.

There has been a spate of revelations about wealth amassed by people around other senior figures. Bloomberg Business News reported the family wealth of Xi Jinping, the man expected to become China's president in November, at a relatively modest $136m.

The National People's Congress which, as the annual Hurun report on China's rich has shown, is now a billionaires' club: the wealthiest 70 members enjoy a combined net worth of $85bn. By way of comparison, the estimated combined net worth of 660 top US officials, including the president, reportedly adds up to a mere $7.5bn.

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