Asia's Youngest Billionaires Thu, Sep 4 05:30 PM
Andrew Farrell, Forbes.com
At this summer's Olympics, Michael Phelps scored in the pool, Usain Bolt on the track and Ma Huateng at the bank.
Huateng is the founder of Tencent and is a Chinese Web titan. Big multinational companies, eager to make a good impression with the local audiences during the Olympics, snapped up advertising spots on Tencent's instant messenger, blogging and portal services. Earlier this month, Tencent said its quarterly earnings nearly doubled from a year ago.
This is good news for Tencent and for Huateng, since he owns a huge chunk of his company's stock. In March, Forbes estimated that the 36-year-old Web mogul is worth $1.4 billion.
Huateng is one member in Asia's exclusive group of the young and extremely affluent. These 15 billionaires, all under the age of 40, are worth a staggering $31.3 billion combined.
Huateng is neither the wealthiest nor the youngest in the club. When we published our list of the world’s billionaires in March, both superlatives went to Yang Huiyan, a 26-year-old with a net worth of $7.4 billion. Yang, a graduate of Ohio State University, joined the family real estate company, Country Garden Holdings, in 2005. The next year she received a hefty chunk of shares that are worth billions of dollars today.
The stock came from her father, Yeung Kwok Keung, who co-founded Country Garden. Don't question his wisdom of giving so much money and responsibility to a recent college grad: Yeung knows the value of a yuan.
Growing up in an impoverished Chinese village, Yeung reportedly never wore new clothes before he was 17. He raised cattle and then worked as a bricklayer and contractor, which led him to build houses and work in real estate. (See "China's Richest, Thanks To An IPO And Dad.")
Huateng and Yang are two of China's eight billionaires under the age of 40. Others include Xian Yang, a 34-year-old coal magnate, and Zhang Cheng Fei, a 38-year-old paper baron.
Youth and exceptional wealth are a rare combination, but this fortunate group will likely grow in Asia in the coming years. The region is home to the world's fastest growing population of the wealthy. According to the World Wealth Report, the population of China's millionaires jumped 20% last year. The billionaire population grew even faster. The March Forbes' list included 42 Chinese billionaires, up from 20 the previous year.
Keeping pace in the money race is India. The country's millionaires jumped 23% last year. The billionaire count soared to 53 from 36 the previous year.
That group counts six members that are under 40, like Anurag Dikshit. The engineer started PartyGaming, which owns PartyPoker.com, with a college roommate and former porn entrepreneur. Dikshit spearheaded the development of technology that helped launch the online poker boom. "All our technology is proprietary, and most of it is Anurag," a PartyGaming spokesperson once said. (See "PartyGaming's Billionaire Dikshit Quits Board.")
PartyPoker stock is off its 2005 high since U.S. lawmakers cracked down on online gaming, but Dikshit still has plenty of chips. Forbes pegs his net worth at $1.6 billion.
Also representing India is a pair of brothers, Malvinder and Shivinder Singh. The two have plenty in common: They went to the same schools in India, attended business school at Duke and started families just months apart. They're also both billionaires.
The two control Ranbaxy Laboratories, a drug company founded by their grandfather. It won't be the family much longer though. In June, a Japanese pharmaceutical company announced it would buy the Singh family's stake for about $4 billion. Not bad for a couple of guys in their 30s.
Source: http://in.news.yahoo.com/240/20080904/1301/twl-5385214.html
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Indian origin Nishita Shah among Next Gen billionaires Thu, Aug 21 08:59 AM
Washington, Aug 21 (IANS) Nishita Shah, 28, an Indian origin businesswoman from Thailand, golfer Tiger Woods and Elon Musk, co-founder of online payment processor PayPal figure on Forbes' list of next-generation billionaires.
Besides Shah, managing director of Thailand's diversified GP Group, on the list are Hollywood actor Tyler Perry, Kenji Kasahara, creator of Japan's leading portal Mixi, and Michael and Xochi Birch, who started Bebo, a social networking site.
'The world's current crop of billionaires has plenty of money but not much youth,' the US business magazine said, noting the average age of the 1,125 people on Forbes' list of the world's wealthiest is 61.
'The diversity of this group shows you can't predict what industry the next billionaire will come from, but these people also have something in common,' Forbes said. 'Even though they've accumulated more than enough money to retire in luxury, they aren't packing up for the Hamptons.'
Glamorous Nishita Shah is one of the richest people in Thailand because of her stake in her family's sprawling business empire with an estimated net worth at $375 million. When the stunning heiress is not poring over financial reports or gracing the pages of Thai magazines, she's planning her upcoming fashion line, Forbes said.
'My dad said I could study anything I wanted as long as it was business,' Shah who holds a business degree from Boston University was quoted as saying.
Shah is largest individual shareholder and director of Precious Shipping, Thailand's biggest dry-bulk shipper boasting a fleet of 44 ships. Her father Kirit founded the group in 1989 and took it public 1993. The 140-year-old family business is booming. Profits more than doubled in past three years.
The licensed pilot and youngest member on Forbes' Thailand list also has a clothing company called Burn Baby making 'luxury active wear' for 'modern urbanite women.'
Nishita Shah is launching her own fashion label - Nsha - on three continents at the end of this year. The director in over 40 group companies bets her heart on her own luxury fashion label Nsha launched in selected boutiques across the world.
After the tsunami of 2004 she helped the fishing village Baan Talay Nok 'promising to help it recover and to cover the educational costs through university for children who lost one or both parents, roughly 20 in all', according to Forbes.
With her mother Anju Shah, she's a patron and fundraiser for the Queen Sirikit Centre for Breast Cancer. she donated the center $160,000 for education, research and construction costs, says Forbes.
Inspired by even richer likes such as Warren Buffet and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation? 'I hope to be able to leave a considerable portion of my wealth to the GP Foundation,' she once said.
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