Chapter 234 Forbes Rich List
Just as the promotion of "Red Cliff" was in full swing, Forbes China officially announced the 2006 Forbes Rich List in Mainland China on December st.

Huang Guangyu, the boss of home appliance retail giant Gome Group, has become the new richest man in mainland China with assets of 18 billion yuan.

Last year's richest family, the Rong family, ranked fourth with 164 billion yuan, while the third was Xu Longmao, boss of Shimao Group.

However, this is not the most eye-catching thing. What caused a huge sensation was that Liu Zhou ranked second on the Forbes Rich List with a net worth of 176 billion.

At the age of 28, Liu Zhou became the second richest man in mainland China and the youngest billionaire in mainland China.

No one expected that Liu Zhou, who was outside the top 100 last year, would suddenly jump to second place on the rich list this year.

Others may not attract so much attention. After all, everyone is more concerned about who sits in the position of the richest man.

But Liu Zhou is very different, not only because he is too young, but also because he is a public figure with super high popularity.

Many people across the country know Liu Zhou and know his general growth trajectory.

Now that he has suddenly become the second richest man in mainland China, the heated discussion he has caused is enormous. Even this year's richest man is not as talked about as Liu Zhou.

Major media outlets reprinted the report, sparking a huge discussion on the Internet.

Some people still slander him mindlessly, saying that Liu Zhou's wealth was either obtained in an unclean way or that he had a huge network of connections and used illegal means to obtain his wealth.

Some people even say that Liu Zhou is a white glove pushed forward by so-and-so. In short, they speculate the source of Liu Zhou's wealth with the utmost malicious intent.

But this time, these brainless haters were strongly counterattacked by Liu Zhou's fans, and their counterattack was very confident.

Because the composition of Liu Zhou's wealth is very simple and clean, which is clearly written in Forbes magazine.

Liu Zhou's wealth mainly consists of three parts.

One part is Sina’s shares.

Sina’s current total market value is nearly US$36 billion, and Liu Zhou owns 35.5% of Sina’s shares, worth US$12.8 billion, equivalent to approximately RMB 108 billion.

This is also Liu Zhou's biggest source of wealth.

Now that everyone sees this, they are full of praise for Liu Zhou's acquisition of Sina.

Not only did they praise Liu Zhou for his brilliant vision, they also praised Sina for its rapid development under his leadership, without mentioning their initial criticism and pessimism towards Liu Zhou.

Another major component of Liu Zhou's wealth comes from Penguin shares.

Liu Zhou initially raised funds for Penguin in early 2001 and acquired a 12.5% ​​stake.

At that time, Liu Zhou could only take this much due to limited funds.

Moreover, he was worried that even if he took over all the shares held by Little Superman and IDG, he would not be able to keep them, so he did not dare to bet all the 20 million US dollars he had prepared on Penguin.

Therefore, Liu Zhou made diversified investments, investing in the three major portals, Amazon and Penguin.

However, even if he invested in the three major portals and Amazon, Liu Zhou still made a huge profit.

Initially, Liu Zhou invested only over 35.5 million US dollars in these companies, but now it has become % of the shares of Golden Harvest Media Holdings Group and Sina.

Later, shortly after Liu Zhou provided financing to Penguin, South African newspapers came here to smell the scent.

As in the past, they are still very optimistic about Tencent and directly acquired the 35% shares held by Little Superman and IDG after financing.

This time, because of the appearance of Liu Zhou, South African newspapers will get much fewer Penguin shares.

Historically, South African Newspaper not only acquired 40% of the shares of Little Superman and IDG, but also financed Penguin, and at that time held nearly half of the shares of Penguin.

But now they only have 35% of the shares acquired. Soon after receiving financing from Liu Zhou, Penguin started to make profits and no longer needed financing.

On June 2004, 6, Penguin was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

The total share capital is 16.8 billion shares, of which 4.2 million shares are listed and issued, accounting for % of the total share capital.

The opening price on the first day of listing was HK$4.375, the closing price was HK$4.15, and the market value on the first day was HK$69.75 billion.

After the listing, Liu Zhou's shares in Penguin were diluted to 9.375%, while South African Press was left with 26.25%.

The entrepreneurial team headed by Pony Ma also holds more shares than in history, with 39.375% remaining after the listing, of which Pony Ma holds 16.3%.

These are the shares he holds after cashing out part of the stocks. Ma knows how to enjoy life. Historically, he often cashed out stocks to improve his life.

Since Penguin's listing, its stock price has increased several times to HK$33.1, with a total market value of approximately HK$556 billion.

In addition to bringing Liu Zhou 52 billion in wealth, it also gave Ma Ge a net worth of 90.6 billion.

This puts Pony Ma exactly at number ten on this year's Forbes Rich List, pushing Lu Guanqiu down one place.

Historically, at this time, Pony Ma had a net worth of only over 4 billion, ranking only in the 30s on the rich list.

Now, because of Liu Zhou, Xiao Ma Ge has directly become one of the top ten richest people in mainland China.

In addition to Xiao Ma Ge, Ding Lei was also greatly influenced by Liu Zhou.

Historically, Ding Lei only ranked twelfth on the rich list this year, but because he was influenced by Liu Zhou's acquisition of Sina, he repurchased NetEase's shares in advance.

It was not until Ding Lei held nearly half of NetEase’s shares that he felt safe and stopped.

Currently, the total market value of NetEase is about 20 billion US dollars, and Ding Lei’s shares are worth nearly 170 billion US dollars, equivalent to about billion yuan.

However, in order to repurchase Wangyi shares, Ding Lei also borrowed a lot of money, so his total net worth is more than 14 billion, ranking fifth on the rich list. If Liu Zhou is also classified as an Internet tycoon, then three of the top ten richest people in the mainland are from the Internet.

However, in the entire Forbes list, most of the wealthy people still come from traditional industries, especially the real estate industry.

Like the famous Evergrande Xu in later generations, he was already very rich, ranking 27th on the rich list.

Wanda Wang also emerged, ranking 91st on the rich list.

In the entire Internet industry, apart from the first three, only Jack Ma, Li Yanhong and Chen Tianqiao are in the top 100.

Chen Tianqiao's Shanda's stock price rose relatively slowly while the stock prices of several other Internet companies soared.

So now Chen Tianqiao has gone from being the richest man in mainland China two years ago to not even making it into the top 50 on the rich list, ranking only 57th.

At this time, Chen Tianqiao placed all his hopes on Shanda Box, but it would not be long before he became discouraged.

Sina and Penguin are both listed companies, and it is clear that Liu Zhou holds shares in these two companies.

The wealth these two companies brought to Liu Zhou is also clear.

In addition to the shares of Sina and Penguin, Forbes also conducted a comprehensive assessment of Liu Zhou's other two companies.

They valued Jiahe Group at RMB 1.2 billion and Zhoushan Literature at RMB 400 million, and the shares of these two companies are 100% owned by Liu Zhou.

Adding Sina's 108 billion and Penguin's 52 billion, Liu Zhou's total net worth is 176 billion.

In fact, if you really calculate it, Liu Zhou's net worth is definitely more than 176 billion.

Because if Jiahe Group and Zhoushan Wenxue go out for financing, the valuation will definitely be more than the 1.2 billion and 400 million estimated by Forbes.

Forbes is certainly aware of this, but this valuation is relatively subjective, unlike listed companies whose market value is clear at a glance.

So under Liu Zhou's arrangement, Forbes lowered the valuations of the two companies, and also ignored some fixed assets such as real estate held by Liu Zhou.

Otherwise, if calculated strictly, Liu Zhou's net worth would definitely exceed Huang Guangyu, making him the richest man in mainland China.

Although Liu Zhou's wealth can withstand investigation, he still doesn't want to be so high-profile.

Now even if he is second on the wealth list, it has already caused a stir. I wonder how lively it will be if he becomes the richest man.

At the same time, it is inevitable that Liu Zhou is likely to become a fat sheep in the eyes of some people.

If most of his wealth could not be concealed, Liu Zhou would not even be willing to be in the top ten of the rich list.

The mainland's rich list is called the Pig-Slaughtering List. The reason for being killed is not only because your origins are indeed not clean and it has been discovered, but also because someone may have targeted you and want to kill you.

It has been several days since the Forbes rich list came out, but the heated discussion about Liu Zhou has never stopped.

There are always some people who don't care about facts, they only believe what they think.

Some people are very jealous of Liu Zhou for becoming the second richest man in mainland China at such a young age, and have been questioning the source of his wealth online.

At the beginning, Liu Zhou didn't care about these people. His fans, especially the old fans who watched Liu Zhou grow up, were able to confront these people.

But then Liu Zhou realized something was wrong. The doubts about his wealth on the Internet became louder and louder, and even some traditional media began to intervene.

Liu Zhou knew that someone was deliberately trying to mess with him!
Of course he is not afraid of investigation, but the public will not care about these things. Passersby will first see the news that slanders Liu Zhou and will have a preconceived notion that Liu Zhou's wealth came from illegal sources.

Even if it is clarified in the future, it will have a significant impact on Liu Zhou's image.

This is a typical case where they can't do anything to you, but they just disgust you.

Liu Zhou was indeed disgusted.

You don't have to guess to know that it was those people from Taishan Society who were defaming him.

Having been in the entertainment industry for so long, Liu Zhou has never been afraid of anyone when it comes to manipulating public opinion.

Liu Zhou will not fall into the trap of proving his innocence in the face of their smears.

Because this is totally useless and will only make the matter more popular.

If you want to cover a hot topic, create one or more hotter topics.

Since they have taken action against Liu Zhou, Liu Zhou will not be polite. When it comes to black material, they have much more than Liu Zhou.

Moreover, Liu and Zhou can withstand investigation, but they may not.

Fortunately, Liu Zhou has a lot of media resources, otherwise he wouldn’t know where to speak out.

So suddenly, there were a lot more reports about business leaders on the Internet and in print media.

Among them, Sina.com and Southern Weekend fired the first shot.

Sina:
"How did Lenovo Group gradually transform from a state-owned enterprise into a private enterprise? A brief analysis of Yanagawa Zhi's superb capital tactics!"

Southern Weekend:
"Shocked! Embezzlement of state-owned assets? This is how Duan Yongji made his fortune!"

These two reports were published on the front pages of two media outlets respectively, and other media outlets quickly followed suit.

All of a sudden, negative news about those previously high-ranking business tycoons was flying all over the place.

(End of this chapter)