Business | FOCUS Jul 12, 2021

China's crackdown on its ultrarich set to reshape its most profitable sectors

With an age of unfettered gains now coming to an abrupt end, investors are likely to be more cautious.

Business / Corporate Mar 4, 2021

Masayoshi Son’s billions multiply on SoftBank mega-rally and SPAC boom

Few fortunes are as volatile as Masayoshi Son’s. The SoftBank Group Corp. founder was briefly richer than Bill Gates at the start of the century before tech stocks crashed. In March 2020, as markets sank under Covid-19 and questions swirled over SoftBank’s investments, his wealth ...

Business / Corporate Feb 1, 2021

With Kuaishou, ex-Googler turns virtual gifts into a $61 billion business

The ByteDance Ltd. rival has become the biggest livestreaming platform for virtual gifts, with more paying monthly users than any other in the world.

Business / Corporate Jul 3, 2020

Jack Ma’s rival saw his wealth surge by $25 billion. Then he quit

Colin Huang, who has overseen the firm as its American depositary receipts have more than quadrupled in less than two years, has stepped down as chief executive officer.

Business / Tech Mar 29, 2019

The complex fortune growing inside Bytedance, the world's most valuable startup

Software engineer Zhang Yiming started out producing apps for sharing jokes before focusing on news aggregation. That pivot proved lucrative. The 35-year-old founder of Bytedance Ltd. is worth about $13 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, making him China's ninth-richest person and one of ...

Business Dec 21, 2018

Asia's megarich took a $137 billion hit in the pocketbook in 2018

The world's fastest growing source of megawealth hit a speed bump this year. The 128 people in Asia with enough money to crack the 500-member Bloomberg Billionaires Index lost a combined $137 billion in 2018, the first time wealth in the region has dropped since ...

Business / Corporate May 21, 2018

Amazon helps Shenzhen entrepreneur turn mom's money into a billion dollars

After Steven Yang left his coveted job at Google, he asked his mother whether he should take venture capital money to fund his business idea. If his online consumer electronics enterprise was a risky bet, she told him, go with the venture capitalists. But if ...

Business Jul 4, 2017

Once a bankrupt fishmonger, Hirotake Yano is now a ¥100 shop billionaire

Selling everyday items to bargain hunters has made the founder of Japan's biggest discount store a billionaire. Hirotake Yano, founder and president of closely held Daiso Sangyo Corp., the self-described "Japanese shopping wonderland," was one of the country's first vendors to adopt a single-price model ...