Wealthiest Asian lost $3.6 bn in one day

They included Bill Gates, whose wealth dropped US$3.2 billion, the most of anyone after Wang, and Inditex SA founder Amancio Ortega, whose wealth fell US$1.5 billion, the most of any European, according to data compiled by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

China’s richest man lost $3.6 billion in a single day after global stock markets tanked and Chinese markets erased all their gains for the year.

Since Chinese stocks peaked in June, shares of Wang’s publicly traded companies have tumbled in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, eroding his personal wealth, says CNN.

Wang’s stake in Dalian Wanda commercial properties dropped by $US2 billion when it fell by 17 per cent, and a 10 per cent drop at his Wanda Cinema Line, the world’s largest cinema operator, saw him lose another $1 billion.

Jianlin may have lost a lot of money, but his fortune still amounts to $31.2 billion, despte the massive decline.

“Everyone is probably overly pessimistic about the stock market now”, Amy Lin, a Shanghai-based analyst at Capital Securities said in an interview.

Twenty-four billionaires saw their wealth fall by more than US$1 billion.

The fortune of Japan’s richest person Tadashi Yanai edged up by nearly $106 million to $21.8 billion on Monday, even as shares of his clothing retailer, Fast Retailing, declined. The following year he purchased Sunseeker, a British yacht maker that builds ships for James Bond movies.

Last week Asia Unhedged told you that a recent survey named Wang Jianlin the richest man in China. Jack Massachusetts, China’s second-richest person and founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba, lost only $545 million.

One Japanese billionaire, meanwhile, even benefited from the chaos.

Japan’s economy heald steady amid the turmoil.

Well, on Monday, the Shanghai Stock Exchange Composite Index fell 8.5%.