China Adds Yet Another Pharma Industry Billionaire

Pharmaceutical and healthcare-related industries have been a big source of new Chinese billionaires of late. More than a tenth of the top 100 billionaires from mainland China currently hail from those fields, and the two richest individuals among them – Zhong Huijuan and Sun Piaoyang – ranked in the world’s top 100 wealthiest individuals with respective fortunes of $20 billion and $16 billion on the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List on Saturday.

China this month has added yet another billionaire from the pharmaceutical industry. Yang Ying joined the group following gains in the share price of Xiamen Amoytop Biotech, a maker of re-agents in which she holds a 33% investment stake. Yang was worth $1.3 billion on Friday, even though the stock lost 6% from a record close of 68.36 yuan a day earlier at the Shanghai Stock Exchange. Other family members hold an additional 11% stake in Amoytop, which began trading in January after an IPO. Amoytop’s sales last year rose by 38% to $103 million.

Shares in China’s pharmaceutical suppliers and healthcare businesses have been in the spotlight – and often bid up to nose-bleeding heights by investors– in connection with the Covid-19 pandemic. Yet even before, they benefitted from growing demand at home amid rising incomes and aging in China.  Chinese companies in the hunt for a Covid-19 vaccine include Xiamen Innovax Biotech, which is working with GlaxoSmithKline, CanSino Biologics, Sinopharm, Sinovac, and Clover Biopharmaceuticals, which, besides GSK, is working with Dynamax Technologies of the United States.

China is home to the world’s second-largest group of billionaires after the United States.

See related posts here: 

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Click here for a Chinese-language version of this story.

—with Maggie Chen

—Follow me @rflannerychina