Shan Weijian, chairman of PAG, poses for a photograph in Hong Kong in 2017.
Anthony Kwan/Bloomberg
Hong Kong-based China dealmaker Weijian Shan, cofounder and chairman of PAG, one of Asia’s largest private equity firms, has joined the billionaire ranks. Shan, 69, is one of the few private equity mavens in Hong Kong, where real estate tycoons and their families dot the city’s rich list, to have joined the three-comma club.
PAG, which manages $50 billion in assets, disclosed in a regulatory filing last week that Shan is its single largest shareholder, owning between 25% and 49.9% of the firm in his own name. Based purely on Shan’s stake in PAG, Forbes estimates his net worth to be at least $1.1 billion. Shan said in an email response that the estimated net worth is “incorrect and way off,” without providing details, adding that his fortune is not enough for him to be included on Forbes’ wealth rankings.
There are just a handful of billionaires in Asia who made their fortune from private equity. The small group includes Jean Salata of BPEA EQT ($22 billion in assets under management) in Hong Kong, Michael Kim of MBK Partners ($26 billion in AUM) in South Korea and Lei Zhang of Hillhouse ($65 billion in AUM) in China.
Hong Kong-based PAG, with about 300 investment professionals across 12 offices, has invested more than $70 billion, mostly in Asia. In January, PAG formed a joint venture with Temasek-owned real estate developer Mapletree Investments to buy the Goldin Financial Global Centre office tower in Hong Kong, which used to be owned by former Chinese billionaire Pan Sutong, for $713 million. In August last year, PAG agreed to acquire Huis Ten Bosch, one of Japan’s largest theme park operators, for about $720 million.
The private equity firm filed for a Hong Kong initial public offering in March last year that could raise $2 billion and value PAG at up to $15 billion. The IPO was poised to be one of the Asian financial hub’s biggest listings in 2022, but PAG delayed the listing plan because of stock market volatility, according to a Bloomberg News report.
Formerly called Pacific Alliance Group, PAG was founded as a hedge fund in 2002 by former McKinsey consultant Chris Gradel. In 2010, Shan joined PAG to launch its private equity business after 12 years at TPG Capital, where he was the U.S. private equity giant’s top China dealmaker.
At TPG, Shan spearheaded the first purchase of a state-owned Chinese bank by a foreign investor. In 2004, TPG’s Asian arm, then called Newbridge Capital, bought a controlling stake in Shenzhen Development Bank for about $150 million. TPG sold its stake to Shenzhen-based Ping An Insurance in 2010 for $1.68 billion. The landmark deal is still considered one of TPG’s best known exits. Before TPG, Shan was a managing director of JPMorgan Chase and an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
Weijian Shan in 2019 in Hong Kong.
ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP via Getty Images
In March last year, Shan joined the board of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. He also served on the boards of palm oil giant Wilmar International, cofounded by billionaires Kuok Khoon Hong (nephew of Malaysia’s richest man, Robert Kuok) and Martua Sitorus, Bank of China Hong Kong, Chinese state-owned steelmaker Baosteel and Lenovo, the world’s largest personal computer maker.
Shan was born in Beijing and grew up during the Cultural Revolution, a period of political and social chaos from 1966 to 1976. When he was a teenager, he labored in the Gobi Desert in northern China’s Inner Mongolia region. His memoir, published in 2019, is called Out of the Gobi: My Story of China and America.
He studied English at Beijing University of International Business and Economics and then went on to earn a master’s degree in business administration from University of San Francisco and a master’s degree in economics and a Ph.D. in business administration from University of California at Berkeley, where U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was one of Shan’s thesis advisors.
Yellen wrote the foreword to Shan’s Out of the Gobi. “Shan’s life provides a demonstration of what is possible when China and the United States come together, even by happenstance,” Yellen said in the book.