Country Garden Holdings chairman Yeung Kwok-keung's daughter Yang Huiyan, the largest shareholder, saw her company's value hit HK$14.18 per share at the time of Hurun report, but it fell to HK$5.59 last month. Even though Country Garden rose 11.48 per cent yesterday, Miss Yang still suffered a HK$63 billion paper loss from the peak.

Fosun International chairman Guo Guangchang saw an even bigger share price collapse. His company's value fell from a peak of HK$15 to close yesterday at HK$5.72, giving him a paper loss of HK$5 billion.

Cheung Yan, chairwoman of Nine Dragons Paper (Holdings), saw her company's value drop from a peak of HK$26.75 to yesterday's close of HK$14.30, off some HK$38.8 billion.

Not making the Hurun list last year was Gome Electrical chairman Wong Kwong-yu whose company only fell 18 per cent from the peak. As such, he suffered a loss of only HK$4.8 billion, and stands to regain the title of the mainland's richest tycoon this year.

As for the highest paid executive, Ping An Insurance's chief executive Peter Ma Mingzhe, about one billion yuan was lost on paper on his 16 million shares.

Over the hedge

Say you lend me five bucks. I give you back half and bet on how much my company's shares would go up in value in five years.

For a real example, take Merrill Lynch's arrangement of a US$500 million bond along with a US$250 million cash-settled equity swap to help Country Garden raise funds.

So if Country Garden's share price stays above HK$6.71 (the initial price) for five years, the company would get the differential between the final price and the initial price. Merrill Lynch would get the difference if the final price falls below the initial price.

Country Garden said the arrangement had a hedge similar to a buyback at a future price. Merrill Lynch said it was an innovative deal that had been done 80 times in the United States in the past two years. Meanwhile, the investment bank charges a service fee on both ends.

Now you and I may still think it a bit weird, considering that they could simply reduce the bond size by half and forget about hedging.

Board game ballots

Hong Kong, Asia's world city, is in danger of losing its super status.

Luckily it's only in Monopoly, the board game nicknamed 'big millionaires' in Hong Kong.

In its pending world edition, Monopoly will choose 22 world cities - based on online ballots - to replace landmarks in the traditional version.

Hong Kong was ranked No20, as of 7pm yesterday, down from fourth at the start. It faces intense competition from Toronto (No21), Barcelona (No22), Las Vegas (No23), and even Beijing (No28) and Shanghai (No32).

Istanbul was ranked No1 by voters, who can vote for 10 cities a day, overtaking Montreal.

Good news from Ming An

No news might be good news for mainland corporates these days. But smart investors were able to detect some good news from Ming An (Holdings), which announced a usually ignored continued connected transaction.

In the announcement, Ming An said it had applied to revise the annual cap for its asset management subsidiary to HK$26.2 million, up from HK$9.9 million this year.

That was because the actual bonus performance of its fund management house totalled HK$16.2 million, triple its original HK$5.4 million.

The robust Hong Kong stock market helped. Besides, Ming An got HK$700 million from disposing of Pacific Century Insurance.

Ming An rose 2.65 per cent to HK$1.94 yesterday, giving something to look for in its next results.