Evergrande’s Hui Ka-yan topples China’s top two tech tycoons to become country’s richest man – for a day

Hui Ka-yan, 58, chairman of property developer China Evergrande, became China’s richest man – unseating Tencent’s Ma Huateng and Alibaba’s Jack Ma Yun – for a day.

The Henan-born Hui’s wealth advance has been driven by an extraordinary rally in Hong Kong-listed Evergrande’s share price. The country’s largest home builder by sales has seen its shares soar over 480 per cent so far this year, the biggest winner among all the mainland China property stocks listed in Hong Kong.

Evergrande surged another 6 per cent on Monday morning to a record market value of 370 billion yuan (US$56.5 billion), adding an extra US$1.8 billion to Hui’s wealth.

As of midday Monday, Hui’s net worth reached US$39.5 billion based on the real time rankings published online by Forbes, enough to temporarily overtake Tencent’s Ma and Alibaba’s Ma, who were worth US$38.7 billion and US$38.7 billion respectively. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

Hui was also ranked the 15th richest person in the world, just behind Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

However, by the close of trading Hui’s net worth had dropped back to US$38.4 billion when Evergrande's stock weakened in late trading.