Billionaire actress Zhao Wei has suffered a major setback in her quest to profit from stock investments in China, after local banks declined to extend credit lines to the celebrity for a 3 billion yuan acquisition of a little-known animation company listed in Shanghai.
The acquisition target, Zhejiang People Culture, plunged by its 10 per cent daily limit on Thursday morning upon trading resumption. For the past week Chinese securities regulators have been looking into Zhao’s source of funding and the buyer, Longwei Culture & Media, owned by the Chinese star.
That is bound to take much of the shine off the legendary success of Zhao -- one of the wealthiest actresses on the planet -- in pocketing millions of dollars of gains from trading stocks in the mainland and Hong Kong. She was even once dubbed China’s female version of Warren Buffett for her spectacular track record of cashing in on companies whose shares later skyrocketed.
Zhao shot to fame overnight in China in the 1990s thanks to her hit drama My Fair Princess, and had ruled the Chinese cinema screens for years, although it has not been until the past few years that her exploding fortune propelled her into China’s ultra wealthy club. Jointly named by the Hurun Report as 35th on the list of richest billionaires under 40, Zhao and her husband Huang Youlong are estimated to boast a net worth of US$1 billion, according to the ranking released in February, 2016.