18 October, 2006. HURUN REPORT RELEASES IT RICH LIST, A PART OF THE 2006 CHINA RICH LIST SERIES

• DING LEI HEADS IT RICH LIST WITH US$1.1 BILLION
• MOBILE PHONE SECTOR HOTS UP
• AVERAGE WEALTH OF IT TYCOONS RISES BY 31% YEAR ON YEAR

35-year old Ding Lei takes back top place from 33-year old Chen Tianqiao on the IT Rich List with a personal fortune of US$1.1 billion. Whilst there has been a surge in the value of Tencent and FocusMedia over the past year, other more established players such as Shanda and Baidu have seen their stocks fall.

“IT is the most transparent of China’s sectors, primarily as a result of the significant impact of international capital.” says Rupert Hoogewerf, CEO of Hurun Report, a luxury business magazine. “The stories of these people tell the story of China’s IT boom.” 23 of the top fifty have listed companies.

Mobile phone sector surge
The mobile phone sector is hotting up with several new businesses seeing sharp increases in their value. AAC Acoustics and SIM Technology have both seen their value sore.

Interesting IT tycoons

• 35-year old Timothy Chen Tianqiao’s wealth fell by US$700 million since announcing last December that his Nasdaq-listed Shanda Networking was going to be offering free-play on Legend of Mir II, its top game, thereby depriving it of a major source of revenues. Last year Chen was one of the fastest risers with an increase of US$400 million.
  
• This past year Yang Lan and Bruno Wu have listed one of their businesses on Nasdaq and another on AIM in London.
  
• Wu Ruilin, one of China’s first companies to list on Nasdaq, and Cai Qingchu are brothers.
  
• Wang Wenjing saw his wealth increase three-fold after his stock became fully tradable.
  
• Shi Yuzhu has built up China’s third-largest online games company, Zhengtu, although there are social questions over the negative impact online games are having on China’s youth.
  
• Not on the list this year include Yan Xiaoqun (stock price collapsed following cashflow crisis), Mao Daolin (sina stock price drop), and the Kongzhong founders (stock price drop).
  
• Venture capitalists are beginning to see some of their investments pay off including Neil Shen Nanpeng and Wang Chaoyong. Another IT entrepreneur, Zhou Hongyi, has turned venture capitalist after a shake-up at Yahoo China resulting in its integration with Alibaba under Jack Ma.
  
• Late this summer, Mo Tianquan cashed out after selling control of SouFun, an online property agency, to Australia's Telstra Corp.

Some interesting stats

• Average wealth of the top fifty IT tycoons is US$236 million. As a group the top fifty have US$12.2 billion, a 31 per cent rise on last year.
  
• Guangdong has now overtaken Beijing with the highest number of IT entrepreneurs. Guangdong boasts fourteen, followed by Beijing on thirteen, Shanghai on ten and Zhejiang on five.
  
• Zhejiang boasts the highest number of IT tycoon birthplaces with nine, followed by Jiangsu on seven and Shanghai on six.
  
• Average age of the IT tycoons is 44.2 years.
  
• Cut-off to make top fifty rises from US$50 million to US$90 million this year.
  
• This year is the fourth annual IT Rich List.
  

Methodology
The IT Rich List is a sublist of the Hurun Report 2006 China Rich List series and only takes into account wealth generated from the IT sector.

Valuing the wealth of China’s Rich is as much an art as it is a science. Our team of researchers has - for the eighth year running - traveled the length and breadth of the country cross-checking information with entrepreneurs, industry experts, journalists, bankers, and regulators, as well as previous years’ databases. The cut-off date for valuation of listed companies was August 31, 2006. For non-listed companies we valued by comparing them with their listed equivalents using prevailing industry P/E ratios. This list relates to Mainland China only. For the purposes of this list, we define Mainland Chinese as someone who was born and brought up in China, no matter what passport they might hold today.

learn more on IT RICH LIST