The new King of Capital is 49-year old Peter Ma Mingzhe, Chairman and CEO of Ping'An Insurance, controlling US$4.5 billion of equity through his indirect control of 14% of the shares of the HK-listed insurer. Second is 31-year old Timothy Chen Tianqiao, who controls the Nasdaq-listed Shanda Networking with a market capital of US$3 billion.

The key trend this year has been the rise of the Hong Kong exchange at the expense of the domestic exchanges. The Fifty Kings of Capital between them control 86 listed companies, with a total market capital of US$37 billion: a staggering 83% increase from last year. The market value of HK-listed companies as a percentage of this has jumped from 26% to 60%, led by new listings like Ping'An. By comparison the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges have seen their percentage of the total drop from 54% to only 19%.

There are 22 new names to this year's ranking with the cut-off to get on the list rising from US$125 million to US$225 million.

MBOs
In this year's Kings of Capital list there are a number of players other than Peter Ma who have used the Employee Shareholders Association (ESA) to take control of a listed company formerly controlled by the State. These include China's two most famous CEOs, Liu Chuanzhi of Lenovo, and Zhang Ruimin of Haier, as well as Yang Guoping of Dazhong Public Utilities and Zhang Shiping of Weiqiao Textiles. In the cases of ZTE's Hou Weigui, and TCL's Li Dongsheng, who both lead their respective ESAs, the government remains the largest shareholder of the listed companies, denying them ultimate legal control.

Performance
Shanda Networking has outperformed the Nasdaq Composite Index by a staggering 260% since its IPO this May, making Timothy Chen's online games company the best performer on the ranking this year. In December Chen also became the first person on our ranking to take control of a South Korean listed company. Online games took third place too for best performance, with the HK-listed Searainbow Holdings controlled by Kang Jian outperforming the Hang Seng Index by 89%. The second best performance came from HK-listed Cai Tianzhen, who saw Titan Oil's share price outperform the Hang Seng by 150% on the back of a surge in the oil price. The worst performance, of those on our ranking this year, came from Kuang Huizhen, who saw Asia Aluminum's share price plummet by 54% over the year - partly as a result of the government's austerity measures.

Domestic Players
Zhang Hongwei of the Orient Group is the biggest player in the domestic capital markets, controlling three listed companies with an aggregate market value of US$538 million.

This is a far cry from last's year's overall Number One, Peter Tang Wanxin (and brothers) who controlled five domestic listed companies through the D'Long Group with an aggregate market value of US$2.6 billion. In Spring this year the group started to unravel before the government decided - in a highly unusual move - to bail out the private company because of the impact D'Long's failure might have had on China's domestic capital markets at a time when investor confidence was still fragile. Another spectacular fall came soon after the publication of last year's ranking with the news that Aikelamu Aishayoufu, the man behind Xinjiang Hops, had fled the country leaving behind him a pile of debts.

The industry which featured most on the Kings of Capital list is IT, with fifteen companies, followed by white goods. The biggest change in industry came in property, which dropped from twelve companies last year to only five this year.

The people featured in the Kings of Capital ranking are those who control the most publicly tradable capital, or - put another way - the most investable assets of the average Chinese. These are the people to whom millions of investors, now spread over several countries, are looking to create shareholder value. These are the people creating the future of China's capital markets.