Collapsing Real Estate Fortunes

November 21, 2008	(Be the first to rate this story!)  Loading ...
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Investors pounced on shares of Chinese property developer Soho last year after founders Zhang Xin and Pan Shiyi publicly listed the company. The value of the husband-and-wife team’s stake soared to $3.8 billion. Zhang said it was “probably a perfect moment.”

A year of credit crisis later, it’s more of a perfect storm. Company shares plummeted and Forbes now values Pan and Zhang’s fortune at $1.2 billion. The sharp fall could have been even worse if not for Soho’s healthy balance sheet, which had a billion dollars in cash at mid-year.

Our recently published lists of China and India’s richest reveals Zhang and Pan are just two of the region’s major property owners with collapsing fortunes. When we published our list of the world’s billionaires in March, it included 15 Chinese real estate kingpins. When we recalculated their fortunes at the end of October, all of those fortunes were smaller, some by billions of dollars.

News Published Under:   Real Estate India, Property Prices |

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