10 Asia Richest 2015

1. Li Ka-shing – Net worth: $33.2 Billion (Hong Kong) This 86 year old business magnate is the richest person in Asia. He is one of the world’s great empire builders. He is the chairman of Hutchison Whampoa (HWL). He oversees this far-reaching conglomerate with 270,000 employees in 52 nations. At the age of 12 he quit school and started as an apprentice in a watch strap factory. By 14 he was working full time in a plastics trading company. He started his own company in 1950, and the rest as they say, is history.

2. Lee Shau Kee – Net worth: $24.8 Billion (Hong Kong) Self-made real estate mogul Lee Shau Kee is one of Hong Kong’s richest landlords. He is the head of Henderson Land Development, an investor in Hong Kong’s iconic International Financial Center, and whose many mainland projects include the Henderson Metropolitan along Nanjing West Road near the bund in Shanghai.

3. Wang Jianlin – Net worth: $24.2 Billion (China) Wang Jianlin is the wealthiest man in mainland China. The Sichuan native and former Chinese soldier is chairman of Wanda Group, a Chinese conglomerate and China’s biggest commercial real estate developer  in 1989 at the age of 35. He now owns 75 department stores, 85 shopping plazas and 51 five-star hotels.

4. Jack Ma – Net worth: $22.7 Billion (China) The founder of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., one of the world’s biggest e-commerce companies. Ma a former English teacher made headlines in September 2014 with the record-breaking $25 billion IPO of Alibaba Group on the New York Stock Exchange. He started the Hangzhou, China-based company in his apartment in 1999.

5. Dilip Shanghvi – Net worth: $21.9 Billion (India) This year’s biggest gainer is pharmaceutical billionaire, Dilip Shanghvi who is the owner and founder of Sun Pharmaceutical Industries, India’s most valuable drug company with market capital of $31 billion. He started Sun in 1983 as a maker of psychiatric drugs borrowing $160 from his father. According to Forbes, Shanghvi is now the India’s richest man thanks to shares surged of Ranbaxy Laboratories a company he acquired from Japan’s Daiichi Sankyo for $4 billion in 2014. He overtook Reliance Industries Ltd’s Chairman Mukesh Ambani.

6. Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud – Net worth: $22.6 Billion    This 60 year old Saudi Arabia self-made billionaire is one of the world’s most high-profile investors. He owns a broad swath of stakes in private and public companies in the US, Europe and the Middle East, mostly through Kingdom Holding Co., a diversified investment company with interest in financial services, real estate, hotels, media, entertainment, and technology.

7. Li Hejun – Net worth: $21.1 Billion (China)    Li Hejun is Chairman and founder of Hanergy Holding Group Ltd., a Chinese multinational renewable energy company founded in 1994. The company’s Yunnan hydropower plants is one of the world’s largest. Hejun published a book in 2014 titled, “China’s New Energy Revolution.”

8. Mukesh Ambani – Net worth: $21 Billion (India)   This 57 year old Indian billionaire lost the top spot as India’s wealthiest to pharmaceutical billionaire, Dilip Shanghvi. He has witnessed a steep decline in his fortunes since then, a $2.9 billion drop in the previous year alone. In spite of this, he is the richest person in India. He is bullish and plans to invest $25 billion in his businesses over the next two years.

9. Tadashi Yanai & family – Net worth: $20.2 Billion (Japan)  Tadashi Yanai is the founder and CEO of Fast Retailing, Asia’s largest apparel company. In 1984, Yanai opened his first Uniqlo store in Hiroshima and in 1991 he changed his father’s company name Ogori Shoji to Fast Retailing. His fortune keeps growing thanks to Uniqlo’s 65% increase in international sales in 2014.

10. Azim Premji – Net worth: $19.1 Billion (India)  Premji is the richest software tycoon in India. He is chairman of Wipro Limited, India’s third-largest outsourcer.The company was founded by his father Mohamed Premji as Western India Vegetable Products in 1945. Premji is also known to be Asia’s most generous person after donating over $4 billion of his fortune.