The Ly Gia Thanh family is the world's wealthiest real estate family

DNHN - Billionaire Ly Gia Thanh, the founder of Truong Giang Thu Nghiep Group (Cheung Kong Holdings) and his relatives became the richest family in the world in real estate.

On April 6, Ho Nhuan Research Institute announced the list of the top 100 real estate entrepreneurs in the world, these entrepreneurs in turn come from 16 countries, including 52 Chinese real estate entrepreneurs, more than the total ones of other countries. 

Billionaire Ly Gia Thanh, founder of Truong Giang Thu Nghiep Group (Cheung Kong Holdings) and his relatives became the world's richest family in real estate with a value of HKD 205 billion (about $ 26.28 billion). 

To be included in the “Ho Nhuan Global Real Estate Entrepreneurs List 2022,” entrepreneurs need to have a net worth of at least 17.5 billion yuan as of January 14, 2022.

Ly Gia Thanh (born July 29, 1928, in Chaozhou, China) is a Hong Kong billionaire, investor, industrialist, and philanthropist. He is considered the most influential investor in Asia. He has turned 92 years old, still living healthy and has just transferred the management rights to his son. 

Tough youth

Ly Gia Thanh is the eldest son in a difficult family in Chaozhou, Guangdong province, China. His family is a typical image of the great migration of the Chinese during the Sino-Japanese war. His whole family fled to Hong Kong during the chaotic war years. "When I was in elementary school, the Japanese bombed Chaozhou," he recalls. 

His father, once the Principal of an elementary school, died early from tuberculosis. The burden of poverty and hardship weighed heavily on Gia Thanh's boy that day. "Those were the most terrifying years of my childhood," he said.

Ly Gia Thanh was forced to drop out of school to take care of his family. At the age of 12, he dropped out of school and worked for a watch strap factory. At the age of 14, he worked full-time at a company that sold plastic. Ly Gia Thanh worked very hard and was very honest, which earned him the position of director of a plastics factory when he was only 20 years old.

In 1950, Ly Gia Thanh started his own business, making plastic toys and household items. In the following years, he restructured his business and focused only on the production of plastic flowers when he noticed the popularity of this item in Italy through the press.

Ly Gia Thanh's first enterprise was named Truong Giang, which translates as "many little rivers merge into one stream." This is also the precursor to Truong Giang Thuc Nghiep, which occurred seven years later. Owner Truong Giang began his real estate career at the age of 30 and demonstrated his daring and capacity after only two years with two regional industrial buildings. 

In the following years, he consistently "extended" the limits of his empire, transforming Truong Giang Thu Nghiep into one of Hong Kong's ten most powerful enterprises, exerting significant influence over the global stock market. Simultaneously, Ly Gia Thanh founded the Hoa Ky Hoang Pho Group, which specializes in investments in the industries of shipping, real estate, energy, and construction.

Bold steps in career 

Contrary to his near-eighty-year-old age and fairly calm, soft appearance, this billionaire's youthfulness, aggressiveness, and decisiveness in decision-making are all defining features. Mr. Ly stated that it took him only five minutes to decide to invest in the "giant" Facebook in 2007 when the social networking site had yet to generate income and was priced relatively high in the market: 15 million dollars. He was drawn to Facebook's rapidly rising user base and the possibility of mobile application development. 

The owner of Hoa Ky Hoang Pho spent 120 million dollars to repurchase a 0.8 per cent ownership in this establishment. Ly Gia Thanh added another billion dollars to his enormous fortune after Facebook was listed for the first time and was valued at over 100 billion USD. 

Horizons, a company specializing in the technology business Mr Ly, also invested in Skype in 2005 a year before eBay spent $ 2.5 billion to buy it. Siri, another company with his capital, was also acquired by Apple for $7.5 million in 2012.

In 2010, Ly Giang Thanh's Truong Giang company also conducted the largest acquisition in its history, which was the acquisition of U.K. Power Network for $9.1 billion. This company specializes in providing electricity to about 8 million people in the UK. A year later, Truong Giang continued to buy Northumbrian Water, a company that provides clean water to 4.5 million people in the UK and wastewater treatment services to 2.7 million more. 

In 2017, Ly Gia Thanh’s CK Asset Group sold a 75% stake in The Center building to a consortium led by a Chinese energy company for a record $5.15 billion.

Being rich is like that, but Ly Gia Thanh has a strangely simple life. He still often wears simple black shoes and wears an old Japanese watch that is not worth the money, always running 30 minutes ahead of time, so when he "misses" to be late for an appointment, he still arrives on time. (Hong Kong has a small area of 30 minutes to reach all locations). 

His first meal of the day was noodles, dumplings, stir-fried vegetables, the Chinese style. Then he read the morning news and played a round of golf near the house he lived in for more than 50 years and then headed to the office on the roof of the Cheung Kong building in central Hong Kong.

Asia's richest billionaire said he has a very effective way to find inner peace: "If I have a rare vacation, I will read books all the time." Ly Gia Thanh has a habit of reading books before going to bed.

Behind Ly Gia Thanh's desk is a calligraphy picture with the following message: "Set high goals, make friends with all kinds of people, enjoy simple pleasures, stand on the high ground in the backdrop, sit on the level ground, walk firmly on the wide ground."

 Hai An