Harrods has opened a private members’ club in Shanghai that offers 250 super-rich people exclusive access to Gordon Ramsay’s first restaurant in China, a bar stocked with rare Scotch whiskies, and the Knightsbridge department store’s own-brand private jets. The retailer opened the private club, which charges minimum annual fees of 150,000 yuan (£16,500), as part of its drive to connect more with wealthy Chinese people as spending by its traditional customer base stagnates. The club, called the Residence, is located inside Shanghai’s historic Cha House where Harrods already operates a…
Tag: The super-rich
Yang Huiyan: Country Garden owner who was once Asia’s richest woman
Just two years ago she was the richest woman in Asia with an estimated $29.6bn (£23.4bn) fortune, but now Yang Huiyan, the chair and majority owner of Chinese property developer Country Garden Holdings, is battling to save the company from collapsing into default. Country Garden, which was founded by Yang’s father – a farmer – in 1992, had grown to become China’s largest property developer, completing thousands of projects across the country. As the Chinese property bubble bursts, the company is now fighting for its very survival and Yang’s billions…
Unsafe at the top: China’s anti-graft drive targets billionaires and bankers
A moment of pity for the uber-wealthy. According to the Hurun Global Rich List, China has more billionaires than any other country. But it is also the place in which the monied must watch their back. On Friday, Fu Xiaodong, a former senior official at China Development Bank, was sentenced to 10 years in prison for accepting 4.3m yuan (£503,466) in bribes during his tenure between 2007 and 2020. Days earlier, the former director of the supreme people’s court enforcement bureau was sentenced to 12 years in prison for accepting…