Market watchers labeled Shanghai billionaire and chief financial officer of Pinduoduo Colin Huang as the most significant wealth gainer in the world. News broke that the e-commerce platform Huang runs partnered with China's most significant traditional electronics retailers that resulted in tremendous increases to the company's value.
Huang's Nasdaq-traded e-commerce company Pinduoduo increased in value at 12.7 percent to a record close of 50.11 USD after it acquired the services of a market analyst upgrade and made an investment in a brick-and-mortar retailer. The increase significantly contributed to Huang's fortune that now stands at 2.9 billion USD. He was then labeled as Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List as the highest gainer of the year so far.
As of 5 p.m. last Monday, Huang's worth climbed to 26 billion USD in New York, reported Forbes. Huang was a former Google engineer whose fortune reached 25 billion USD this Wednesday, making him the top three of the wealthiest people in mainland China and ranks as No. 35 in the world.
Last Sunday, Gome Retail Holdings in Beijing claimed that Pinduoduo would purchase 200 million USD worth of convertible bonds that may potentially change the e-commerce platform stake to 5.6 percent. Gome's Hong Kong-traded shares also improved by 16 percent after the announcement.
Pinduoduo was founded in 2015 with a market capitalization of 58 billion USD last Monday. Its short-term presence resulted in the company being one of China's largest online retail businesses. Its investors include Sequoia China, where Neil Shen is a founding partner. Shen ranked as the top billionaire in 2020 Forbes Midas List announced last week.
Despite Huang's great climb to the billionaire's list, he is still dominated by Google co-founders, his ex-bosses Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who are valued at 55.9 billion USD and 52.9 billion USD, respectively. The 26 billion USD worth of Huang last Monday still served as a positive sign that he may surpass the value of Google's CEO Eric Schmidt, who is now valued at 14.2 billion USD.
Pinduoduo's bond purchase was used as a method for a larger alliance that may benefit the company's offline service and Gome's social e-commerce business. China, being home to the world's largest billionaires next to the United States, still form part as the center of a relatively large number of IPOs. Amid the pandemic effects on the global economy, Huang even rose as a member of the elite group based on his IPO last week.
