Pharma Pair Becomes China's Richest Couple
The public listing of Hansoh Pharmaceutical Group on Friday has made former chemistry teacher Zhong Huijian China's third richest woman. She and her husband are now the country's richest couple.
Zhong Huijuan and her husband Sun Piaoyang have become China's richest couple, with a combined wealth of $17 billion, beating Robin Li, founder of China’s top search engine Baidu, and his wife Ma Dongmin, who are worth about $8.8 billion, the «Financial Times» reported.
Zhong holds a 68-percent stake in Hansoh Pharmaceutical Group, China’s largest maker of psychotropic drugs, which went public on Friday in Hong Kong with a market value of US$10.4 billion, giving her a $7.9 billion fortune, «South China Morning Post» said. Her husband, who founded Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine, China’s largest privately owned drug company, is worth some $9.2 billion.
Both companies, which focus on developing drugs to treat China’s huge burden of chronic diseases such as cancer, are based in the eastern city of Lianyungang, where Sun worked as a technician in a chemical factory. His wife was a chemistry teacher before founding Hansoh in 1995. Hansoh’s cornerstone investors include Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC and Hillhouse Capital.
