Pham Nhat Vuong tops Southeast Asia's richest with US$36.5B fortune
Pham Nhat Vuong, chairman of Vingroup, leads Southeast Asia's five wealthiest billionaires with a net worth of US$36.5 billion, according to Forbes. The combined wealth of the top five, including tycoons from the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand, totals US$110.7 billion.
Pham Nhat Vuong remains Southeast Asia's richest person with a net worth of US$36.5 billion, according to Forbes' real-time billionaire rankings on Monday. The 58-year-old Vietnamese tycoon, who chairs Vingroup, ranks 60th among the world's richest people and holds about 33 per cent of the combined wealth of the region's five wealthiest billionaires.
Vuong's fortune has risen sharply alongside Vingroup shares. On 27 Aug, he added as much as US$2.3 billion to his net worth in a single day, the fourth-largest gain among billionaires worldwide, according to Forbes. Only Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Oracle chief technology officer Larry Ellison and Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell recorded larger gains that day, while Vuong's increase surpassed that of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Vingroup shares climbed to a record VND236,000 (US$9.05) that day and were up 38 per cent since the start of the year.
On the same day, Vuong's wife Pham Thu Huong became Vietnam's second-richest person with a fortune of around US$4.1 billion, sharing the position with Vietjet Air chairwoman Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao.
Second on the regional list is Philippine ports tycoon Enrique Razon Jr., with an estimated net worth of US$20 billion. Razon, 66, became the Philippines' richest person this year for the first time since his debut on the country's rich list in 2007. He chairs International Container Terminal Services Inc. (ICTSI), the Philippines' largest port operator by revenue. Razon's fortune had increased by over US$10 billion year-on-year as ICTSI shares more than doubled amid the company's international expansion as of early August.
Indonesia's Low Tuck Kwong ranks third in Southeast Asia with a fortune of around US$19.3 billion. The Singapore-born coal tycoon saw his wealth surge by about US$4 billion during August as shares of his flagship company Bayan Resources gained 27 per cent. Low, 78, and his daughter hold a combined stake of around 62 per cent in the coal miner. He is reportedly in talks over a potential sale of a majority stake, with a consortium led by Indonesian tycoon Andi Syamsuddin Arsyad, better known as Haji Isam, among the prospective buyers, according to Bloomberg.
The two remaining places among Southeast Asia's five richest billionaires are held by Thai tycoons. Dhanin Chearavanont, 87, has a net worth of about US$17.6 billion. He is senior chairman of Charoen Pokphand Group, one of Thailand's largest conglomerates, with businesses spanning agriculture, food production, retail, telecommunications, real estate, finance and e-commerce in more than 20 countries. Thai energy tycoon Sarath Ratanavadi rounds out the top five with some US$17.3 billion. The 61-year-old founder and CEO of Gulf Development was Thailand's biggest billionaire wealth gainer in Forbes' latest annual ranking, adding US$5.6 billion to his fortune from a year earlier.
