Well there isn’t fool-proof plan as to how once can become an instant billionaire. But if you are like Eric Tse, son of Sino Biopharmaceutical executive directors Tse Ping and Cheung Ling Cheng, then you really don’t need any play. The 24-year-old son turned billionaire overnight after he got $3.8 billion worth in shares from the family business,.
Eric Tse became one of the wealthiest people in Asia overnight when his parents gave him about a fifth of the company’s share capital this week – a stake worth more than $3.8 billion. The move catapulted Tse into China’s growing class of ultrarich and onto Forbes’ ranking of the 500 wealthiest people on earth. He is now worth more than President Donald Trump, film director Steven Spielberg and Starbucks founder Howard Schultz.
The transfer of shares took place to ‘refine the management and inheritance of family wealth’, the company said in a statement. To that end, Eric Tse also was named an executive director of Sino Biopharmaceutical and added to its executive board committee. He will earn a little less than USD500,000 a year plus bonuses.
Born in Seattle and schooled in Beijing and Hong Kong, Tse is a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Finance. Eric Tse is listed as a director on at least five other company boards in Hong Kong, according to the ‘South China Morning Post’, including a firm named for the conglomerate of Thailand’s wealthiest family. It should be stated here that Tse’s billionaire father was once a member of the Chinese People’s Political Consulative Conference, China’s top political advisory group.
“My parents, seniors and elders genuinely believed in my potential and helped me without expecting any return,” Tse said in a Wharton article spotlighting him. “By the time I was 19, I was thinking about how I could deliver the same positive energy and passion to the people around me.”
Tse may be a newly-minted billionaire, but his star-studded Instagram posts show that he’s occupied that world for years. He has pictures with some of the world’s well known celebrities. He can be seen smiling next to retired NBA player Yao Ming at the Basketball World Cup, wrapping his arm around supermodel Bella Hadid at a party in Venice, posing poolside with Princess Charlene of Monaco and snapping a selfie with singer Rihanna in New York. However, most of his pictures have the caption ‘#casual’.
The company however, said Eric Tse is not interested in being recognised on global rich lists.
“In response to nomination for ‘Billionaire List’ or wealth ranking organised by media or other organisations, ‘Tse will endeavor not to participate’ in such rankings in his own name, and would recommend participating in such nominations in the name of the Tse Ping family,” the company said in a statement.