December 17, 2019

Muyuan's chairman has fastest-growing fortune according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index

Qin Yinglin, chairman of Chinese pig producer Muyuan Foodstuff Co. has the fastest-growing fortune among a group of billionaires listed on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Business Insider reported.

Qin's net worth has grown to over US$6.6 billion this year so far to a total of US$8.56 billion, his profile on the index reveals. That is an increase of over 341%, Bloomberg's Blake Schmidt and Emma Vickers reported.

A global shortage of pork allowed Muyuan to raise both its prices and its profits in the second half of 2019. Muyuan made 260% more in the third quarter of 2019 than during the same timeframe last year, Bloomberg reported. The company's success directly benefits the 54-year-old billionaire, who derives most of his net worth from the 60% stake in Muyuan he owns with his wife, according to Bloomberg. Qin founded Henan province-based pork producer with 22 pigs in 1992, according to the Muyuan's website.

An outbreak of African swine flu on Chinese pig farms cut the country's pork production by nearly a third and sent prices up approximately 50% above what they were this time last year, Business Insider's Alexandra Ma previously reported.

China is both the world's largest producer and consumer of pork, and the shortage forced the Chinese government to pull meat out of its stockpiles to meet the demand, the Associated Press reported in September. The government even resorted to implementing artificial intelligence, facial recognition, and blockchain technologies on some farms to monitor the pig's health to no avail, Ma reported.

A representative of Qin at Muyuan Foodstuff did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment on its chairman's net worth or the company's stock price.

Qin isn't the only pork billionaire to see his net worth skyrocket in 2019. The net worth of the world's largest pork producer, New Hope Group chairman Liu Yonghao, has nearly doubled to US$11 billion in the past 12 months, according to Bloomberg.

Few other billionaires in China have shared Qin and Liu's success. The American and French fortunes on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index outpaced Chinese ones in the first half of 2019, Business Insider previously reported, growing at rates of 35% and 17% respectively. The collective net worths of Chinese billionaires, meanwhile, grew 15%.

- Business Insider