Vietnam's richest man drops to 35th place on Forbes' billionaire list
Thursday, August 17, 2023, 16:32 GMT+7
The real-time net worth of Pham Nhat Vuong, chairman of leading Vietnamese conglomerate Vingroup, plunged US$7.2 billion to $37.3 billion, making him the 35th wealthiest person in the world as of 3:00 pm on Thursday, down nine notches against the previous day, according to Forbes.
Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk ranked first on the list, with his net worth of $225.8 billion, followed by Bernard Arnault and his family ($216.1 billion). Bernard Arnault is the CEO of LVMH, the world's largest luxury goods company.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos remained the third-richest man in the world with his net worth of $157.7 billion.
Regarding Vuong, the wealthiest man in Vietnam, his net worth was a bit lower than that of Hong Kong’s Li Ka-shing ($37.5 billion) and higher than that of Chinese Tencent CEO Ma Huateng ($35.4 billion).
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| A screenshot, taken at 3:00 pm on August 17, 2023, shows the decrease in the net worth of some global richest billionaires, including Vietnamese Vingroup chairman Pham Nhat Vuong. |
On Wednesday, the estimated net worth of Vuong reached some $84 billion, enabling him to secure the 16th place on the Forbes world’s richest billionaires, following the debut of Vietnamese electric vehicle (EV) maker VinFast’s VFS shares on the Nasdaq stock exchange on Tuesday.
The stock opened at $22, more than double the $10 per share agreed with VinFast's SPAC partner Black Spade Acquisition that had valued the carmaker at $23 billion, according to Reuters.
It surged further during the session, ending at $37.06 and valuing the EV maker, which has not posted a profit, at $85 billion, more than Ford's market capitalization of $48 billion and General Motors' $46 billion stock market value.
However, VFS ended the session on Wednesday at $30.11, contracting 11.8 percent over the session earlier, with a matching volume of over three million shares, thus bringing VinFast’s market capitalization down to $69.5 billion.
Vuong controls 99 percent of VinFast directly or indirectly.
The debut on the U.S. bourse is said to be one of the Vietnamese EV maker’s business strategies to go global.
To boost the growth of the carmaker, Vuong early this year pledged $1 billion from his personal fortune for VinFast.
Vingroup was also committed to offering $500 million in non-refundable funding as well as $1 billion worth of loans to VinFast for a five-year term.
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