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Pham Nhat Vuong, Vietnam’s first billionaire and owner of giant conglomerate Vingroup, has leapt 97 positions to become the 543rd richest person in the world, according to updates from Forbes released on Tuesday.
The magazine’s real-time list of the world’s billionaires showed that Vuong's assets had expanded by more than 14 percent to $4 billion in just 13 days.
He'd already marked a milestone on November 8 by climbing 227 places in eight months to 640th on the list, with his net worth growing by more than $1 billion.
His rise came following the IPO of Vingroup’s retail unit Vincom early this month, which was hailed as the biggest IPO debut ever in the country after raising nearly $709 million and valuing the mall operator at around $3.4 billion.
Vingroup’s shares have also gained nearly 100 percent since mid-2017, closing at VND77,000 ($3.40) on Tuesday. Vuong, 49, owned more than a 27 percent stake in Vingroup as of June this year.
Vingroup is one of Vietnam’s largest real estate conglomerates, and has been expanding rapidly into retail, logistics, agriculture, education and healthcare. As of the end of September, its subsidiary Vincom Retail was managing, operating and renting 41 shopping malls with a total area of over 1.1 million square meters (272 acres). It also has 22 projects under construction and another 50 in early development.
Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, the only other Vietnamese billionaire and owner of budget carrier Vietjet, now ranks 1,177th on the Forbes list with assets worth around $2 billion.
At the top of the list are Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos with a net worth of $94.9 billion, followed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates with $89 billion and Warren Buffet with $77.9 billion.
