Zhong Shanshan, Chairman of bottled-water company Nongfu Spring, has become the sixth richest person in the world after overtaking legendary investor Warren Buffett.
According to the Bloomberg Billionaire's Index, Shanshan's fortune rose by $13.5 billion in 2020, to $91.7 billion. Buffett, the Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, has a net worth of $86.2 billion.
Shanshan, who recently became Asia's richest person, is only the second Chinese billionaire to feature on the list of top 10 richest people in the world. Wang Jianlin secured the eight position on the index in 2015, the report said.
Shares of Nongfu rose 18 percent during the first two trading sessions of 2021, the report said. Since their listing in Hong Kong in September, Nongfu's shares have gained more than 200 percent.
Nicknamed the "Lone Wolf", he also took his company Beijing Wantai Biological Pharmacy Enterprise Co public last year. Shares of the company, which makes vaccines, have surged more than 2,800 percent since the start of trading in April 2020, Bloomberg reported.
Even with the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, the 500 richest people added a total of $1.8 trillion to their net worths, which is now a combined $7.6 trillion.