Baidu founder tops on Hoogewerf IT rich list

Robin Li, founder of Baidu, one of the world’s leading search engine companies, topped the Rupert Hoogewerf 2010 IT rich list released yesterday with assets of 31.5 billion yuan. He was followed by Ma Huateng, CEO of the Tencent, China’s leading instant messaging company, and Ding Lei, CEO of Net Ease, who hold property with 29.3 billion yuan and 15.1 billion yuan, respectively.

This was the third time for Li to top the list after taking the No. 1 spot in 2007 and 2008. This time, Li set a record for the most assets held by anyone on the list since it was established.

The Hoogewerf group attributed the strong performance of Baidu to its tripled growth price in the U. S. stock market and the withdrawal of Google from mainland China.

Meanwhile, the stock price of Tencent increased by 30 percent in 2010, and it is used by nearly 90 percent of Internet users in China.

It was notable that the threshold of the list this year was the highest one. The average wealth was 5.6 billion yuan, 10 times higher than in 2003. There were four companies that possess more than 100 billion yuan market in value, which include Huawei, Tencent, Baidu and Alibaba.

On the other hand, there were 20 new faces emerging on the list, accounting for 38 percent of its total number.

In addition, those listed were generally younger, sharing average age of 47 years. And the average age of the top three was merely 40 years old.

By People's Daily Online