Yao is the founder and largest shareholder of Oppein Home Group, the biggest cabinet maker in Asia. The Guangzhou-based company builds about 750,000 kitchens and more than 1 million items of furniture each year. It sells its products to 150 countries worldwide and had revenue of 11.4 billion yuan ($1.7 billion) in 2018.
Yao Liangsong's net worth of $4.49B can buy ...
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Yao’s net worth is derived from a 69 percent stake in Oppein Home Group. The Guangzhou-based company is the largest cabinetry manufacturer in Asia, according to its website. It builds about 750,000 kitchens and more than 1 million items of furniture each year, according to the site.
Oppein began trading on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in March 2017 and had revenue of 11.4 billion yuan ($1.7 billion) in 2018. He owns his shares directly, according the company's 2019 first quarter report.
Yang Yaoxing, a spokesperson for the company, declined to comment on the billionaire's wealth.
Yao Liangsong was born in Meizhou, China in August 1964. He graduated from the Beihang University with a degree of machine engineering and was assigned his first job as a teacher at an aviation school in Jiangxi in 1986, where he set up a school magazine called Grassland for the students, according to a television interview on Shenzhen-based CETV in 2009.
Yao left teaching and started his own restaurant business two years later, which failed and left him in debt, which he helped pay off by selling medical equipment. Yao's sister inspired him to establish Oppein Home Group in Guangzhou in 1994, according to Oppein's website on April 2017. The company began trading on the Shanghai Stock Exchange in March 2017 with Yao serving as chairman of the group.
The billionaire maintains positions in the People's Political Consultative Committee of Guangzhou Baiyun District and the General Chamber of Commerce, according to the company's initial public offering prospectus in March 2017.