A new Singapore citizen Li Xiting has made it to Bloomberg’s latest Top 500 Billionaries Index.
Li is now ranked 186th richest in the world with a net worth of US$8.94 billion (27 Dec). There are also 7 other Singaporeans ranked in the top 500 billionaire index.
According to Bloomberg, Li is the chairman of Shenzhen Mindray Bio-Medical Electronics, a Chinese medical equipment maker. The Shenzen-based company had revenue of 13.6 billion yuan (US$2.1 billion) last year. Its products, including patient monitoring and medical imaging devices, are found in numerous medical institutions around the world.
Bloomberg listed his citizenship as Singapore:
Bloomberg further stated that Li was born in 1951 and graduated from the University of Science and Technology of China with a bachelors degree in physics. He worked as a researcher and would assist scholars at institutes in Wuhan, China and France between 1976 to 1987. Li then spent about fours years working at a medical equipment firm in Shenzhen.
In 1991, he started Mindray in Shenzhen and the company became publicly traded in New York in 2006. Li and a consortium took the company private about a decade later but relisted on Shenzhen stock exchange in October last year.
According to the Ash Center of Harvard Kennedy School, Li donates generously to various organizations in China. For example, in December 2017, Li donated US$3 million to Suqian city in Jiangsu Province for poverty alleviation, and US$1.5 million to Daishan County in Zhejiang province for its Tourism Development Fund. It’s not known if he has donated any money to any non-profit organizations in Singapore.
It’s also not known when the Singapore government granted Li his Singapore citizenship but certainly with the red passport he possess now, Li can can easily travel to many countries since the Singapore red passport is ranked the most powerful passport in the world with visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to 189 countries and territories.
In any case, looking at the contact page of his company’s website, Mindray has offices all over the world except Singapore:
- Mindray Headquarters, Shenzhen
- Mindray Argentina, Buenos Aires
- Mindray Australia, Victoria province
- Mindray Brazil, Sao Paulo
- Mindray Canada, BC and ON provinces
- Mindray Colombia, Bogota and Medellin
- Mindray Egypt, Cairo
- Mindray France, Paris
- Mindray Germany, Darmstadt
- Mindray Korea, Seoul
- Mindray Peru, Lima
- Mindray Philippines, Manila
- Mindray Poland, Warsaw
- Mindray India, Gurugram and Kolkata
- Mindray Indonesia, Jakarta and Surabaya
- Mindray Italy, Milan
- Mindray Malaysia, KL
- Mindray Mexico, Mexico City
- Mindray Morocco, Casablanca
- Mindray Netherlands, Hoevelaken
- Mindray Russia, Moscow and Novosibirsk
- Mindray Saudi Arabia, Riyadh
- Mindray Spain, Madrid
- Mindray Thailand, Bangkok
- Mindray Turkey, Istanbul and Ankara
- Mindray UK, Huntingdon
- Mindray USA, NJ State
- Mindray Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City
- Mindray South Africa, Johannesburg
In 5 July 2013, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said at the inaugural DBS Asia Leadership Dialogue:
“In fact, if I can get another 10 billionaires to move to Singapore and set up their base here, my Gini coefficient will get worse but I think Singaporeans will be better off, because they will bring in business, bring in opportunities, open new doors and create new jobs, and I think that is the attitude with which we must approach this problem.”
It’s not known how many jobs the Singapore government has created for Singaporeans by granting the Singapore citizenship to former PRC billionaire Li.