Lu Xiangyang is a Chinese entrepreneur and a founder of the battery and auto maker BYD Company.
Lu Xiangyang was born in Anhui. He started his career at the local branch of the People’s Bank of China. At the beginning of the 1990s, he moved to Guangdong province, where he started working for brokers. Later he even founded Guangzhou Youngy Management and Investment Group. In 1995, he invested 5 million renminbi in the newly formed company BYD, the founder of which was his cousin Wang Chuanfu. The share in the BYD afterwards brought Xiangyang the majority of his fortune. Later Lu Xiangyang acquired 70% of the world’s second-largest lithium mine in Sichuan and a cobalt mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Lu Xiangyang made the 2022 Forbes Billionaires List with an estimated wealth of $15.7 billion and occupied the 114th position
The majority of Lv’s fortune is derived from his 22% stake in BYD, a publicly traded maker of batteries and automobiles in Shenzhen.
Lv owns the stake directly and through Youngy Investment, according to a July 20, 2023 company filing. About 14% of his stake is pledged and removed from the net worth calculation.
He also holds a 25% stake in Youngy Co. and a 15% stake in Youngy Health, according to company filings.
The billionaire’s cash and other investments are based on an analysis of dividends, insider transactions, taxes and market performance.
Li Qian, a spokesperson for the company, didn’t respond to a request for comment on the net worth calculation.
Biography
Born in 1962 in Anhui, central China, Lv is the elder cousin of Wang Chuan-fu, chairman of BYD. Lv started his career working in a China Central Bank unit in Anhui and later co-founded BYD with Wang in February 1995, according to the company’s 2020 annual report.
The company was making lithium-ion batteries for handsets by 1997, and later expanded to cars, joining billionaire Li Shufu’s Geely Automobile Holdings as one of country’s first non-state owned electric carmakers.
BYD began trading on the Hong Kong stock exchange in 2002. It attracted the attention of billionaire investor Warren Buffett who bought a stake through a unit of Berkshire Hathaway in 2008.
The company has benefited from some of the Chinese government’s air pollution policies, including mandates that electric cars make up a certain amount of state vehicle purchases.
Milestones
- 1995 BYD was founded with 2.5 million yuan and 20 employees.
- 1998 Founded the first overses unit in Europe.
- 2002 Started publicly trading in Hong Kong.
- 2011 Started trading in A shares in Shenzhen.
