Nova Group chairman becomes Vietnam’s 2nd wealthiest, after Vingroup’s chief

Bui Thanh Nhon, Chairman of multi-sector Nova Group, whose net worth quickly expanded to $3.5 billion, has surpassed Chairman of Hoa Phat Group Tran Dinh Long, to become the second richest person in Vietnam.

Nhon was first time named on Forbes’s annual ranking of the planet’s richest people on Tuesday, ranked 1,053rd with total assets of $2.9 billion. However, updated data on Wednesday showed that the Nova chairman's assets had grown by $600 million, propelling him to the 903rd position on the real-time billionaires list.

Nova Group’s main business lines are real estate, trade, services, agriculture, and consumer goods, with NovaLand Group, Vietnam's top real estate developer, serving as its flagship.

Vietnam has seven representatives in Forbes’s list of USD billionaires, with the total wealth expanding from $19 billion last month to $22.2 billion, as a result of Nhon's inclusion.

The first position belonged to Pham Nhat Vuong, Chairman of Vingroup, with a fortune of $6.3 billion. He ranked 427th globally. Vuong has been named to the world's billionaires list for the 10th time. Forbes initially recognized him in 2013, with $1.5 billion and a position of 974th.

Vingroup is Vietnam's largest listed firm by market cap. Its core businesses are electric cars, real estate development (residential complexes, resorts, and retail space), technology research (cloud computing, AI, big data...), education, and medical care.

Chairman of Hoa Phat Group Tran Dinh Long, with $3.3 billion in total assets, ranked third place in Vietnam and 975th globally. Hoa Phat is now Vietnam's biggest steel maker and also involves interior decoration items, office equipment, real estate development and agriculture.

Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, Vice Chairman of HDBank and Vietjet Air, has slipped to the fourth position in Vietnam and out of the top 1,000 wealthiest persons on earth. She ranked 1020th, down 33 places from last month.

Techcombank Chairman Ho Hung Anh and Masan Group Chairman Nguyen Dang Quang, both witnessed a decline of $200 million over a month, to $2.4 billion and $1.9 billion, respectively. They are the fifth and sixth richest in Vietnam, as well as the 1331st and 1601st in the world.

Tran Ba Duong, Chairman of Thaco Group and his family, who had an unchanged net worth of $1.6 billion, remained last place on the Vietnamese representatives’ list, and ranked 1931st on Forbes’s entire list.

CEO Tesla Elon Musk is currently the richest person in the world, with $219 billion. This was followed by Amazon Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos with $171 billion, LVMH Chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault with $158 billion, and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates with $129 billion.

There are 2,668 billionaires on Forbes’ 36th-annual ranking, 87 fewer than a year ago. Their collective wealth is $12.7 trillion, $400 billion less than in 2021, caused by military conflicts, pandemic, and sluggish markets, it said in the US magazine.

The most dramatic drops have occurred in China, where a government crackdown on tech companies has led to 87 fewer Chinese billionaires on the list, and Russia, where there are 34 fewer billionaires than last year following the conflict in Ukraine.