Zhang Yin (entrepreneur) - Business Career

Business Career

In October 2006, she became, at the age of 49, the first woman to top the list of richest people in China published by the Hurun Report. In 2010 Zhang's personal fortune was valued at approximately US$4.6 billion, making her the wealthiest self-made woman in the world, ahead of Oprah Winfrey, J.K. Rowling, Giuliana Benetton and Rosalia Mera. Forbes magazine put her wealth at US$1.35 billion in November 2006, which would have made her then the richest woman in China and the fifth richest person in China. On a later Forbes list she was displaced as China's richest woman by 25-year-old Yang Huiyan, whose net worth Forbes estimated at $9 billion following the 2007 stock market listing of Country Garden Holdings, a real estate developer run by her father. As of March 2011 Forbes estimates her wealth to be US$1.6 B and the #782 richest person in the world

Zhang Yin is the daughter of Cheung Deen who had been a lieutenant in the Red Army and later became general manager of a metallurgy company in Guangdong. His contacts and connections with the Communist Party would help along her business career. After working in a Guangdong textile factory, Yin moved to Shenzhen to work in a paper trading company at the time that the city was becoming the special economic zone and export hub it is today. There she discovered that the Chinese export sector faced an enormous scarcity of paper packaging materials. In 1985, Zhang Yin opened a paper trading company in Hong Kong, a convenient source of raw materials in the form of wastepaper, using her savings of $3,800.

Zhang Yin opened a paper trading company in Hong Kong in 1985. In 1990, she moved to Los Angeles and married the second time. Her husband Ming Chung Liu was born in Taiwan, grew up in Brazil and was trained as a dental surgeon. Together they founded the paper exporting company America Chung Nam. This company has been the number one American paper exporter since 2001. It is also the largest overall exporter to China, by volume shipped. Zhang Yin holds a green card.

Zhang Yin returned to Hong Kong in 1995 and cofounded Nine Dragons Paper with her husband and her younger brother Zhang Cheng Fei. The company, headquartered in Dongguan, raised almost $500 million in an initial public offering in March 2006 at the Hong Kong Stock Exchange; by the end of 2006 the stock had nearly tripled in value. The firm invested $800 million and more than doubled production capacity by 2009, becoming first Asia's and then the world's largest maker of packaging paper. The firm entered 2011 with revenues of US$3.8 billion, 17,000 employees and the capacity to produce nine million tons of containerboard and packaging materials per year.

Zhang Yin makes most of the strategic decisions, her husband is CEO, her brother handles general management. Her 24-year-old son Lau Chun is a nonexecutive director. The company has three general managers who are responsible for all aspects of the business; none are family members.

In January 2007, it was reported that Cheung was also a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, a political advisory body for the Chinese government.