Huang Guangyu, head of Gome Electrical Appliances Holding Ltd [file photo:sina.com]

Huang Guangyu, chairman of Gome Electrical Appliances Holding Ltd, took the top spot with net worth estimated at 18 billion yuan (US$2.3 billion), Forbes reported yesterday.

He finished in fourth place last year.

Following the 37-year-old Huang is a group of young entrepreneurs who have profited from the country's economic boom. More than a quarter of the business people on this year's list of the mainland's 400 richest people are younger than 40.

The combined net worth of the top 40 richest people was US$38 billion, up 46 percent from a year ago. The threshold to enter the list this year increased to 800 million yuan from last year's 500 million yuan.

A big reason for the jump in wealth among China's leading business people is their success in listing their companies overseas, said Russell Flannery, Forbes' Shanghai Bureau chief and the compiler of the list.

"The growing number of Chinese listings on stock markets around the world is an extension of China's rapidly expanding influence in world trade and investment in general," Flannery said.

Huang entered the media spotlight early this week when Caijing business magazine alleged that he and his brother received 1.3 billion yuan in illegal loans from the Bank of China's Beijing branch more than 10 years ago and have not paid it back. The report also claimed the men were under investigation.

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Huang and his company denied they owed the bank any money and said they had received no notification of any investigation.

Huang's assets almost doubled in the past year as Chinese consumers snapped up household goods at his Gome chain, Forbes reported.

Xu Rongmao, who controls Shimao Property, the Hong Kong-listed arm of real estate developer Shimao Group, ranked second on the rich list with US$2.1 billion, up from No. 9 the year before. He was followed by Rong Zhijian, chairman of the conglomerate Citic Pacific Ltd, with US$2 billion, slipping from No. 1 last year.

The richest woman on China's mainland was reported to be Zhang Yin, the 49-year-old co-founder and chairman of Nine Dragons Paper Holdings Ltd, one of the world's largest packaging paper makers. She ranked No. 5 on Forbes list, a big jump from last year's No. 107, with US$1.5 billion in assets.