Show me the money! A humble delivery man has now become China's third-richest billionaire.
Wang Wei, chairman of SF Holding — the FedEx of China — has seen his fortune grow to around $27 billion, according to a Forbes estimate. Wang has knocked out Tencent founder Pony Ma for the third spot, but is still a few billion dollars behind China's richest man, property tycoon Wang Jianlin, based on a ranking by the Hurun Report.
China's economy has boomed over the years, and so have the pockets of some savvy individuals. The world's second-largest economy now creates one new billionaire nearly every week, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Logistics firms like SF are also riding China's e-commerce boom, as shopping sites run by Alibaba and JD.com have grown in popularity among consumers.
Shares of SF have soared as much as 40 percent after the company completed a backdoor listing last Friday in Shenzhen. Wang, 46, merged his company with one that was already trading — a quicker route to a public debut.
Since then, the stock has spiked by the 10 percent daily trading limit every day. But shares pulled back 3 percent today, after official state media reports said the huge rise was a matter of "idle speculation." Still, the company's market cap is hovering around 285 billion yuan ($41 billion).
The Chinese government has been keen to rein in frenzied stock trading — those efforts are seeking to avoid a repeat of the 2015 stock market crash.
Wang started his company in 1993 with about $13,000, sending packages himself along with a handful of other couriers and one delivery van, according to state media reports. Now, SF has 15,000 vehicles and a network that covers 200 countries and regions globally.
Other Chinese delivery firms have also listed recently — YTO Express in Shanghai, and ZTO Express in the U.S.
ZTO's New York IPO was the largest in the U.S. last year.
SF Holding didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
— Barry Huang contributed to this report.