A low-profile Chinese couple has become the country's wealthiest people overnight after an initial public offering that also earned Goldman Sachs a near 200-fold profit on the bank's original $5m investment in the pair's pharmaceutical company.
Li Li and his wife Li Tan's company, Shenzhen Hepalink Pharmaceutical, sold 10 per cent of its shares this week in a Shenzhen-based IPO that values their combined 80 per cent pre-sale stake at around Rmb42.6bn ($6.2bn).
Goldman Sachs invested $4.9m in 2007 to buy a 12.5 per cent stake in Hepalink that is now worth Rmb6.7bn ($975m), a huge return on paper even before the company begins trading on the stock exchange.