Meet the newest billionaire: A 24-year-old Wharton School grad
One of the world’s wealthiest people is now a 24-year-old Wharton School graduate and heir to a biopharma fortune, according to Hong Kong exchange filings and reports.
Eric Tse woke up on Wednesday morning a billionaire after his parents gifted him 2.7 billion shares in their company, Sino Biopharmaceutical Ltd., late Tuesday, filings show. The stake is valued at approximately $3.8 billion, Fortune.com reported. His shares are being kept in holding companies.
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Tse was also appointed an executive director, a Wednesday statement from the company revealed, adding that he’ll be making HK$3.9 million, or just shy of $498,000 per year in his new gig. The newfound billionaire, his parents and his sister – all named to the company's executive committee – own roughly $8.9 billion dollars’ worth of shares in the biopharma company, according to Bloomberg.
He's now head-to-head with media mogul Sumner Redstone, whose net worth, as of Thursday, was $3.7 billion, and director Steven Spielberg, who is worth an estimated $3.6 billion, according to Forbes.
Eric Tse, shown in this undated image, became an overnight billionaire when his parents gifted him 2.7 billion shares in their company, Sino Biopharmaceutical Ltd.
His Instagram page, which reaches more than 13,000 followers, shows him rubbing elbows with big names, such as Princess Charlene of Monaco, France’s former first lady Carla Bruni, and Chinese basketball legend Yao Ming.
Other posts, which appear to have since been deleted from his page, showed him with popstar and entrepreneur Rihanna and models Lily Aldridge and Bella Hadid, according to the Daily Mail.
Tse was born in Seattle but attended school in China before returning to the states, according to an article on the Wharton School website. He graduated from the elite University of Pennsylvania school in 2018, with a bachelor's degree in economics. He then attended Schwarzman College at Tsinghua University in Beijing, where he received his master’s in management and global leadership, according to the Wednesday announcement.
While a student at Wharton, Tse co-created the Penn Wharton China Summit, a forum for students from across the world to meet Chinese leaders, according to the article, in which he acknowledges his parents for their support.
“My parents, seniors and elders genuinely believed in my potential and helped me without expecting any return,” he said at the time. “By the time I was 19, I was thinking about how I could deliver the same positive energy and passion to the people around me."