‘Don’t cry for me’ Goldin chief loses $21 billion in 2 days

Chinese have the same saying: “Easy come, easy go.”

Pan Sutong made $22 billion this year and then lost most of it. He says he doesn’t care,” Bloomberg reported Thursday.

This year, Pan saw shares of his Hong Kong-based Goldin Financial Holdings and Goldin Properties Holdings rocket more than 350%. Then on Wednesday, the spit hit the fan at another Chinese conglomerate.

Hanergy Thin Film Power Group lost $19 billion after Chairman Li Hejun failed to show up for its annual meeting Wednesday. The stock, which had surged sixfold over the past year, making the company more valuable than Sony, according to Bloomberg, fell 47% in 24 minutes before being suspended.

Hanergy’s plunge shocked the market and over two days, the Goldin twins lost about $21 billion combined.

“It’s as unpredictable as a casino,” Nigel Davis, principal lecturer in the University of Hong Kong’s law department, told Bloomberg. “There is not much correlation between fundamentals and share price, it’s pretty much gambling.”

Sounds just like the U.S. stock market to us.

While, it was only paper profits, that’s still a huge psychological hit. But don’t feel too sorry for Pan. He’s already a Hong Kong-based electronics and property tycoon who last week just happened to jump to fourth place on Bloomberg’s Asia wealth ranking.

And we don’t think this is going to put a big crimp in his lifestyle. He owns a 70.3% stake in Goldin Financial and bought, long before the stock jumped, a 115 foot yacht; a private Gulfstream G550; homes in London, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Shanghai and Tianjin; and his own brokerage. The owners of France’s five first growth Bordeaux producers are his buddies and he’s partied with British Princes William and Henry.

As for Goldin, we don’t think that’s going belly-up anytime soon, either. The company is completing a Hong Kong office tower that will start generating cash next year. It plans to become the king of the wine business by building two massive wine storage facilities in the free trade zones of Tianjin and Guangzhou. Finally, part of the business is factoring, the buying of receivables from manufacturers at a discount.

So, what did Pan have to say about the big loss? “A genuinely wealthy person would not count his wealth every day. It’s better if you just leave me off the list.”