Li retakes Asia's richest person crown

An IMAX cinema that Wanda Group operates in Changsha, Hunan province, is a local attraction. Wanda Cinema Line holds around 15 percent of the market share on the Chinese mainland. [Photo/China Daily]

Alibaba's surge minted at least three new billionaires this year, including Simon Xie, an Alibaba co-founder and the second-biggest shareholder of the finance affiliate that owns Alipay. Xie, 44, owns 9.7 percent of Zhejiang Ant Small & Micro Financial Services Group Co, the parent of Alipay, according to company filings obtained by Bloomberg News.

Small & Micro CEO Lucy Peng and Jonathan Lu, CEO of Alibaba, each controls almost 4 percent in Small & Micro Financial, according to filings submitted by the company in Hangzhou. They also both own less than 1 percent of Alibaba, which made them new 2014 billionaires.

Two of the year's other biggest gainers were Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg of the United States.

Buffett, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc, added $13.7 billion to his net worth after the Omaha, Nebraska-based company soared 28 percent as the dozens of operating businesses the 84-year-old chairman bought over the past five decades churned out record profit.

Buffett passed Mexican telecommunications billionaire Carlos Slim on Dec 5 to become the world's second-richest person. Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft Corp, was up $9.1 billion during the year. The 59-year-old remains the world's richest person with an $87.6 billion fortune.

Zuckerberg, the hoodie-wearing chief executive officer of the world's largest social-networking company, gained $10.6 billion as the Menlo Park, California-based business rose to a record on Dec 22.

Sheldon Adelson, the gambling mogul who controls Las Vegas Sands Corp, the world's largest casino company, fell $8.7 billion as the Las Vegas-based company dropped 25 percent.

Macao's casinos are looking at their first down year in revenue since the market was opened to foreign operators in 2002. More than half of the company's 2013 $13.8 billion in revenue comes from Macao.

Adelson's decline was followed by Jeffrey Bezos, chairman of Amazon.com Inc. The 50-year-old had $7.2 billion trimmed from his fortune as the Seattle-based company lost ground in the cloud computing market to crosstown competitor Microsoft Corp.