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Mainzeal failed while parent made billions

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  Richard Yan, pictured outside the High Court in Auckland, says he never lost confidence in Mainzeal. Photo: Nikki Mandow Richard Yan, pictured outside the High Court in Auckland, says he never lost confidence in Mainzeal. Photo: Nikki Mandow

Richina, the Chinese parent company of failed New Zealand construction company Mainzeal, owns assets potentially worth billions of dollars, according to information from the ongoing High Court hearing in Auckland reports Nikki Mandow for Newsroom.

Investors in Richina, including Mainzeal directors Richard Yan and Dame Jenny Shipley, now have stakes worth millions - on paper at least. Yet despite significant loans from Mainzeal to Richina, no one could keep the New Zealand company afloat, or avoid losses to unsecured creditors of more than $115 million.

In 1980 a fresh-faced Chinese student arrived in Auckland, one of the first young people from Communist China to get a scholarship to the capitalist west after the end of the Cultural Revolution.

Yan Ciliang, or Richard Yan as he’s known in English, was 17 years old: bright, enthusiastic, optimistic, poor. The story goes that on arrival in Auckland the sum of his possessions was a Playboy-branded belt, a watch, a few clothes, a borrowed $50, and a scholarship to the University of Auckland.

Yan is now a wealthy businessman. A very wealthy businessman. On paper at least, Yan could be worth over $1 billion. Read the full article . . .>