Yang Huiyan gives company shares worth $826 million to charity

A woman selling shares of a company online.

Yang Huiyan, board chair of Country Garden Services Holdings Company, a real estate firm in China, has donated company shares worth $826 million to a charity founded by her younger sister, according to Fortune.

The donation to Hong Kong-based Guoqiang Public Welfare Foundation amounts to 55 percent of Yang’s personal stake in the firm. According to a statement from the company, the donation will support “charitable purposes such as supporting science, education and culture, health and youth development in Hong Kong and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, assisting vulnerable groups, funding disaster relief, and promoting rural revitalization in [m]ainland China.” The foundation pledged not to sell the shares within the next 10 years.

Yang donated the shares amid a crisis in China’s real estate sector and a decline in her own wealth. Once the richest woman in Asia, Yang has seen her fortune slump 80 percent in about two years, from $34 billion to $6.32 billion, according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

(Photo credit: Getty Images/Pony Wang)