An autodidact who formerly worked as a taxi driver, he has built his fortune since the mid-1980s by investing in stock trading, real estate[2] and pharmaceuticals.
[1] Born in 1963 into a working-class family in Shanghai, Liu Yiqian dropped out of school at the age of 14, in order to help his mother to sell handbags on the street.
Then he became a taxi driver in Shanghai for two years in the mid-1980s, before making his fortune in the 1990s as part of the new rich who emerged after China's reform and opening-up policy.
[11][12] Later that month, he bought an antique Tibetan bronze yogi sitting in the lotus position at an auction at Sotheby's in New York.
[13] In November 2015, he bought Italian painter Amedeo Modigliani's Nu couché (1917–18), a widely known painting of a reclining nude woman, for US$170.4 million, the second-highest price for an artwork at auction, in a volatile sale at Christie's in New York.