A taipan (Chinese: 大班; pinyin: dà bān; Sidney Lau: daai6baan1,[1] literally "top class"[2]), sometimes spelled tai-pan, is a foreign-born senior business executive or entrepreneur operating in mainland China or Hong Kong.
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, taipans were foreign-born businessmen who headed large hong trading houses such as Jardine, Matheson & Co., Swire and Dent & Co., amongst others.
[citation needed] The first recorded use of the term in English is in the Canton Register of 28 October 1834.
Examples of taipans are: The López family of Iloilo of Lopez Holdings Corporation; the late Henry Sy of SM Investments; National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) vice-chairmen Henry T. Sy Jr. and Robert Coyiuto Jr.; Ramon Ang of San Miguel Corporation; and Lucio Tan of Philippine Airlines.
[4] The term gained wide currency outside China after the publication of Somerset Maugham's 1922 short story "The Taipan" and James Clavell's 1966 novel Tai-Pan, and was film adapted in 1986, directed by Daryl Duke.