A Chinese gaming billionaire now ranks as one of the top landowners in the US
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- Tianqiao Chen is the US' 82nd-biggest landowner according to The Land Report.
- He owns 198,000 acres of timberland in central Oregon near the Deschutes National Forest.
- The Chinese billionaire cofounded online-gaming company Shanda Interactive Entertainment in 1999.
Chinese billionaire Tianqiao Chen is the US' 82nd-biggest individual landowner according to the latest edition of The Land Report.
Chen owns 198,000 acres of timberland in central Oregon through his investment group – Shanda Asset Management – per the ranking.
A grant application from 2018 said the company owned at least 196,000 acres of land, with parts bordering the Deschutes National Forest near the city of Bend.
Chen acquired the land in 2015 for $85 million, or $430 per acre, The Land Report said. Business Insider could not independently verify this information.
Chen bought the land from Fidelity National Financial Ventures via the investment vehicle Whitefish Cascade Forest Resources, according to both The Land Report and the Deschutes Land Trust, which carries out conservation work in central Oregon.
The land is currently owned by Shanda Asset Management, The Land Report said, citing Oregon tax records. The Deschutes Land Trust said that Whitefish Cascade previously rebranded as Shanda Asset Management.
The grant application included a map of Shanda Asset Management's land. It said that the land is "extremely popular" with hunters, hikers, mushroom pickers, and mountain bikers and that species on the land include deer, elk, bears, and turkeys.
The Land Report said that Chen also owns about 500,000 acres of timberland in Ontario, Canada. Shanda Asset Management says on its website that it had acquired 700,000 acres of timberland predominantly in Oregon and Ontario "to diversify its holdings and protect and steward natural resources."
Chen is behind only the Canadian Irving family as the biggest individual owner of US land by a non-US citizen, Bloomberg reported.
Tianqiao Chen was a billionaire by 30
Chen quit his job at a securities firm to cofound online gaming company Shanda Interactive Entertainment in 1999 with his wife, Chrissy, and his younger brother, per Bloomberg.
Chen listed the company on the Nasdaq in 2004 before taking it private again in 2012. Bloomberg reported that Chen became a billionaire at 30, but later largely disappeared from the public eye amid health problems. The news organization reported Wednesday that Chen is still a billionaire.
Shanda Asset Management is a branch of the Shanda Group, an investment firm. As well as the land in Oregon and Ontario, Shanda Asset Management owns real estate in China.