Football/Industry
2018: No.7= - £1.0bn
2017: - No.6 - £990m

Aston Villa owner Tony Xia told the South China Morning Post that the club will return to the Premier League within two years.

That was in October 2016, so time is running out. Hopefully Tony Xia's patience isn't. Aston Villa has been enjoying a run of good results, which is probably what Tony Xia was hoping for when he paid £76 million for the club in June 2016. He has been a Villa supporter since seeing the club when he was a student at Oxford University

Tony Xia, 41, owns a broad-based Chinese conglomerate - the Recon Group - which has a controlling interest in several publicly-listed companies on the Hong Kong and Chinese stock exchanges. He is chairman and chief executive. His other private companies employ more than 35,000 people in 75 countries.

His business interests range from planning companies which have played a big part in the rapid expansion of China's cities, to tourism, finance, logistics, IT, health, agriculture, transport and design. One of his companies - Teamex - was sold in a £430 million deal.

Last February Recon bought a 51 per cent stake in Millennium Films, a Hollywood film studio specialising in action films, including The Expendables series. Tony Xia has taken over as chairman.

He studied landscape design at Harvard , the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at Trinity College, Oxford on a five-month exchange, before establishing his own design company in America. When China's economy began to take off he relocated the company to the eastern province of Zhejiang.

He played football as a striker when he was a youngster and the game has long been his passion. He sees his Villa purchase as the cornerstone of his sports, leisure and tourism interests and plans to promote the game - and Villa - in both China and India.

Back at Villa, the club's drop from the top flight have had a significant effect on the club's finances, with a considerable drop in TV cash. In the year to May 2016 the club made a £81.3 million loss. Turnover for the year, including player transactions, was down at £108.8 million.

The good news is that Tony Xia, who underwent heart surgery last year, is committed to Villa's youth system and has revamped the academy to find and nurture the stars of tomorrow. The academy's scouts are scouring the UK and Europe to find talented teenagers.

Tony Xia's stated objective is to get Villa back into the Premier League as quickly as possible. He has a home in Beijing but has pledged to buy a base in Birmingham for himself and his wife Sally and three year-old daughter Charlotte.