Wealthy shift focus to investment: Survey

China's top entrepreneurs, who have achieved extraordinary business success in the past decades, are moving away from their core businesses to become more involved in investment, a ranking of the wealthiest investors in the world's second-largest economy showed on Wednesday.

"It is a clear trend that many entrepreneurs are shifting from their traditional core industries looking for other investment opportunities," said Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman and the chief researcher of the Hurun Report, a luxury magazine publisher.

"They have changed their businesses, because China's economy is evolving," he said.

The list of China's richest investors, which is a sub-list of the Hurun China Rich List 2013, an annual ranking of China's 1,000 wealthiest people, named Liu Yonghao, 62, board chairman of New Hope Group, as the richest investor with total investment of 20 billion yuan ($3.27 billion) in the finance sector.

Gong Hongjia and wife Chen Chunmei, leading angel investors in the Chinese technology sector, ranked second with wealth from investment of 18 billion yuan.

"Though Liu's core business is still pig feed, his investment in the finance sector has become an important part of his wealth portfolio," Hoogewerf, a former chartered accountant at Arthur Andersen, said.

Liu holds 6.7 percent of China Minsheng Banking Corp Ltd's shares. That makes him the largest shareholder of the bank, and his New Hope Group retains extensive interests in animal feed, property, logistics and dairy products.

The threshold for being one of China's richest investors this year was 5 billion yuan. There were 22 entrepreneurs who made the grade, with a total wealth from investment of 212 billion yuan.

The most popular investment sectors were information technology and finance, the list showed.