Stop me if you think that you’ve heard this one before. Actually, don’t. The names are the same, the amounts are truly and similarly earth shattering, but this is an entirely new story of Chinese Billionaire Liu Yiqian becoming the greatest person to earn frequent flyer miles, who most likely has no interest in using frequent flyer miles.
In one purchase totaling $170,400,000, Mr Yiqian earned enough miles to fly around the world in first class roughly 1,000 times, 132,000,000 miles to be exact. In fact, he could fly on Singapore’s Suites class 1,284 times or more…. with a date! Speaking of dates, of all things, he did it buying a nude painting by Modigliani. I suppose for someone who can put $170,000,000 on an American Express card to buy a painting, it’s less exciting to him than it is to me. Earlier this year Mr. Yiqian, entered our travel radar screens by spending a mere $45,000,000, which when converted to frequent flyer miles from an Asian American Express account equated to about 27,000,000 miles. SO essentially, Mr. Yiqian now has over 150,000,000 American Express points from two purchases.
You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. Mr. Yiqian was once a Beijing cab driver who turned his modest earnings into investments in property, pharmaceuticals and investment banking. Now he’s taking the points and miles game by storm, 170,000,000 dollars at a time. As a reminder, using the points towards purchases, or for hotels would not get him the best reward, not that he cares….
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