Huang Guangyu, 41, once the richest man in mainland China, also founder and former chairman of Hong Kong-listed Gome Electrical Appliances Holdings, faces charges of insider trading, bribery and other business offences.

Huang Guangyu was born into a poor farming family in 1969 in Shantou of southern China's Guangdong Province.

According to the Hurun Report, which tracks the wealth of people in China, he used to supplement his mother's income by selling used books and discarded plastic bottles after school.

By the age of 17 he had moved to Beijing with his brother, selling cheap electrical appliances with the help of a bank loan of just US$3,600, said Forbes magazine, which also measures individuals' wealth.

The brothers' retail business took off in the late 1980s and they expanded into the property market: before long, they were both worth millions of dollars.

Huang had his first taste of the capital markets in 2006, when he took Gome public through a back-door listing. Since then, Huang has been attracted to the capital markets because of the high risks and still higher yields, said people close to him.

Although Huang dropped out of school at the age of 16, he later managed to obtain a bachelor degree from Renmin University of China. Huang's wife Du Juan graduated from Beijing University of Science and Technology and once worked in the Bank of China as a credit officer. Later, Du joined Gome as head of Pengtai Investment Co Ltd. "Du is in charge of Gome's business in Hong Kong; she's good at handling investment business," said a source within Gome.

Before 2005, Huang also owned Eagle Legend Securities Limited and Eagle Legend Futures Limited. In April 2005, Gome announced that it had sold both companies in order to focus on the electrical appliance business. However, according to sources with Gome, the two companies were sold because Huang lost 4 billion yuan in a futures transaction earlier that year. That's also how Huang lost all his hair, they said.