(Yicai Global) July 12 -- Xu Jingren, the founder and chairman of Chinese drug-making giant Yangtze River Pharmaceutical Group, has died at the age of 76. He was known as the Banlangen King after his firm made vast quantities of the traditional Chinese medicine during Shanghai’s hepatitis A outbreak in the 1980s.

Xu suffered a heart attack on June 10 while on a business trip, the Health Times reported yesterday. The privately held firm confirmed his death with the Beijing News later in the evening.

Xu never nominated a successor, but his son Xu Haoyu is the company’s vice chairman.

Born in 1944, Xu Jingren founded Jiangsu province-based Yangtze River Pharma in 1971. It topped the list of China’s top 100 pharmaceutical companies by revenue for six consecutive years from 2014 to 2019. The firm has more than 20 subsidiaries and employs 16,000 people.

In April, China’s market regulator fined the drugmaker CNY764 million (USD118 million), or 3 percent of its annual revenue, for price fixing.

Xu’s family’s wealth had climbed to CNY47 billion (USD7.3 billion) as of last year, ranking first among the richest entrepreneurs from the city of Taizhou in Jiangsu, according to the 2020 Hurun China Rich List.

Editor: Futura Costaglione