Musk tops Forbes 2022 Billionaires list
Agencies | New York
The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com
War, pandemic and plunging stock markets have dented the fortunes of many of the richest people on the planet this year, said Forbes yesterday as it released the names of 2,668 billionaires around the globe, down from a record 2,755 last year.
Collectively, they’re worth $12.7 trillion according to the World’s Billionaires 2022 list, down from a record $13.1 trillion on the 2021 list.
Overall, the billionaires on the Forbes Billionaire List for 2022 have declined by 87 compared to 2021. The collective wealth of these billionaires have declined by a whopping $400 billion to $12.7 trillion.
The report says, in all, 329 people fell off the billionaires’ list this year–the most since the 2009 financial crisis. That includes 169 “one-year wonders”, newcomers to the 2021 ranking, including Bumble’s Whitney Wolfe Herd and Peloton’s John Foley, who debuted a year ago and have already dropped from the list.
However, the report has 236 newcomers joined the ranks this year, including pop star Rihanna, Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson and venture capitalist Josh Kushner. Barbados, Bulgaria, Estonia and Uruguay each gained their first billionaires ever.
And, despite the volatile year, 1,050 billionaires are wealthier than they were a year ago. But, no one got richer than Elon Musk, who tops the World’s Billionaires list for the first time ever. Musk was worth an estimated $219 billion, after adding $68 billion to his fortune over the past year on the back of a 33% jump in the share price of his electric vehicle maker Tesla.
He surpassed Jeff Bezos, who fell to No. 2 for the first time in four years due to a 3% drop in Amazon stock and increased charitable giving, which wiped $6 billion from his net worth. French luxury goods tycoon Bernard Arnault, who added $8 billion to his fortune over the past year, remains the world’s third-richest person.
Rounding out the top 5 are Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. There are 86 list members under the age of 40, including newcomers like Melanie Perkins, the 34-year-old co-founder and CEO of graphic design platform Canva, and Vlad Yatsenko, the 38-year-old co-founder and chief technology officer of digital bank Revolut.
An even more impressive set: the 12 under 30s who made this year’s list, including the world’s youngest billionaire, 19-year-old German drugstore chain heir Kevin David Lehmann, and newcomer Gary Wang, 28, the Bahamas-based American cofounder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX–one of 19 billionaires to get rich from crypto and blockchain technology.
Overall 1,891 billionaires– or 71% of the list (vs. 72% last year)–are self-made, meaning they founded or cofounded a company or established their own fortune (as opposed to inheriting it).
In addition to the 329 people whose fortunes dipped below $1 billion this year, another 30 billionaires died, including Publix Super Markets heir Carol Jenkins Barnett, who was 65, and 91-year-old Edward “Ned” Johnson III, who took over Fidelity from his father in 1977 and turned it into one of the largest US money managers. Forbes used stock prices and exchange rates from March 11 to calculate net worths.
Elon Musk
Net worth: $219 billion
Source of wealth: Tesla, SpaceX
Residence: Austin, Texa
Jeff Bezos
Net worth: $171 billion
Source of wealth: Amazon
Citizenship: US
Bernard Arnault
Net worth: $158 billion
Source of wealth: LVMH
Citizenship: France
Bill Gates
Net worth: $129 billion
Source of wealth: Microsoft
Citizenship: US
Warren Buffett
Net worth: $118 billion
Source of wealth: Berkshire Hathaway
Citizenship: US
Larry Page
Net worth: $111 billion
Source of wealth: Google
Citizenship: US
Sergey Brin
Net worth: $107 billion
Source of wealth: Google
Citizenship: US
Larry Ellison
Net worth: $106 billion
Source of wealth: Oracle
Citizenship: US
Steve Ballmer
Net worth: $91.4 billion
Source of wealth: Microsoft
Citizenship: US
Mukesh Ambani
Net worth: $90.7 billion
Source of wealth: Diversified
Citizenship: India
M.A. Yusuff Ali
Net worth $5.4 billion
Middle East retail king M.A. Yusuff Ali presides over $8 billion (revenue) LuLu Group International, with 255 stores and shopping malls in the Gulf and elsewhere, according to Forbes. Yusuff Ali is reportedly planning to list the retail business in 2023. Other assets include the Waldorf Astoria in Scotland and the Great Scotland Yard Hotel, the former headquarters of the U.K. Metropolitan Police. Yusuff Ali opened his first LuLu hypermarket in the 1990s at the height of the Gulf War.
Ravi Pillai
Net worth $2.6 billion
Indian-born farmer’s son, Ravi Pillai migrated to Saudi Arabia after his small construction business in his native Kerala state went bust. With help from a well-connected local partner, he started over in 1978 and built his RP Group into a $7.8 billion (revenue) construction heavyweight. The construction magnate has used his Gulf riches to invest back home, picking up stakes in banks, hotels and real estate.
Mukesh Ambani
Mukesh Ambani of India remains Asia’s richest person. Worth an estimated $90.7 billion, he held onto the No. 10 spot worldwide, enough to narrowly edge out fellow Indian Gautam Adani, whose fortune climbed by nearly $40 billion, to an estimated $90 billion, as shares of his listed companies have skyrocketed.
327 women billionaires
Forbes found 327 women billionaires around the globe. The majority of them inherited their wealth, including the world’s richest woman, Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, whose grandfather founded beauty giant L’Oreal. But 101 women on the list are self-made billionaires, the richest being Fan Hongwei, who chairs Chinese chemical fiber supplier Hengli Petrochemical and is worth an estimated $18.2 billion.
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine–and the avalanche of sanctions that followed–sent the Russian stock market and the ruble plummeting, resulting in 34 fewer Russian billionaires on the list. The fortunes of the 83 Russians who held onto their billionaire status nearly all stagnated or declined from a year ago. Total Russian billionaire wealth fell by more than $260 billion.
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