Bernard Arnault, CEO and chairman of luxury goods group LVMH, fell to No. 3 richest spot in June, one month after falling to No. 2 and losing the No. 1 spot to Elon Musk, as shares of his luxury conglomerate LVMH continued to slip. It’s a marked change from the 2001 list of billionaires, when 49% of the total 565 billionaires were self-made. Forbes uses the term “self-made” as a contrast to “inherited” and “inherited & growing;” it’s not meant to indicate that someone created a billion-dollar fortune all on their own.
The world’s 10 richest people added $402 billion to their fortunes in 2021. Here’s whose net worth grew the most
- Larry Page, the former CEO of Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is worth $91.5 billion, placing him at No. 8 this year.
- While there are several ways to compare various nations’ wealth, one of the best methods is to evaluate each country’s gross domestic product, or GDP.
- Men owned $105 trillion more wealth than women, while Black families in the United States had only 15.8 percent of the wealth of a normal white household.
- He moved into the top 10 richest in the world following a notable 15% jump in the share price of Alphabet in May 2023.
- Notable drop-offs include Kardashian family member and makeup entrepreneur Kylie Jenner and West Virginia Governor Jim Justice.
- A particular point of positivity for the disability community lies in technology.
- Unfortunately for the world’s wealthiest individual, the matter won’t be resolved anytime soon.
The founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, became billionaires at age 30. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, four years after starting the company, joined the list at 23 to become the youngest self-made billionaire. Mark Zuckerberg (39) of Meta, Larry Ellison (79) of Oracle, Warren Buffett (93) of Berkshire Hathaway, Bill Gates (68) of Microsoft and Larry Page of Google (51) complete the top eight roundup of most wealthy people in the world. In ninth and tenth place comes Steve Ballmer (68), the former CEO of Microsoft, and Sergey Brin (50), the co-founder of Google. For Forbes’ full list of the World’s Billionaires, see forbes.com/billionaires.
Bill Gates: $139 billion (+$7 billion)
- There were rapid-fire public offerings, surging cryptocurrencies and skyrocketing stock prices.
- LVMH chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault is No. 3 on the list, with $76 billion.
- In comparison, Musk, the world’s richest man, has lost $62 billion, while Gates has lost a comparatively modest $12.5 billion.
- Poverty inequality across the world is exploding, with the rich hoarding a disproportionate amount of global wealth while the already vulnerable are getting fewer resources.
- In the past 10 years, more than half of the new wealth created globally has been directed to the pockets of the richest one percent of humanity.
GDP can also be distorted by the financial sector in tax haven countries (though this is a much greater concern in Europe than in Africa). In 2017, former US President Donald Trump promised Americans that his Tax Cuts and Jobs Act would deliver benefits for the working class. The act aimed to slash https://www.bookstime.com/ corporate tax from 35 percent to about 20 percent for big organisations. Trump delivered $1.5m in tax cuts, the biggest corporate tax cut in US history. Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and owner of X, formerly Twitter, paid a “true tax rate” of around 3 percent between 2014 and 2018, Oxfam found.
Warren Buffett is worth $117 billion—once again making him one of the 5 richest people in the world
Altogether they are worth $13.1 trillion, up from $8 trillion on the 2020 list. China had 319 (not including Hong Kong, Taiwan or Macau), Germany had 114, and India had the fourth most with 101; India reached over 100 billionaires for its first time. Forbes first listed Gates as a billionaire in 1987; he was the richest person in the world from 1995 through 2017 (except in 2008 and from 2010 through 2013). Largely due to the $59 billion he has donated to the Gates Foundation, including a $20 billion gift in July 2022, he was overtaken as the world’s richest person in 2018 by Jeff Bezos. He and Melinda French Gates divorced in 2021; she received an estimated $10 billion in stock and other assets as part of the divorce settlement. He dropped out of Harvard to cofound software firm Microsoft with his high school friend Paul Allen in 1975, creating one of the first software programs available for the nascent personal computer industry.
Ranked No. 31 in 2020, Elon Musk rocketed into second place this year after Tesla shares increased more than 700%. Interestingly, it has been the loss of wealth by others rather than an increase in his own net worth that catapulted Buffett back into fifth place. Mark Zuckerberg, who had a net worth of more than $120 billion in January, has seen his fortune plummet 5 wealthiest people in the world by $54 billion as Facebook shares have been pummeled this year. In the past, Oxfam’s annual state of inequality reports have been criticised for including indebted individuals in their calculations of the world’s poorest people. The organisation used data from Credit Suisse, the Institute for Policy Studies, and Forbes, among others, to make its calculations.
Besides Bezos, Musk and Arnault, there’s Bill Gates, who ranks No. 4 at $124 billion, buoyed by the strength of shares he owns in Microsoft, Canadian National Railway and tractor maker Deere & Company. Zuckerberg rejoined the world’s top 10 richest in the summer of 2023 for the first time since January 2022, as the result of a rise in Meta’s stock. During the month of June, his fortune rose by $13 billion as Meta stock climbed 8%. And Zuckerberg talked to Forbes in September 2023 about Meta’s two biggest bets ahead of the company turning 20. The biggest gainer in June was Larry Ellison, whose fortune rose by $26.8 billion to an estimated $173 billion, as shares of Oracle soared to all-time highs. In terms of feedback, Becker said most people lament about how they wish they’d heard about the Institute sooner.
- During February 2024, Ellison was overtaken by Mark Zuckerberg and fell from No. 4 richest to No. 5.
- Bernard Arnault and his family are at number one, with a net worth of $233 billion.
- The company also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, both of which it acquired and greatly expanded.
- Becker said a problem is that although awareness is increasing, that hasn’t necessarily been followed up with by better outcomes.
The CEO of luxury goods conglomerate LVMH, which owns brands such as Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior and Givenchy, added $61 billion to his net worth in 2021. Heading into 2022, the 10 wealthiest individuals in the world are all worth more than $100 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Still, Forbes found more than 1,000 billionaires who are richer than they were a year ago. And 236 newcomers have become billionaires over the past year—including the first ever from Barbados, Bulgaria, Estonia and Uruguay. Caitlin O’Kane is a New York City journalist who works on the CBS News social media team as a senior manager of content and production. She writes about a variety of topics and produces “The Uplift,” CBS News’ streaming show that focuses on good news.
