The previous list of top 10 richest men published by Forbes magazine has seen all ten men pass a $100 million net worth with significant increase to their income, but the most recent one has a slight different in those figures.
Many may wonder what they do to achieve this feat even in this time of global pandemic and significant downturn in the global economy, but a closer look at their income and activities reveals an in-depth and analysis of their income.
Elon Musk – $246.9b:
Born in Pretoria, South Africa 50 years ago, Musk is working to revolutionize transportation on Earth, through electric car maker Tesla — and in space, via rocket producer SpaceX.
He grew up in South Africa, then immigrated to Canada at age 17. He landed in the U.S. as a transfer student to the University of Pennsylvania.
Musk owns 21% of Tesla but has pledged more than half his stake as collateral for loans; Forbes has discounted his stake to take the loans into account.
Twitter’s board agreed to sell the company to Musk for $44 billion on April 25, 2022, after he disclosed a 9.1% stake and threatened a hostile takeover.
SpaceX, Musk’s rocket company, is valued at $74 billion – after a funding in February 2021.
Musk, who will turn 51 next month holds citizenship in America, Canada and his Native South Africa.
Bernard Arnault & family – $146.6b:
Bernard Arnault is a French business magnate, investor, and art collector.
He is the chairman and chief executive of LVMH Moët Hennessy – Louis Vuitton SE, the world’s largest luxury goods company.
Arnault is, as of May 2022, the second richest person in the world and the richest person from Europe, with an estimated net worth of US $160 billion – according to Forbes.
Bernard Arnault oversees the LVMH empire of about 70 fashion and cosmetics brands, including Louis Vuitton and Sephora.
In January 2021, LVMH acquired American jeweler, Tiffany & Co for $15.8 billion, believed to be the biggest luxury brand acquisition ever.
LVMH spent $3.2 billion in 2019 for the luxury hospitality group, Belmond, which owns or manages 46 hotels, trains and river cruises.
His father made a small fortune in construction and Arnault got his start by pulling out $15 million from that business to buy Christian Dior in 1985.
Four of Arnault’s five children work in corners of the LVMH empire: Frédéric, Delphine, Antoine and Alexandre.
Jeff Bezos – $142.0b:
Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States, the 58-year old, according to Forbes, stands at third richest man in the world – with an estimated net worth of 151.8 billion Dollars.
Jeff Bezos founded the e-commerce giant, Amazon, in 1994, out of his garage in Seattle. He stepped down as CEO to become the executive chairman in July 2021.
Bezos sold $8.8 billion worth of his Amazon stock in 2021 and also gave some shares away; he now owns a bit less than 10% of the company.
Amazon faced criticism from U.S. senators and the general public for its treatment of warehouse workers during the coronavirus pandemic.
He and his wife MacKenzie divorced in 2019 after 25 years of marriage and he transferred a quarter of his then 16% Amazon stake to her.
Bezos owns The Washington Post and Blue Origin, an aerospace company developing rockets. He briefly flew to space in one in July 2021.
Bill Gates – $129.1b:
William Henry Gates III is an American business magnate, software developer, investor, author, and philanthropist. He is the co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen.
Bill Gates turned his fortune from the software firm, Microsoft, into a diversified fortune; including the investment zero-carbon energy.
In May 2021, Bill and Melinda each announced on Twitter that they were ending their marriage of 27 years. They still co-chair the charitable Gates Foundation.
Gates, who cofounded Microsoft with Paul Allen (d. 2018) in 1975, transferred at least $5.7 billion worth of shares in public companies to Melinda.
As of March 2020, when Gates stepped down from the Microsoft board, he owned about 1% of the software and computing company’s shares.
He has invested in dozens of companies including Canadian National Railway and AutoNation, and is one of the largest owners of farmlands in the U.S.
Till date, Gates has donated an estimated $35.8 billion worth of Microsoft stock to the Gates Foundation.
Gautam Adani & family – $123.9b:
Slightly different from Gates, Gautam is the fifth richest man in the world, with a net worth of over 120 billion Dollars.
Gautam Shantilal Adani is an Indian billionaire industrialist and philanthropist. He is the chairman and founder of the Adani Group, an Ahmedabad-based multinational conglomerate involved in port development and operations in India.
The infrastructure tycoon controls Mundra Port, India’s largest port, in his home state of Gujarat.
His $13 billion Adani Group’s interests span infrastructure, commodities, power generation and transmission and real estate.
Adani acquired a 74% stake in Mumbai International Airport, India’s second busiest airport, in September 2020. He’s now the country’s biggest airport operator.
Adani wants to be the world’s largest producer of green energy and has said he will invest up to $70 billion on renewable energy projects.
Warren Buffett – $115.9b:
Warren Edward Buffett is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist. He is currently the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. He is one of the most successful investors in the world and had a net worth of over $125 billion as of April 2022, making him the world’s sixth wealthiest person.
Buffett runs Berkshire Hathaway, which owns more than 60 companies, including insurer Geico, battery maker Duracell and restaurant chain Dairy Queen.
As the son of a U.S. congressman, he bought his first stock at age 11 and first filed taxes at age 13.
He has promised to donate over 99% of his wealth. So far he has given more than $45 billion, mostly to the Gates Foundation and his kids’ foundations.
In 2010, he and Bill Gates launched the Giving Pledge, asking billionaires to commit to donating at least half of their wealth to charitable causes.
Larry Ellison – $101.7b:
Lawrence Joseph Ellison is an American businessman and investor. He is the co-founder, executive chairman, chief technology officer and former chief executive officer of Oracle Corporation.
He was born on August 17th, 1944, at Bronx, New York, United States and will clock 78 years in three months.
Larry Ellison is chairman, chief technology officer and cofounder of software giant, Oracle, where he owns about 35% of the shares.
He gave up the Oracle CEO role in 2014, after 37 years at the helm.
Oracle has grown in part through steady acquisitions of software companies, the biggest of which was the $9.3 billion acquisition of NetSuite in 2016.
In 2020, Ellison moved permanently to the Hawaiian island Lanai. He bought nearly all of it in 2012 for $300 million.
Ellison joined Tesla’s board in December 2018, after purchasing 3 million Tesla shares earlier that year.
Mukesh Ambani – $99.9b:
Mukesh Dhirubhai Ambani is an Indian business magnate and chairman, managing director, and the largest shareholder of Reliance Industries Ltd., a Fortune Global 500 company and India’s most valuable company by market value.
Mukesh Ambani chairs and runs the Reliance Industries, which has interests in petrochemicals, oil and gas, telecom and retail.
Reliance was founded by his late father Dhirubhai Ambani, a yarn trader, in 1966, as a small textile manufacturer.
After his father’s death in 2002, Ambani and his younger sibling Anil divvied up the family empire.
Reliance sparked a telecom price war with the launch of a 4G phone and broadband service, Jio, in 2016. Today, investors in Jio include Google and Facebook.
Ambani is pivoting Reliance into green energy. The company will be investing $80 billion over the next 10-15 years on renewable energy and building a new complex next to its refinery.
Larry Page – $99.8b:
Lawrence Edward Page is an American computer scientist and internet entrepreneur. He is best known as one of the co-founders of Google, along with Sergey Brin.
Larry Page stepped down as CEO of Alphabet, the parent of Google, in December 2019 but remains a board member and a controlling shareholder.
He cofounded Google in 1998 with fellow Stanford Ph.D. student, Sergey Brin.
With Brin, Page invented Google’s PageRank algorithm, which powers the search engine.
Page was CEO until 2001, when Eric Schmidt took over, and from 2011 until 2015, he was the CEO of Google’s new parent company, Alphabet.
He is a founding investor in a space exploration company, Planetary Resources, and is also funding “flying car” startups of Kitty Hawk and Opener.
Sergey Brin – $96.0b:
Sergey Mikhailovich Brin is an American business magnate, computer scientist, and Internet entrepreneur. Together with Larry Page, he founded Google. Brin was the president of Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., until December 3, 2019, when he stepped down from the role.
Sergey Brin stepped down as president of Alphabet, parent company of Google, in December 2019 but remains a controller shareholder and a board member.
He cofounded Google with Larry Page in 1998. The two met in Stanford University while studying for advanced degrees in computer science.
Google went public in 2004 and began trading as Alphabet, a newly created parent company, in 2015.
Brin was absent from public Alphabet events for much of 2019; he spent his time on Alphabet’s moonshot research lab X.
Brin is reportedly funding a high-tech airship project.
The shift for the top ten is a constant occurrence as their net worth fluctuates on daily basis but no new name is found in the top ten both from the previous and the current list.
