w Musk's philanthropic record
wa wa
Affected by last year's global stock market turmoil, the number of people on the 2022 Forbes Global Billionaires List decreased by 87 places from last year to 2,668 places. While the total wealth of this year's list reached $12.7 trillion, it is down from $13.1 trillion last year. Among all the richest people on the list, the number of richest people in the United States is 736, ranking first in the world.
1. Elon Musk
Wealth: $219 billion
Sources of wealth: Tesla, SpaceX
Age: 50 years old
Nationality: United States
Musk's wealth has increased by $68 billion over the past year. It's worth mentioning that he concentrated on dumping a large number of fluctuating Tesla shares worth more than $16 billion in two months last year, and as a result, may have created the largest amount of personal annual tax bills ever created.
2. Jeff Bezos
Wealth: $171 billion
Source of wealth: Amazon
Age: 58 years old
This is the first time in the past 4 years that Bezos has lost the position of the world's richest man. As Amazon stock fell 3 percent, Bezos's fortune fell $6 billion from last year. After stepping down as Amazon's CEO last June, Bezos shifted his focus to other places, such as his commercial space company, Blue Origin. In the summer of 2021, Blue Origin's rocket New Shepard successfully sent Bezos to an altitude of 100 kilometers above the surface. In addition, there are reports that Bezos plans to build a luxury yacht. Bezos is also becoming more actively involved in philanthropy, such as donating more than $1 billion to organizations like the former president's private foundation and environmental groups last year.
3. Bernard Arnault and the family
Wealth: $158 billion
Source of wealth: LVMH
Age: 73 years old
Nationality: French
Lvmh Group brands Louis Vuitton and Dior's performance during the pandemic has increased Bernard Arnault's wealth by $8 billion and prompted the seasoned luxury group leader to seek to extend his tenure. At present, LVMH is working hard to persuade the company's shareholders to agree to raise the age limit for CEOs from 75 to 80, and Arnault may use this increase of 5 years to carefully consider the successor.
4. Bill Gates
Wealth: $129 billion
Source of wealth: Microsoft
Age: 66 years old
Bill Gates, who recently experienced a divorce, has recently been busy writing: one was launched last year on "How to Fight Climate Change"; another will be launched in May this year on the theme "How to Stop Another Pandemic". In response to a possible global pandemic in the future, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation joined forces with other institutions in March to promote the development of relevant drug candidates.
5. Warren Buffett
Wealth: $118 billion
Source of wealth: Berkshire Hathaway
Age: 91 years old
After a series of transactions, Berkshire Hathaway's stock price reached an all-time high. Last fall, Buffett bought $1.1 billion worth of shares in video game maker Activision Blizzard, and the deal was a great time point: Just three months later, Microsoft announced that it had agreed to buy Activision Blizzard for $69 billion. Separately, Buffett snapped up $7 billion worth of shares in Western Oil this year as oil prices soared. In March, Berkshire Hathaway announced that it would buy insurer Alleghany for $11.6 billion in cash, the largest acquisition Buffett has made since 2016.
6. Larry Page
Wealth: $111 billion
Source of wealth: ALPHABET
Age: 49 years old
7. Sergey Brin
Wealth: $107 billion
Age: 48 years old
For now, the two Google co-founders still hold a controlling stake in the company and are members of Alphabet's board of directors. Last year, the two launched their first share sale since 2017. Forbes estimates that since May 2021, the two have cashed out more than $1 billion each.
8. Larry Ellison
Wealth: $106 billion
Source of wealth: Oracle
Age: 77 years old
As the company's cloud transformation continues to deepen, the wealth of Ellison, the current chairman and former CEO of Oracle, has increased by more than $10 billion compared with last year. Last September, Ellison bought a resort in Lake Tahoe for $345 million. His portfolio of real estate is vast, including Lanai Island, Hawaii, which was acquired in 2012 for $300 million, and more than a dozen properties within Malibu's luxury Carbon Beach neighborhood.
9. Steve Ballmer
Wealth: $91.4 billion
Age: 65 years old
Eight years ago, former Microsoft CEO Ballmer bought the NBA's Los Angeles Clippers for as much as $2 billion. Today, eight years later, Forbes values the team at $3.3 billion. The team's gains were indeed good, but what really gave Ballmer a big win was Microsoft stock, which rose more than 600% in those 8 years, increasing Ballmer's wealth by more than $65 billion.
10. Mukesh Ambani
Wealth: $90.7 billion
Source of wealth: Diversification
Age: 64 years old
Nationality: Indian
Last year, the oil and gas tycoon began a career in renewable energy, while his industries own the world's largest refinery in the Indian state of Gujarat. Reliance Industries plans to invest $80 billion over the next 10 to 15 years in green energy projects, of which $10 billion will be used to build four large renewable energy plants next to the refinery. In January, Reliance Industries announced that it would purchase a majority stake in the Mandarin Oriental, Manhattan, New York, for $98 million.
11. Gautam Adani and his family
Wealth: $90 billion
Sources of wealth: infrastructure, commodities
Age: 59 years old
In recent years, the stock prices of some of Adani's listed companies have risen due to increased profits, and the performance of solar developer Adani Green Energy has been particularly impressive. Affected by this, Adani's wealth has grown by $40 billion in the past year and has grown 10 times since 2020. Adani Green Energy aims to become the world's largest renewable energy supplier by 2030 and plans to invest $70 billion in this regard. In 1988, Adani, who dropped out of college, left his father's textile shop to start a commodities export company on his own. Today, in addition to commodities, Adani also has a certain interest in the port and airport industry.
12. Michael Bloomberg
Wealth: $82 billion
Source of wealth: Bloomberg Corporation
Age: 80 years old
While empowering Wall Street through its Bloomberg terminal, Bloomberg pledged $120 million to fight drug overdose in November and again pledged $750 million in December to support charter schools. In the 2020 U.S. presidential election, the former mayor of New York spent $1.2 billion to support Democratic candidates (more than $1 billion of which was spent on his own unsuccessful campaign). Bloomberg is more pessimistic about the Democratic Party's performance in 2022, warning democrats in a recent commentary: "If the wrong line is not corrected immediately, the Democratic Party will suffer in November this year." ”
13. Carlos Slim Elu
Wealth: $81.2 billion
Source of wealth: Telecommunications
Age: 82 years old
Nationality: Mexican
After mexico's Americas Telecom Company shares rose 44 percent, the telecom tycoon's fortune grew $18.4 billion from last year. In 2015, Slim exercised a stock option for The New York Times, buying 10 percent of the shares at more than $6 per share and selling them all at the end of 2020 at more than $40 per share.
14. Françoise Berdongu Meyers and the family
Wealth: $74.8 billion
Source of wealth: L'Oréal
Age: 68 years old
The world's richest woman is vice chairman of L'Oréal's board, which was founded in 1909 by its chemist grandfather. Last December, L'Oréal acquired its 36th brand: Youth to the People, a California-based pure plant-based skincare company.
15. Mark Zuckerberg
Wealth: $67.3 billion
Source of wealth: META
Age: 37 years old
Because Zuckerberg intends to build a vaguely defined (and possibly unpopular) tech utopia of "metacosm," Facebook officially changed its name to Meta last October. Of course, he has reason to escape the blow from the real world: Meta's stock price has fallen by as much as 50% since its peak last September, and Zuckerberg has fallen out of the world's top ten richest people for the first time in the past six years.
16. Jim Walton
Wealth: $66.2 billion
Source of wealth: Walmart
Jim Walton is the son of Walmart founder Sam Walton, who now runs the Walton family's Alveste Bank, which has about $27 billion in assets.
17. Bell eyelids
Wealth: $65.7 billion
Sources of wealth: Nongfu Spring, Wantai Biology
Age: 67 years old
Nationality: Chinese
Zhong has become The Richest Man in China for two consecutive years. Although Nongfu Spring's stock price has fallen by more than 15% in the past year, a rise in the share price of Beijing Wantai Biopharmaceuticals has made up for the loss. Zhong holds a 75% stake in the company, which develops and produces biodiagnostic reagents and vaccines.
18. Alice Walton
Wealth: $65.3 billion
Age: 72 years old
Alice Walton is the only daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton. She founded the Crystal Bridge American Art Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas, while her nephew's wife, Olivia Walton, replaced her as the museum's new president last November, but Alice remains on the museum's board.
19. Rob Walton
Wealth: $65 billion
After serving as chairman of Walmart's board for 23 years, Rob Walton resigned in 2015. Despite they sold more than $7 billion worth of Walmart stock last year, Rob and his siblings remain the company's largest shareholders.
20. Zhao Changpeng
Source of wealth: Cryptocurrencies
Age: 46 years old
Nationality: Canadian
With about 70% of Binance's stake, Zhao became the richest man in the cryptocurrency space. Since founding Binance in 2017, Zhao Changpeng has built it into the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume. He announced in January that Binance would purchase a minority stake in Forbes for $200 million through an SPAC deal.
21. Charles Koch
Wealth: $60 billion
Source of wealth: Koch Industries
Age: 86 years old
22. Julia Koch and the family
While many multinational companies fled Russia, Koch's Koch Industries remained where it was. The $115 billion conglomerate has two glass manufacturing plants in Russia and employs about 600 people. Koch Industries said it would not abandon its Russian employees or hand over its production facilities to the Kremlin. Charles Koch's younger brother David Koch died in 2019, and Julia Koch is the latter's widow. Currently, the Charles Koch and Julia Koch families each hold a 42% stake in Koch Industries.
23. Amancio Ortega
Wealth: $58.9 billion
Source of wealth: ZARA
Nationality: Spanish
Last November, Amancio Ortega, founder of the Aites Group, which has 2,000 Zara stores, appointed his youngest daughter as the new chairman of the group. Due to the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian War, the Aites Group closed 502 stores in Russia, and the group's stock price fell as a result. In 2021, Ortega spent about $700 million to buy a large number of shares in grid operating companies in Spain and Portugal.
24. Michael Dell
Wealth: $55.1 billion
Source of wealth: Dell Corporation
Age: 57 years old
Benefiting from record PC sales, 2021 was the best year in Dell's history, and the company's stock price rose by 20%, adding $10 billion to founder and CEO Michael Dell's fortunes. Recently, Dale and his wife Susan donated $15 million to Ukraine to support Ukrainian families.
25. Zhang Yiming
Wealth: $50 billion
Source of wealth: ByteDance
Age: 38 years old
ByteDance is the world's most valuable unlisted unicorn company today, with its most famous short video platform, TikTok, with 1 billion monthly active users. In November last year, Zhang Yiming announced that he was stepping down as chairman of ByteDance. As China tightens its internet platform regulations, many founders of Chinese tech giants, including Zhang Yiming, have opted out of management. ■
In calculating the wealth of the listers, the share price of March 11, 2022 was used. For the complete list and how to make the list, please log in to the forbes.com/billionaires to view.
Forbes China exclusive manuscript, without permission, please do not reprint
Pay attention to the "Forbes" WeChat public account
The highlights are never to be missed
▽
Great content