Richest People in the World
#20 Michael Bloomberg
Net worth: $22 Billion
As the found of Bloomburg L.P. and the Mayor of New York City, Bloomberg has used his money and power to advocate for organizations of his choosing. Luckily, that means organizing Mayors for Freedom to Marry and pledging to match $250,000 in donations to Planned Parenthood when the Susan G. Koman foundation cut their funding. Good on ya, Mike.
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20:
Michael Bloomberg
Net worth: $22 Billion As the found of Bloomburg L.P. and the Mayor of New York City, Bloomberg has used his money and power to advocate for organizations of his choosing. Luckily, that means organizing Mayors for Freedom to Marry and pledging to match $250,000 in donations to Planned Parenthood when the Susan G. Koman foundation cut their funding. Good on ya, Mike.
19:
Mukesh Ambani
Net worth - $22.3 Billion Mukesh Ambani is the chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries. The company controls the largest natural gas field in India and the largest oil refinery in the world. They also do business in petrochemicals.
18:
S. Robson Walton
Net worth: $23.1 Billion The first of several Walton's on this list. Rob Walton is the eldest child of Sam Walton, founder of Walmart. He took over the position of chairman of the board at his father's death in 1992 and retains that position today.
17:
Alice Walton
Net worth: $23.3 Billion Her money may come from Walmart, but Alice Walton has little to do with the company. She runs a horse ranch in Texas and last year opened the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas containing works she donated from her private art collection.
16:
Jim Walton
Net worth: $23.7 Billion He's the youngest and the richest son of Walmart's Walton family. After the company's shares went up last year, Jim donated $100,000 to Mitt Romney's Super PAC.
15:
Liliane Bettencourt
Net worth: $24 Billion Though her dementia forced her to step down from the board of the largest cosmetics and beauty company in the world, Liliane Bettencourt remains the primary shareholder of her father's company, now known as L'Oreal, because she's worth it. Over the past few years, the Bettencourt family has been the fulcrum of several major scandals, the latest involving Liliane's relationship with French photographer François-Marie Banier. Liliane's daughter Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers filed a criminal complaint against Banier saying he was taking advantage of her mother, who presented him with $1 billion in cash and gifts. Liliane denied this.
14:
Sheldon Adelson
Net worth: $24.9 billion Meet the casino king of Las Vegas. He is the chairman and CEO of the Las Vegas Sand Corporation which owns and operates, among others, the Las Vegas Venetian and Palazzo, and the Sands Casino Resort Bethlehem, located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Adelson also owns the Israeli newspaper "Israel HaYom."
13:
David Koch
Net worth: $25 Billion David Koch is a co-owner and Executive Vice President of Koch Industries, which he and his brother Charles inherited from their father Fred C. Koch. Then the company was a mid-sized refinery. The brothers have since made it the second largest privately held company in the US.
12:
Charles Koch
Net worth: $25 Billion The elder of the Koch brothers is the co-owner, chairman, and CEO of Koch Industries, a company founded by his father Fred C. Koch. Charles Koch is a co-founded of the libertarian think tank the Cato Institute. Koch and his brother David current face accusations of an attempted "hostile takeover" of the institute by the Cato board who say the brothers want to use the organization to push their own Republican political agendas.
11:
Christy Walton
Net worth: $25.3 Billion The highest ranking Walton and the highest ranking female on our list. Christy Walton inherited her husband John T. Walton's fortune when he died in a plane crash in 2005. Some of Christy's wealth comes from investments in the solar panel company First Solar.
10:
Karl Albrecht
Net worth: $25.4 Billion Ironically, Albrecht made his fortune from his worldwide chain of discount supermarkets, Aldi. The company, short for Albretch Discount, began when Albretch's mother opened a small corner store in their hometown of Essen, Germany. Karl and his late brother Theo took over and now there are about 4,500 Aldi shops worldwide
9:
Li Ka-shing
Net worth: $25.5 Billion While most of the people on this list have at least a college degree, Li Ka-shing doesn't even have a high school diploma. He dropped out at age 12 to help support his family. Now, though innumerable investments in real estate, plastics manufacturing, retail, the Internet, you name it, he's the richest person in Asia. Also the most generous. He has donated millions of dollars to more charities than we can even name and has pledged to eventually donate a third of his wealth.
8:
Stefan Persson
Net worth: $26 Billion We're fans of Stefan Persson, though probably bigger fans of his father Erling. Why? Well, Persson Sr. founded H&M. We like H&M. Stefan took over as chairman and chief exec. in 1982, though handed the CEO-ship to his son Karl-Johan in 1998. H&M now has 2,500 stores in 43 countries and an impressive list of contributing designers including Versace, Roberto Cavalli, Lanvin, and Comme des Garçons.
7:
Eike Batista
Net worth: $30 Billion Brazil's wealthiest man makes his pretty impressive living from old school liquid gold (we mean oil.) Funny enough, he got his start with actual gold and, now that he's a billionaire, he's getting back into it.
6:
Larry Ellison
Net worth: $36 billion Alright, Larry here is proof that that you can drop out of two colleges and still be one of the wealthiest people in the world. In the 70s, Ellison worked at the electronics company Ampex where one of his projects was a database for the CIA which he called Oracle. A few decades later, Oracle is a multi-national tech company and Ellison is a multi-billionaire.
5:
Amancio Ortega
Net worth: $37.5 billion Amancio Ortego started as an errand boy for several shirt shops in Galicia, Spain. Then he started his own clothing company which made bathrobes. Well, one thing led to another with that little bathrobe company and now he's the fashion executive and founding chairman Inditex, the largest fashion group in the world.
4:
Bernard Arnault
Net worth: $41 Billion Bernard Arnault is the chaiman and CEO of the largest luxury-product company in the world LVMH. AKA Louis Vuitton - Moët Hennessy. AKA the huge fashion house, the famous champagne producer, and the largest maker of cognac. So here's proof that an engineering degree can definitely make you some moolah, just maybe not in the way you think.
3:
Warren Buffett
Net worth: $48 Billion Warren Buffett is pretty much the most prime example of "working your way to the top" that we've ever heard of. He started making, and more importantly, saving money as a child by going door-to-door selling magazines, chewing gum, and Coke (like the soda! Don't get any ideas!) He got into the stock market at the ripe old age of 11 when he bought three shares in Cities Service Preferred (AKA Citgo). And then he just worked his way up until he was kinda sorta ya know the CEO of the eighth largest company in the world. NBD. Like Gates, Buffett is a billionaire widely known for his philanthropy. He made the largest charitable donation in history when he pledged 10 million shares of Berkshire Hathaway which at the time amounted to $30.7 billion.
2:
Bill Gates
Net worth: $61 Billion You thought he was number one, didn't you? Not surprising; he was until Carlos Slim usurped him in 2010. Gates dropped out of Harvard and launched Micro-soft in 1975 (trademarked Mircosoft a year later) with partner Steve Ballmer. 12 years later, he was a billionaire and featured in Forbes 400 Richest People in America issue. And 12 years after that, he and his wife Melinda combined the pre-existing William H. Gates Foundation with the Gates Learning Foundation and the Gates Library Foundation to form the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The couple has since donated $28 billion to charity and plan to eventually contribute 98 percent of their wealth.
1:
Carlos Slim Helu
Net Worth: $69 Billion Mexican business tycoon Carlos Slim has holdings in a great many Mexican companies via his conglomerate Grupo Carso, which was named for himself and his late wife Soumaya Domit de Slim (Carlos + Soumaya, Car + So, get it?). Slim is currently the CEO of telecommunications company Telmex, and América Móvil, the largest mobile network provider in Mexico and fifth largest in the world.
