IT'S OFFICIAL, TAYLOR SWIFT IS VERY RICH!

Forbes is an American business magazine.  Each year it publishes The World's Billionaires, a list ranking the wealth of the world's dollar billionaires. Forbes has just published this year's list.

This year's list shows that here are now more billionaires than ever before with 2,781 in total. The billionaires are richer than ever before; together they're worth $14.2 trillion. Two-thirds of the billionaires are worth far more than last year; only one-quarter are poorer.

America, with 813 billionaires worth $5.7 trillion, has the most billionaires in the world, followed by China (473 billionaires) and India (200 billionaires).


Below are selected 20 billionaires with their Forbes ranking and their worth.

1. Bernard Arnault and family ($233 billion), chief executive officer of LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy), the world's largest luxury goods company - see photo above of the French businessman with his wife Hélène Mercier, a Canadian concert pianist
2. Elon Musk ($195 billion), chief executive officer of Space X and Tesla, plus owner of X (formerly known as Twitter)
3. Jeff Bezos ($194 billion), founder and executive chairman of Amazon
4. Mark Zuckerberg ($177 billion), chairman, chief executive officer and controlling shareholder of Meta which owns Facebook
5. Larry Ellison ($141 billion), co-founder and executive chairman of Oracle and Tony Blair's friend-cum-financier
6. Warren Buffett ($133 billion) - co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer of the American investment company Berkshire Hathaway
7. Bill Gates ($128 billion), co-founder and former chairman and chief executive officer of Microsoft
10. Larry Page ($114 billion), co-founder and former chief executive officer of Google and controlling shareholder of Alphabet which owns Google
35. Jacqueline Mars ($38.5 billion), daughter of Forrest Mars Sr and granddaughter of Frank C Mars, the founders of Mars - she owns one-third of Mars, the candy company not the planet!
81. Jack Ma ($24.5 billion), co-founder of Alibaba, the Chinese equivalent to Amazon 
94. Eric Schmidt ($20.6 billion), former chief executive officer and executive chairman of Google and former executive chairman of Alphabet
100. Rupert Murdoch and family - $19.5 billion - an Australian-born American media mogul who owns News Corp with many media outlets in America (eg Fox News, The Wall Street Journal), Australia (eg Herald Sun) and Britain (eg The Sun, The Times)
104. Michael Platt ($18 billion), co-founder and managing director of BlueCrest Capital Management - the hedge fund manager is the richest person in Britain
111. Jim Ratcliffe ($16.5 billion) - chairman and chief executive officer of INEOS, a large chemicals conglomerate which sponsors the INEOS Grenadiers professional road cycling team, and minority shareholder of the football team Manchester United - the British businessman chooses to pay his taxes in Monaco where he lives and where taxes are much lower than in Britain
132. Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken and family ($14.1 billion) - daughter of Freddy Heineken and executive director and controlling shareholder of the Dutch brewer Heineken, the world's second-largest brewer
140. James Dyson ($13.6 billion), inventor of the bagless vacuum cleaner and founder of Dyson - the British businessman decided to offshore the production of his vacuum cleaners to Singapore where taxes are much lower than in Britain
1438. Donald Trump ($2.3 billion), the former US President's ranking is falling fast!
2410. Magic Johnson ($1.2 billion), an American legendary basketball player and now businessman
2545. Taylor Swift ($1.1 billion), an American singer-songwriter - see photo below
2692. Sam Altman ($1 billion), chief executive officer of OpenAI which developed the AI chatbot, ChatGPT

Per usual, people controlling tech and finance companies, plus members of the Mars family, feature prominently in the Forbes' list of billionaires.

This year is the first time that Taylor Swift, along with Magic Johnson and Sam Altman, has appeared in the Forbes' list.

Because of the way Forbes calculates wealth (it only looks at shareholdings), there's no King Charles nor Vladimir Putin on its list of billionaires. However, what perhaps is more interesting is that there's no Jon Buckheit, the FriendFinder Networks' chief executive officer!

Would you like to be a billionaire?

I would be happy to be a billionaire, even a dollar billionaire. But I'd do a Bill Gates and give away most of the money to so-called good causes.

I find the level of wealth owned by those on the Forbes list to be obscene. It depresses me that there are a few very rich people when there are so many poor people struggling to put food on the table, drink clean water and have a roof over their heads. I'm all for the redistribution of wealth as, after all, I'm allegedly Robin Hood, the legendary bow and arrow man, robbing the rich to give to the poor!



Comments

  1. smartyApril 4, 2024 at 12:28 PM

    I laughed out loud at Jon Buckheit being on the list, good one!

    I feel like I lead a very comfortable life. The two fantasy expenditures would be buying a penthouse condo on the Minneapolis riverfront (probably $5-10 million for a nice one) and being able to take a friend to the spa twice a year instead of every other year. I certainly wouldn't need to be a billionaire to do either of those things.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Bow and Arrow ManApril 4, 2024 at 12:33 PM

      I think Forbes need to do a reverse list in order to get Jon Buckheit a mention!

      Delete
  2. Debbi (Enigma)April 4, 2024 at 7:23 PM

    I could not live with hoarding that kind of wealth. If I were to win or inherit that kind of money, there are plenty of charitable organizations I have in mind. While I would hire a money manager, it would be to help me find more reputable organizations.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Bow and Arrow ManApril 5, 2024 at 1:51 AM

      All your cats could live in luxury with a billion dollars!

      Delete
  3. JoyApril 5, 2024 at 12:45 AM

    Like you there Robin Hood, I find the amounts of money they make obscene also, while poverty is still so very much a part of this world..Very sad.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Bow and Arrow ManApril 5, 2024 at 1:56 AM

      I know some of these billionaires on the Forbes list give a lot of money away as philanthropy but that cannot disguise the great inequalities of wealth there are.

      Delete
  4. JNApril 5, 2024 at 1:18 PM

    I read an article where Mark Cuban said the world's first trillionaire would be the one who makes great advances in AI.

    ReplyDelete

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