The ten richest individuals in the world had a total approximately $1.44 trillion in worth that they own they presumably don’t owe it to anyone else come February 1, 2024. It is rather hard to understand a figure like that, to get your head around it, in part because it is so obviously an enormous ocean of money, and in part because it is so clearly a not-shared part of our life on this planet, a concentration of not just wealth but also the power that comes with it and the influence that power doles out.
The Overall Top 10: Wealthy Superstars
With a net worth of $212.1 billion, Bernard Arnault, head of LVMH, is the richest man in the world. But while Elon Musk may be okay with a $194.6 billion nest egg his worth, after all, has plunged 21% he is certainly not my best role model for a path-to-just-us-for-every-Father’s-Day-2nd-Billion-to-5th-Billion route to RoboRiches. And yet, there Musk sits with Jeff Bezos, not far behind at $192.4 billion. Other heavyweights, like Zuk, whose net worth of $161.8 billion is up a whopping 39%, aren’t doing too badly either. From there, we head into elysium, with five individuals worth a gilded total of $619.5 billion.
Powerful Women: Benefiting Society
Françoise Bettencourt Meyers isn’t just the richest woman in the world. She’s one of its most formidable billionaires. As the associate director of the family foundation that comes with her roughly $88 billion in assets, and with the ability to decide how much of her wealth goes to what kinds of life-improving purposes, you would think society might benefit. After all, with Bill and Melinda Gates and other similarly wealthy couples, a foundation capable of effecting real change (if it wishes to) isn’t just a fountainhead of tools and living services that you or I can get to improve our lives. Still, people like Bettencourt Meyers keep that “real change” potential mostly under wraps.
The Region’s Richest People Are Shaping Its Destiny
Zhong Shanshan is, for now, in a class by himself as China’s richest person. With a fortune of $60.5 billion, he is well ahead of Ma Huateng, who, despite heading Tencent Holdings, a company that is hardly a wealth-creating machine these days, stands with a net worth of $39 billion. After Ma comes Zhang Yiming, the somewhat beleaguered founder of ByteDance, the content giant (and owner of TikTok), who is under intense pressure these days to make his company (and the renminbi, China’s heavily controlled currency) perform. Elsewhere in Asia, Mukesh Ambani is head of the wealth fest that is the Reliance Group, a business they don’t stop talking about in India.
Where the Tech Titans and Industry Giants Stand These Days
More and more, the global economy is coming under the influence of tech companies. The latest profits for the likes of Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg show this clearly. But few seem to be winning quite like NVIDIA’s CEO Jensen Huang, who, thanks to his company’s place in both the artificial intelligence and chips (semiconductors) arenas has seen his net worth swell to an impressive $61.4 billion. And leading right behind him is Warren Buffett, the “Oracle of Omaha,” who’s rendered a net worth of $128.7 billion for himself across the almost uncountable brilliant investments he’s made over the years. Following Buffett’s principles on investment and finance could serve you well; they have certainly served him and seem likely to serve anyone who follows them.
David Thomson and his family run a publishing empire worth an astounding $62 billion, placing them atop the media money mountain. This trio of children of the founders of the company known as Woodbridge oversees a huge number of assets, including many that are in print. Rupert Murdoch and Donald Newhouse each command an $11.2 billion fortune and are not at all shabby figures in the media world. The even bigger figure who is a player in that world is Warren Buffett. He ranks above Thomson and Murdoch, of course, but his presence there is not felt to be very muscular. More and more, as a guy who is an investing legend, he is either in or near the basement of the next level of the media world that we are discussing here. After all, we are painting with some broad brushstrokes when it comes to The Warren Factor.
