Net Worth:26.5 bil
Fortune:inherited
Source:Wal-Mart inheritance
Age:54
Country Of Citizenship:United States
Residence:Jackson, Wyoming
Industry:Retail
Education:NA,
Marital Status:widowed, 1 child
Who's Who
Christy Walton is the widow of John Walton, the son of Walmart founder Sam Walton. After her husband passed away in 2005, her inheritance and smart investments since have catapaulted her right into the top 10 list of the world's billionaires.
Most of her wealth derives from the Walmart shares she received but a significant portion also comes from ‘First Solar’, a company that her late husband took an investment gamble on in 1999.
Money Matters
When her husband died in a tragic plane crash on 27 June, 2005, she inherited $15.7 billion; by March 2009, this represented a personal net worth of 17.6 billion dollars. Today, she is worth close to $26.5 billion and is now the Forbes-proclaimed richest woman in the world, the 10th richest person in the world and the 4th richest person in the USA!
Personal Probe
Walton lives a relatively quiet life--aside from her massive philanthropy projects--in Wyoming with her only son, Lucas. She is an avid animal lover and the entire Walton clan (including John’s brother, Jim Walton, his sister, Alice Walton and their families) is said to be a close knit one.
Perfectly Philanthropic
Despite having inherited her wealth from her husband she has certainly not been shy about giving away copious portions of it to charitable causes. While she declined to match Bill Gates and Warren Buffett’s pledge to donate 99% of their wealth to charity (causing many people to assume she was stingy), she is actually one of the most philanthropic billionaires around. The entire Walton family is said to be highly interested in education but her interests span to environmental causes as well.
She still supports the Walton Family Charitable Support Foundation, which has made huge donations to educational institutes, including 300 million dollars to the University of Arkansas, and has disbursed an estimated 1.6 billion dollars in charitable giving to date.
She has also extended her benevolence beyond educational causes. She is a board member of the San Diego Natural History Museum as well as the member of the San Diego Zoological Society and the Mingei International Museum, all of which have received generous donations from her.
She even presented the family’s own Victorian-styled home to the International Community Foundation after completely renovating it and included a 4 million dollar endowment along with the gift!
Her commitment to those less fortunate than her lead Conde Nast to rank her the highest female philanthropist in the world today in terms of donations as a percentage of net worth.
The Wealth Behind Wal-Mart
Though Christy did not have anything to do with the founding and running of this business, the majority of her wealth derives from it. Here’s a brief look at the retail behemoth.
Sam Walton (her husband’s father) began his retail career way back in 1940, making only 75 dollars a month working for retailer J.C. Penney. He then opened his own low-end retail store just 5 years later but lost its lease in 1950.
Following this setback, he decided to open a new chain of stores along with his brother in Bentonville, Arkansas in 1962 and finally took WalMart public by 1970.
The company developed into the world's largest retailer worth over 200 billion dollars--with 6500 stores in 15 countries, 1.8 million employees and serving an average of 176 million customers a week. The Walton family controls 40% of the WalMart shares, which accounts for their incredible wealth and 3 spots among the world's top 20 billionaires.
Following this setback, he decided to open a new chain of stores along with his brother in Bentonville, Arkansas in 1962 and finally took WalMart public by 1970.
The company developed into the world's largest retailer worth over 200 billion dollars--with 6500 stores in 15 countries, 1.8 million employees and serving an average of 176 million customers a week. The Walton family controls 40% of the WalMart shares, which accounts for their incredible wealth and 3 spots among the world's top 20 billionaires.
Net Worth:27 bil
Name:Mukesh Ambani.
Born :April 19, 1957 (1957-04-19) (age 52) Colony of Aden, Yemen Residence,Mumbai, India
Father:Dhirubhai Ambani.
Nationality :Indian
Occupation:Chairman, Managing Director of Reliance Industries
Spouse(s): Nita Ambani
Children :Isha, Anant and Akash.
With a net worth of around $27-billion, Mukesh Ambani is the richest man in Asia and the fifth richest in the world. He was selected as the Businessman of the Year in 2007 and is the proud owner of the world's most expensive private residence, Antilla, which he had built for a mind-blowing $2-billion.
The home is 27-stories high (actually 60-stories in true height, but only 27 floors) and features 7 separate floors for his car collection alone. Ambani is known worldwide for being one of the toughest and most savvy businessmen of the modern era. Although his position was inherited, his wealth wasn't. Ambani worked hard and amassed one of the world's largest fortunes.
Mukesh Ambani was born April 19, 1957 in Yemen, India. His father, a prominent businessman in his own right, Dhirubhai Ambani, was the founder of Reliance Industries. Ambani grew up surrounded by business. When he was only a child, he was already the next in line to keep the family company thriving not only in the area, but on a world scale.
Mukesh excelled in school when he was young. He attended the Abaay Morischa School in Mumbai and eventually completed his graduation with a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from the UDCT. He even enrolled in Stanford University, hoping to receive an MBA, but left the school after one year.
In 1981, a 24-year-old Ambani joined his father's company, Reliance, and initiated a few key moves for the company, including the backward integration from textiles into polyester and further into petrochemicals. His father's dream of a global expansion came to fruition a few years later when Mukesh helped to create 60 brand new, world-class manufacturing facilities that all involved very diverse technologies. This raised the profile of Reliance and also their production. Reliance's manufacturing capacities went from a few hundred thousand tons to over twelve million annually.
Ambani then directed the creation of the world's largest “grassroots” petroleum refinery in Gujarat, India. The capacity was amazing for a grassroots organization, producing a capacity of 660,000 barrels daily, all integrated with petrochemicals. Ambani then went on to setup one of India's largest telecommunications companies in history, Reliance Communications Limited. Mukesh set this up with his brother, Anil, and the company was once known as Reliance Infocom. The two brothers parted ways, each taking an equal share of the revenue. If they had not split up, Ambani's net worth would be around $85-billion.
Ambani is one of the world's best and brightest businessmen. Under his leadership, Reliance constructed a retail division and launched a new chain, Delight stores, and also signed a letter of intent to make energy-efficient structures with NOVA Chemicals.
Mukesh Ambaini is also the owner of the Indian Premier League team, the Mumbai Indians, and he's married to Nita Ambani, a well-known philanthropist, and mother to his three children, Akash, Anant, and Isha.
NO : 08
Net Worth:30 bil
No.↓ 8th Stood steady
Name↓ Eike Batista
Net worth (USD)↓ $30.0 billion increase
Age↓ 53
Citizenship↓ Brazil
Residence↓ Brazil
TVX, MMX, LLX, MPX, OGX, BFX ... more than alphabet soup, the names of these companies can be confused with the old call letters of ham radio operators. But no. These companies have something more in common than just the X at the end of all of their names. In the first place, their creator, Brazilian entrepreneur Eike Batista. Secondly, the business formula behind each of these companies: the are bold, propelled by a nearly religious faith, more typical of Canadian or United States capitalism than the more conservative Latin America. Thirdly, because the last five were in the limelight of the Latin American business world in 2007. But, what is the fixation with the letter X? The X represents multiplication, according to the entrepreneur.
And multiplication is what his companies have experienced lately. After creating MMX in December 2005, from three projects--an iron mine, a future ore pipeline, and a planned superport in the north of the state of Rio de Janeiro- -Batista ventured into a public stock offering in July 2006, which managed to raise US$460 million. Not bad for a company with small iron production and ambitious green projects. But MMX’s reputation was earned in April 2007, when it sold 49% of Minas Rio, one of the company’s projects, to the mining giant Anglo American, for US$1.15 billion. At presstime, in January 2008, Anglo American was in talks with MMX to purchase the remaining 51% of Minas Rio and 70% of Amapa, another MMX’s iron project, for US$5.5 billion.
How does he do it? To begin with, Eike has a last name with legendary resonance in Brazil. His father, Elicer Batista was the founder of Vale do Rio Doce Company (privatized in 1997 and recently rebaptized as Vale), the natural resources giant that became one of the biggest development myths in Brazil.
But the strongest marker of Eike Batista’s DNA is his risk-taking spirit. He wasn’t speed boating world champion in the early 90s for nothing, and in 2006 he broke the speed record between the ports of Santos and Rio de Janeiro, reaching speeds of 180 kilometers per hour with his Spirit of Brazil, a million dollar boat that, according to the Brazilian magazine Nautica, is the fastest in Brazil.
The capitalist version of this risk-taking spirit materialized in the late 80s, when he launched TVX Gold on the Vancouver Stock Exchange, a junior focused on gold projects that, among other companies, was a partner in the disappeared Placer Dome in the development of La Coipa, in Chile. When he left TVX in the late 90s, he received US$800 million for his share in the company. For MMX, Eike Batista surrounded himself with the star executives from Vale, which has become another mark of his strategy. For OGX, the company he created to explore petroleum and gas deposits, he recruited the top executives from Petrobras and put Francisco Gros at the helm, a prestigious Brazilian executive who was president of Petrobras, of the state development bank BNDES and Fosfertil, the largest fertilizer manufacturer in the country.
Batista’s gambles are focused on hot sectors. In addition to this company, in March 2006, Batista created LLX, specializing in logistics; MPX, that has seven thermoelectric projects in Brazil and vChile either under construction or under study; and BFX, focused on reforestation and charcoal production for fuel.
For some observers, Batista’s plans are too ambitious. The entrepreneur has had various stumbles, such as a failed jeep factory he set up in the north of Brazil, and his iron and steel project in Bolivia that went belly up with the nationalizations of president Evo Morales, who rescinded the contract.
For now, its watch and wait. OGX was created in June 2007, and five months later became the main player in the bidding issued by the National Petroleum Agency, with the highest number of awards. At the close of this issue, Batista was preparing for the public offering of MPX on the Sao Paulo Stock Exchange, hoping to raise some US$1.4 billion. If everything comes out as planned, in a few months Batista will find himself in charge of a US$15 billion empire. Independently of any privatizations or inheritances. With pure pluck and by seducing star investors, partners and executives. The capitalist dream come true.
NO : 07
Net Worth:31 bil
Name↓ Amancio Ortega
Net worth (USD)↓ $31.0 billion increase
Age↓ 74
Citizenship↓ Spain
Residence↓ Spain
Sources of wealth↓ Inditex Group
Amancio Ortega Gaona is a famous Galician fashion designer and entrepreneur. As the co-founder and chairman of Inditex Group, he's been listed as one of the richest men in the world by Forbes.
Amancio Ortega Gaona, best known as Amancio Ortega, was born on March 28, 1936 in Leon, Spain. His father worked on the railroad while his mother helped support the family by working as a maid. At the age of 13, Ortega began working for a shirtmaker as a delivery boy in La Coruna, Galicia, the center of the Iberian textile industry. He worked for a variety of stores and tailors and studied how products and costs changed as they traveled from the manufacturer to the consumer. As a result, he became focused on the importance of getting products directly to the consumer without a middle man.
Ortega never attended higher education and continued to work in the textile field into the early 1960s. After becoming manager of a local clothing shop, he discovered that only wealthy individuals could afford to purchase fine clothing and became even more determined to make quality clothes accessible to everyone. As a result, Ortega started making his own products, purchasing cheaper fabric from Barcelona and selling good quality, cheaper products to local stores. In 1963, at the age of 27, Amancio Ortega founded his own company called Confecciones Goa that made and sold fine bathrobes.
Ortega continued to build his company and in 1975 he opened his first retail store called Zara. It was located across the street from on of La Coruna's most well known department stores and Zara became famous for selling high quality designer products at reasonable prices. As a result of this success, Ortega continued to open stores and was credited with choosing perfect locations for each one. By 1989 Amancio Ortega Gaona was successfully operating almost one hundred Zara stores in Spain.
With the Zara's increasing popularity and overwhelming success, Ortega created Inditex in 1985 as the holding company for the Zara brand as well as other smaller chains. Inditex became one of the largest textile companies in the world.
Ortega continued to keep his brand simple and direct. His goal was to bring designs from the runway to the common consumer in only a few short weeks. Ortega wanted the clothing to be produced in fewer quantities and for stores to be refilled more often to cut down on inventory and shipping costs. Since Ortega kept his factories in Spain and produced smaller amounts of clothing, he was able to keep jobs in his home country, continue to save shipping costs, and pass the savings onto the consumer. Zara became so popular, in fact, that Amancio Ortega hardly needed to advertise at all.
Inditex Group went public in 2001 and, with over 59% of the shares in his possession, Ortega quickly became one of the wealthiest men in the world. He continues to keep a low profile however, so much so, in fact, that few people have ever seen a picture of him. Ortega never grants interviews and rarely shows up for public events.
Amancio Ortega lives a very private life with his second wife in La Coruna and, although he avoids the financial intricacies of the publicly traded company, he still enjoys designing and working with the details of fashion.
NO : 06
Net Worth:31.1 bil
Name↓ Lakshmi Mittal
Net worth (USD)↓ $31.1 billion increase
Age↓60
Citizenship↓ India
Residence↓ United Kingdom
Sources of wealth↓ Arcelor Mittal
Lakshmi Mittal is an Indian industrialist based in the United Kingdom. He was born in Sadulpur village, in the Churu district of Rajasthan, India, and he resides in Kensington, London. He is the Chairman and CEO of ArcelorMittal (founder of Mittal before merger with Arcelor) and also serves as a non-executive director of Goldman Sachs, EADS and ICICI Bank.
Mittal was born in a Rajasthan Agrawal family and spent his initial years in India, living with his extended family on bare floors and rope beds in a house built by his grandfather. The family eventually moved to Calcutta where his father, Mohan, became a partner in a steel company and made a fortune. Mittal graduated from St. Xavier's College in Calcutta with a Bachelor of Commerce degree in Business and Accounting in 1969.
Mr. Mittal began his career working in the family's steelmaking business in India, and in 1976, when the family founded its own steel business, he set out to establish its international division, beginning with the buying of a run-down plant in Indonesia. Shortly afterwards he married Usha, the daughter of a well-to-do moneylender. In 1994, due to differences with his father, mother and brothers, he branched out on his own, taking over the international operations of the Mittal steel business, which was already owned by the family. Mittal's family never spoke publicly about the reasons for the split.
In March 2008, Mittal was reported to be the 4th wealthiest person in the world, and the wealthiest in Asia, by Forbes Magazine (up from 61st. richest in 2004) up one place since a year ago. The Mittal family owns a controlling majority stake in ArcelorMittal, the world's largest steel company. His residence at Kensington Palace Gardens was purchased from Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone in 2004 for �57 million (US$128 million), making it the world's most expensive house, at that date.
In 2008 Mittal awarded Abhinav Bindra with Rs. 1.5 Crore, for getting India its first individual Olympic gold medal in shooting.
Awards
2008: Padma Vibhushan
2007: Bessemer Gold Medal
2006: Person of the Year - Financial Times
2004: European Businessman of the Year - Fortune magazine
1998: Willy Korf Steel Vision Award - American Metal Market and PaineWeber�s World Steel Dynamics
1996: Steelmaker of the Year - New Steel
Net Worth:39.5 bil
Name↓ Lawrence Ellison
Net worth (USD)↓ $39.5 billion increase
Age↓ 66
Citizenship↓ United States
Residence↓ United States
Sources of wealth↓ Oracle Corporation
Larry Ellison is the founder and CEO of the enterprise software company Oracle Corporation. He is also a well known American billionaire and philanthropist.
Lawrence Joseph Ellison, better known as Larry Ellison, was born in New York City on August 17, 1944 to a young unwed Jewish mother. In order to provide her son with a better upbringing, Ellison's mother gave him to Lillian Spellman Ellison and Louis Ellison, her aunt and uncle in Chicago. They formally adopted Ellison when he was only nine months old. Ellison didn't meet or reunite with his birth mother until he was 48.
Ellison's adoptive father took the name Ellison when he entered the US from his native Crimea as a tribute to Ellis Island. He also hoped to conceal his Jewish heritage. In his early years, Ellison grew up in the middle-class neighborhood of Chicago's South Shore. Although he fondly recalls the nurturing and supportive nature of his adoptive mother, his adoptive father was often distant and cold.
Although he was labeled as an intelligent child, Larry Ellison was inattentive in his studies. After graduating from South Shore High School, Ellison attended the University of Illinois but left at the end of his second year after the death of his adoptive mother. He spent the summer living in Northern California with his friend Chuck Weiss then continued his studies at the University of Chicago. He only spent one term at the University during which time he discovered computer programming and permanently relocated to Northern California. He was 20 years old at the time.
Although his short attention span worked against him during his academic career, Ellison's drive and impatience worked perfectly in line with the needs of computer programming. He worked for a variety of companies as a computer programmer and spent his free time hiking and climbing in Yosemite. In 1967 he married Adda Quinn. The marriage lasted seven years and ended in a divorce in 1974.
During the later years of his marriage, Larry Ellison began working for Ampex Corporation as a programmer on a database project for the CIA. Ellison named the project "Oracle", a name he would later use to signify his own company. While working on the project, Ellison read "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks" by Edgar F. Codd which inspired him to front the initial $2000 as the start-up fee for his own database systems company named Software Development Laboratories. It switched names a few times and ended up as Oracle.
Larry Ellison wanted his Oracle database system to be compatible with the IBM System R, but IBM refused to share the code necessary to make this possible. So Ellison was forced to release his system as a singular data sharing system. The original release was called Oracle 2, despite the lack of an original Oracle or Oracle 1. During this time Ellison also married Nancy Wheeler Jenkins from whom he divorced one year later.
IBM, Ellison's initial rival, was the primary database system for companies but failed to initiate a system for smaller companies and microcomputers. Ellison, along with other entrepreneurs took advantage of the void and flooded the market with their systems. Oracle, Sybase, and eventually Microsoft took over the market.
Just before the rise of Oracle, Larry Ellison met and married his third wife, Barbara Boothe, with whom he had two children. They divorced in 1986 after three years of marriage.
As Oracle rose to power along with other database systems, its primary competitor, Sybase, was taken over by PowerSoft and lost some of its hold on the market. Although the original Sybase software was sold to Microsoft and turned into the well known "SQL Server", this merger allowed Oracle to recover from a financial fall and lead the open market in database systems.
For a short time Larry Ellison served as director of Apple Computer when Steve Jobs returned to the company in 1997. He resigned the position in 2002, sighting his inability to attend formal meetings, and one year later married his fourth wife, Melanie Craft. Steve Jobs served as the official photographer at the wedding.
Lawrence Ellison has five children, two with his third wife and three with Melanie Craft.
Net worth (USD)↓ $31.1 billion increase
Age↓60
Citizenship↓ India
Residence↓ United Kingdom
Sources of wealth↓ Arcelor Mittal
Lakshmi Mittal is an Indian industrialist based in the United Kingdom. He was born in Sadulpur village, in the Churu district of Rajasthan, India, and he resides in Kensington, London. He is the Chairman and CEO of ArcelorMittal (founder of Mittal before merger with Arcelor) and also serves as a non-executive director of Goldman Sachs, EADS and ICICI Bank.
Mittal was born in a Rajasthan Agrawal family and spent his initial years in India, living with his extended family on bare floors and rope beds in a house built by his grandfather. The family eventually moved to Calcutta where his father, Mohan, became a partner in a steel company and made a fortune. Mittal graduated from St. Xavier's College in Calcutta with a Bachelor of Commerce degree in Business and Accounting in 1969.
Mr. Mittal began his career working in the family's steelmaking business in India, and in 1976, when the family founded its own steel business, he set out to establish its international division, beginning with the buying of a run-down plant in Indonesia. Shortly afterwards he married Usha, the daughter of a well-to-do moneylender. In 1994, due to differences with his father, mother and brothers, he branched out on his own, taking over the international operations of the Mittal steel business, which was already owned by the family. Mittal's family never spoke publicly about the reasons for the split.
In March 2008, Mittal was reported to be the 4th wealthiest person in the world, and the wealthiest in Asia, by Forbes Magazine (up from 61st. richest in 2004) up one place since a year ago. The Mittal family owns a controlling majority stake in ArcelorMittal, the world's largest steel company. His residence at Kensington Palace Gardens was purchased from Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone in 2004 for �57 million (US$128 million), making it the world's most expensive house, at that date.
In 2008 Mittal awarded Abhinav Bindra with Rs. 1.5 Crore, for getting India its first individual Olympic gold medal in shooting.
Awards
2008: Padma Vibhushan
2007: Bessemer Gold Medal
2006: Person of the Year - Financial Times
2004: European Businessman of the Year - Fortune magazine
1998: Willy Korf Steel Vision Award - American Metal Market and PaineWeber�s World Steel Dynamics
1996: Steelmaker of the Year - New Steel
NO : 05
Net Worth:39.5 bil
Name↓ Lawrence Ellison
Net worth (USD)↓ $39.5 billion increase
Age↓ 66
Citizenship↓ United States
Residence↓ United States
Sources of wealth↓ Oracle Corporation
Larry Ellison is the founder and CEO of the enterprise software company Oracle Corporation. He is also a well known American billionaire and philanthropist.
Lawrence Joseph Ellison, better known as Larry Ellison, was born in New York City on August 17, 1944 to a young unwed Jewish mother. In order to provide her son with a better upbringing, Ellison's mother gave him to Lillian Spellman Ellison and Louis Ellison, her aunt and uncle in Chicago. They formally adopted Ellison when he was only nine months old. Ellison didn't meet or reunite with his birth mother until he was 48.
Ellison's adoptive father took the name Ellison when he entered the US from his native Crimea as a tribute to Ellis Island. He also hoped to conceal his Jewish heritage. In his early years, Ellison grew up in the middle-class neighborhood of Chicago's South Shore. Although he fondly recalls the nurturing and supportive nature of his adoptive mother, his adoptive father was often distant and cold.
Although he was labeled as an intelligent child, Larry Ellison was inattentive in his studies. After graduating from South Shore High School, Ellison attended the University of Illinois but left at the end of his second year after the death of his adoptive mother. He spent the summer living in Northern California with his friend Chuck Weiss then continued his studies at the University of Chicago. He only spent one term at the University during which time he discovered computer programming and permanently relocated to Northern California. He was 20 years old at the time.
Although his short attention span worked against him during his academic career, Ellison's drive and impatience worked perfectly in line with the needs of computer programming. He worked for a variety of companies as a computer programmer and spent his free time hiking and climbing in Yosemite. In 1967 he married Adda Quinn. The marriage lasted seven years and ended in a divorce in 1974.
During the later years of his marriage, Larry Ellison began working for Ampex Corporation as a programmer on a database project for the CIA. Ellison named the project "Oracle", a name he would later use to signify his own company. While working on the project, Ellison read "A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks" by Edgar F. Codd which inspired him to front the initial $2000 as the start-up fee for his own database systems company named Software Development Laboratories. It switched names a few times and ended up as Oracle.
Larry Ellison wanted his Oracle database system to be compatible with the IBM System R, but IBM refused to share the code necessary to make this possible. So Ellison was forced to release his system as a singular data sharing system. The original release was called Oracle 2, despite the lack of an original Oracle or Oracle 1. During this time Ellison also married Nancy Wheeler Jenkins from whom he divorced one year later.
IBM, Ellison's initial rival, was the primary database system for companies but failed to initiate a system for smaller companies and microcomputers. Ellison, along with other entrepreneurs took advantage of the void and flooded the market with their systems. Oracle, Sybase, and eventually Microsoft took over the market.
Just before the rise of Oracle, Larry Ellison met and married his third wife, Barbara Boothe, with whom he had two children. They divorced in 1986 after three years of marriage.
As Oracle rose to power along with other database systems, its primary competitor, Sybase, was taken over by PowerSoft and lost some of its hold on the market. Although the original Sybase software was sold to Microsoft and turned into the well known "SQL Server", this merger allowed Oracle to recover from a financial fall and lead the open market in database systems.
For a short time Larry Ellison served as director of Apple Computer when Steve Jobs returned to the company in 1997. He resigned the position in 2002, sighting his inability to attend formal meetings, and one year later married his fourth wife, Melanie Craft. Steve Jobs served as the official photographer at the wedding.
Lawrence Ellison has five children, two with his third wife and three with Melanie Craft.
NO : 04
Net Worth:$41 bilNationality: French.
Born: March 5, 1949, in France.
Education: École Polytechnique, BA, 1971.
Family: Married Helene Mercier (concert pianist), 1991; children: five.
Bernard Arnault is the primary shareholder, chairman, and chief executive officer of the Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton company which focuses on producing and marketing a variety of luxury goods including the popular brands Moet champagne, Christian Dior, Dom Perignon, and Louis Vuitton.
Bernard Arnault was born on March 5, 1949 and grew up in Roubaix in the north of France. He attended the Ecole Polytechnique, an engineering school, and helped run his family's construction and property business firm after graduation. The company, named Ferret-Savinel, surged under Arnault's supervision and began building time shares on the French Riviera. After the French Socialist rise to power in 1981, Arnault, along with his wife and children, moved to the United States where he continued his construction business in Palm Beach, Florida.
When the political atmosphere in France changed in 1983, Arnault moved his family back to his native country and took over the struggling textile firm, Boussac which owned the brand Christian Dior. It was the French government who had been looking for someone to acquire the company and Bernard Arnault put up $15 million of his own money with some additional finances to purchase it. His entire reasoning behind the acquisition was to gain control of the Dior label and gain a foothold on the luxury market.
Arnault began building his empire by selling off various divisions of the Boussac company that had nothing to do with his luxury business goals. Much of that money went to purchasing 24% of the controlling shares of the LVMH enterprise. After a bitter battle with the executive staff, Arnault eventually gained control over the company and laid off a number of managing executives in order to rebuild the company to meet his vision.
Bernard Arnault shifted the company's focus away from the traditional trends and onto the new and creative energies that were immerging within France. He wanted to harness the creativity of the fashion world and bring it to the luxury marketplace. Part of this change included hiring a new designer by the name of John Galliano. Arnault's experience with business gave him the strength and knowledge he needed to rebuild the company and his training as a classical pianist gave him an understanding of the creative arts. This combination provided Arnault with a powerful foundation on which to build the future of LVMH.
Arnault continued to acquire brands throughout the 1990s and purchased luxury names such as Givenchy, TAG Heuer, Sephora, and a number of wine and spirit labels. He was criticized for his large luxury conglomerate but many of his competitors found that Arnault was making both business and financial strides with his decisions.
With the changing economies of the 21st century, however, Bernard Arnault found that much of the world was not purchasing the luxury goods they had craved in past years. As a result, many of the brands under the LVMH company struggled to make money and stay afloat. Arnault, however, was not dissuaded and continued to focus on quality and luxury while realizing that some of his brands and stores needed to be downsized. Despite any financial problems, Arnault still managed to keep a tight hold over some of the world's most well-known luxury brands in the industry.
NO : 03
Net Worth:$50 bil
Warren Buffett’s determination and creativity has made him the success story he is today. He is chairman of an investment company which has more than $2 billion in holdings and is also the 2nd richest man in the world.
Warren Edward Buffett was born in 1930 in Omaha, Nebraska. At an early age warren displayed an aptitude for money and business along with an amazing ability to calculate numbers off the top of his head. He was an enthusiastic paper boy for the Washington Post, often covering more than one paper route at the same time. Warren’s interest in money and finance started showing early, and by the age of 11 he was playing the stock market.
Warren purchased three shares of Cities Service at $38 a share for himself and his older sister. Although the stock fell to just over $27 he held his shares until they rebounded to $40, unfortunately selling them before they climbed to $200. The experience taught him one of the basic lessons of investing: patience is a virtue.
In 1947 at the age of 17 he graduated from High School and while he never intended to go to college his father urged him to attend the Wharton Business School. Buffett lasted two years, claiming he knew more than his professors. Warren moved back home and transferred to the University of Nebraska. Even while working full-time, he graduated in only three years with a Bachelor of Science degree, and went on to be rejected by Harvard Business School because he was to young. He completed a master’s in economics at Columbia University where he meet Ben Graham a lecturer and famed investor.
Warren worked for his father who owed an investment banking company for the next three years during which he meet Susie Thompson and in 1952 they were married and had three children together. Warren didn’t have a lot of money at this point until he was asked by Ben Graham to join his company as a security analyst, which he did and by 1956 his fortune rose to $140,000.
In 1956 at the age of twenty five, Warren started his own investment company, the Buffett Partnership, using a small amount of his own funds and collecting around $100,000 from partners and family he managed to increase his capitol to $300,000 by the years end. One of the companies Warren invested in during his role as managing partner of the Buffett Partnership was a textile company called Berkshire Hathaway.
Berkshire Hathaway was eventually liquidated but the name was kept and turned into an investment business. Its main interest was with insurance, which added considerable cash flow for future investments. He liquidated the Buffett partnership in 1969, and spent the remainder of the year liquidating its portfolio.
Warren became chairman of the board and chief executive officer for Berkshire Hathaway in which he remains today. Berkshire Hathaway now owns more than forty companies employing more than 150,000 people.
In 1977 Warren and Susan separated but never divorced, She was also a significant stockholder in Berkshire Hathaway and a board member as well. Susan Buffett died in 2004, and Warren now lives with companion Astrid Menks whom he meet through his wife.
Warren Buffett is also a generous and charitable philanthropist, having started the Buffett Foundation which he donates more than $12 million a year to. On his death he plans to disburse 99% of his wealth to good causes through the Buffett foundation.
In 2005, Forbes magazine estimated Warren Buffett's wealth to be $44 billion.
NO : 02
Net Worth:$56 bil
Bill Gates is cofounder, chairman and chief software architect of Microsoft, the most successful software company in the world, renowned for making software that is powerful and innovative while still being user friendly. Microsoft now employs more than 55,000 people in 85 countries.
William H Gates III commonly known as Bill Gates was born on 28th October 1955 and raised in Seattle along with his two sisters. Bill became interested in programming at an early age while attending one of Seattle’s most exclusive schools. Gates soon befriended a student named Paul Allen and together using the schools minicomputer they practiced their skills.
They turned to a computing company, in exchange for free use of a more powerful computer they searched for bugs in the computers system while also learning new languages. Bill went on to Harvard University and while there teamed up with Paul to write a new version of Basic programming language for the first personnel computer the Altair 8800. The company was impressed with Gates and Allen’s work and licensed the software resulting in Gates and Allen forming the company Microsoft to develop software for other companies. Bill dropped out of Harvard to spend more time on the new business.
Their break came when they developed an operating system called MS-DOS for the first IBM personnel computer, and later managed to persuade other manufactures to standardize their systems to run MS-DOS. This standardization started a new computer industry boom throughout the 1980’s as MS-DOS took hold of the market and gained popularity, Microsoft also started developing applications such as word processors.
Microsoft announced Windows 1.0 in 1983, which promised a graphical user interface (GUI) better graphics and multitasking. However the final product was not released for another 2 years until 1985, with very few compatible applications Windows did not sell well.
Over the next five years Microsoft released a number of upgraded windows 2.0 versions which added many programs, versatility and features. As Microsoft grew, its share price sky rocketed, and at the age of 31 Bill Gates became the youngest self-made billionaire in American history.
In 1990 Microsoft headed by Bill Gates created a new version of Windows called Windows 3.0 with a much improved GUI and features which sold more than 10 million copies, quickly followed by Windows 3.1, 3.11 and workgroups which added networking support. Building on their success Microsoft developed Windows 95 followed by windows 98, 2000, Millennium Edition and The current version Windows XP. Each new windows release has seen Microsoft gain more market share and along with their popular applications such as Office, games etc has seen Bill Gates become the richest man in the world worth an estimated US$46 billion.
Gates also has interests in other business having many investments and positions in company’s including Corbis Corporation, Berkshire Hathaway Inc, Teledesic Corporation. In 1998 Gates gave up his role as CEO to focus on development of new technology and products.
Bill Gates married Melinda French Gates in 1994 and has three children, Jennifer, Rory and Phoebe. Both Bill and Melinda are keen Philanthropist’s starting the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which has committed more than $3.2 billion to global health, $2 billion to improve learning opportunities to low income families, $477 million to community projects and more than $488 million to special projects and annual giving campaigns.
Bill Gates development of software and programs has been his contribution to the revolution of computers and computer science.
NO : 01
Net Worth:$74 bil
Carlos Slim Helu is a Mexican entrepreneur and businessman involved in a varied group of companies that include telecommunications, retail, banking and insurance, technology, and auto parts manufacturing businesses. He is the wealthiest Mexican man, the richest Latin American, and one of the top ten richest men in the world.
Carlos Slim Helú was born on the 28th of January, 1940 in Mexico City. His father Yusef Salim Haddad and mother Linda Helu were of Lebanese decent. Carlos was the 5th of 6 children. He studied engineering at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico.
The financial success that Slim Helu has achieved has been from finding undervalued companies and making them profitable. Telefonos de Mexico (Telmex) was acquired during a privatization period in 1990 of the Mexican government. Carlos was criticized for raising phone call costs soon after purchasing the business, but he went on to improve phone services in Mexico with the company offering local and long distance calls, mobile phone services, Internet services, and a telephone directory.
"It's not a question of arriving and putting in a whole new administration, but instead, arriving and "compacting" things as much as possible, reducing management layers. We want as few management layers as possible, so that executives are very close to the operations. We also don't believe in having big corporate infrastructures." Carlos Slim Helu
Carlos Slim Helu has been referred to as the "Warren Buffett of Latin America", but he thinks of himself as an operator of companies, rather than just an investor (like Buffett).
Even though he has admitted to having very poor computer skills, he sees the Internet and technology as a major growth area in his group of businesses. He owns the largest Internet Service Provider (ISP) in Mexico and had one of the largest in the United States of America with his acquisition of Prodigy. Slim also owns the major computer retailer CompUSA, with more than 200 retail stores throughout the USA and Puerto Rico.
"Technology is going to transform people's lives and society everywhere in the world. My main task is to understand what's going on and try to see where we can fit in." Carlos Slim Helu
In 2005 Forbes business magazine estimated Carlos Slim Helu's net worth to be $23.8 billion American dollars, making him the 4th richest person in the world.
In 2006 Carlos Slim Helu was ranked as the third richest man in the world with an estimated $30 billion in assets.
In 2007 the Mexican billionaire remained in third position but increased his wealth dramatically to an estimated $49 billion.
Update : In June of 2007 it was reported that the wealth of Carlos Slim Helu increased to an estimated $67.8 billion, making him the richest man in the world. This puts Carlos Slim ahead of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. Read more about Carlos Slim being the Richest Man in the World.