The fifth edition of Wealth-X Billionaire has revealed that there are more billionaires in the world now than any other times. If we look globally at different countries of the world, there are countries that are richer than others, and they have a strong economic infrastructure. Contrary to that, other countries have poverty. They have a weak economy.
Statistics of 2017 Billionaire Census:
North America used to be home of billionaires, but according to the statistics of 2017, the number of wealthy people in the Asian region has increased rapidly. Now Asia has more ultra-wealthy people. Another factor that leads to an increase in the wealthy count is the technology sector. The rapid growth in the information technology sector has contributed a lot towards this.
Rank
Country
Billionaire Count
Total Wealth ($bn)
1
United States
620
2580
2
China
249
670
3
Germany
129
368
4
Russia
100
319
5
United Kingdom
94
253
6
Switzerland
86
226
7
India
85
199
8
Hong Kong
72
236
9
Saudi Arabia
57
177
10
United Arab Emirates
52
161
11
France
49
183
12
Brazil
46
140
13
Italy
44
125
14
Spain
38
128
15
Singapore
37
73
16
Turkey
35
54
17
Canada
34
84
18
Japan
31
82
19
Mexico
25
122
20
Thailand
23
61
The United States Has Most Billionaires:
The United States is a country with a strong economic and political infrastructure. The country is one of the fastest developing countries in the world. Many of the world’s most wealthy retail giants are located in America. The country has more wealth than any other country on the planet. The total wealth in the United States is approximately 2580 billion US Dollars.
Down below are some brief facts and figures about the wealthiest people in the United States of America.
Jeff Bezos: The Wealthiest Individual:
Jeff Bezos is the chief of Amazon and is the first person in the United States to go above 100 billion US Dollars. He ranks first on the Forbes list of World’s Billionaires. He founded Amazon from his garage back in 1994. It is now a multimillion dollar industry and one of the best e-commerce website in the world. Bezos also has his interests in space travel. He owns the aerospace company called Blue Origin. The company is now working on manufacturing a rocket that is reusable. This machine would allow the rocket to land and launched again. Bezos also purchased The Washington Post in 2013. He bought the company for $250 million.
Bill Gates: One of the top billionaires in the US:
According to the Forbes list of top 10 billionaires, Bill Gates stands on the second rank with a wealth of 90 billion US dollars. He owns the world’s largest private charity foundation named Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He was the one to start Microsoft along with Paul Allen back in 1975. The company grew out to be one of the biggest tech companies in the world. Microsoft’s majority shares are sold. Bill Gates only own 1% of the company shares now. As of now, Gates is on the board of directors of the firm.
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation:
https://www.flickr.com/oninnovation/
Bill Gates’ father was also a philanthropist. Bill Gates and his wife, Melinda Gates founded this organization with a goal to do something to help people. It started out when Bill read an article in the newspaper that said something about people suffering in the world. So Bill clipped that piece of article from the paper and sent it to his Father, William H Gates.
Bill, being a billionaire used his own wealth to make this foundation and now it is the largest philanthropist foundation in the world. The goal of it is to help the people suffering in the poorest nations of the world. Under the supervision of Gates, the foundation is now working to improve health and hygiene in the stuck poverty countries.
Investments at Reinvented Toilet Expo
Reinvented Toilet Expo was held at Beijing on 6th November. He stated that the foundation would scale up its investments in developing hygienic toilet technologies. He’s working on this project because 4.5 billion people in the world don’t have access to the clean and safe toilets. Some still defecate out in the open. This leads to the outspread of many diseases. Unsafe sanitation causes diarrhoea and other infections.
Warren Buffett, 3rd Wealthiest Person:
Warren Buffett is the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. His company owns about 60 other companies in the world. As per the 2018 Forbes Billionaires Net Worth, he has an estimated wealth of $84 Billion. He is also known as the Oracle of Ohama. He is one the most successful investors of all time. Warren promised that he would give away 90% of his total fortune. He has donated about $35 million to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation as Gates is a good friend of Buffett.
China’s Most Wealthy Individuals:
China is a second country on the list having a total billionaire count of 249. The summed wealth of these people makes up about 670 billion dollars. Most of the rich people in the country are not born with that much of money; rather they made their fortune themselves. Starting from different backgrounds, they managed to get rich by using their innovative ideas to move ahead.
Huateng Ma: The Richest Man in China:
Huateng Ma with a net worth of $41.8 billion is the wealthiest man in the country. He is currently the CEO of Tencent. He comes 17th on the Forbes 400 billionaires list. Tencent is one of the largest tech companies in the world. It works in all the fields including social media, gaming and other departments. WeChat was an app developed by this company. It has more than 1 billion users now. The founder of Alibaba, Jack Ma is the direct rival of
Huateng Ma. But the low profile style of Huateng keeps him off the spotlight.
Huateng Ma is also known as Pony Ma. He co-founded the Tecent Technologies back in 1998. The company launched their very first product in 1999. It was a PC based free messages application. In the first year, the app had about one million users. But as it was free, so the company remained unprofitable. Later on, they launched the mobile application which yielded them a profit of $ 1.2 million. In 2004, Tencent was on the list of stocks in Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
Jack Ma: Second Mostly Wealthy individual:
https://www.flickr.com/teknobeyin/
Jack Ma comes on the second rank in China. He stands 20th on the Forbes’ list. Jack Ma is the founder of Alibaba Group. He is the chairman of the company. Recently, Jack stated that he would step down as the chairman and Daniel Zhang would take control of the operations of the company.
Alibaba is a leading name in the e-commerce industry, and Jack Ma is the face of business in China. According to Forbes, he is also one of the most powerful people in the world. Adding to that he also a significant role in promoting and leading startups. In the 50 Greatest Leaders list, Jack ranked second.
Initial Struggle of Jack:
Ma put a great struggle behind his fortune. At first, he heard of the internet back in 1994. One year after that, he went to the United States where some of his friends told him more about the internet and how it worked. He randomly searched beer and was surprised to see the results out there. He was amazed because there were not many search results about China in that. So he planned to make a website related to China.
Making a fortune on the Internet:
His website got many views overnight, and the next thing he knew was some emails of businessmen willing to know about him. So he later collected some money to start his own company with his wife and some friends. He started making websites for other companies and named it as ‘ChinaPages.’ Later on, he came back to China in 1999 and began Alibaba as an e-commerce platform.
Industries with Most Wealth:
There are different industrial sectors but down below is a list of sectors with most wealth:
Rank
Industry
Number of Billionaires
Billionaire Wealth
Average Wealth
1
Finance/Banking/Investment
488
1430
2.9
2
Industrial conglomerates
343
1066
3.1
3
Real estate
158
368
2.3
4
Manufacturing
119
339
2.8
5
Technology
115
600
5.2
Finance, banking and investment sectors have the most wealth. The industry has a total of 488 billionaires having a total of 1430 Billion US Dollars. The technology sector has been progressing rapidly. Although it comes 5th on the list but the IT industry has the most average wealth than any other industry in the world. Of the top 10 riches individuals in the world, 6 of them have made their fortune from the technology industry.
Wealth By Gender 2016:
As compared to males, the female billionaire count has declined rapidly in 2016. About 57% of the females that are billionaires have inherited their wealth from their families. On the other hand, most of the men have self-made wealth, and only 8% of the total male billionaires have inherited their wealth from their families.
