insiderblm
#1 Jeff Bezos
CEO and Founder, Amazon
REAL TIME NET WORTH
$111.7B
as of 8/19/19
2019 Billionaires NET WORTH
$131B
as of 3/4/19
- Jeff Bezos founded e-commerce colossus Amazon in 1994 out of his garage in Seattle. He remains CEO and owns a nearly 12% stake.
- He divorced his wife MacKenzie in July 2019 after 25 years of marriage and transferred one quarter of his Amazon stake to her.
- MacKenzie Bezos’s 4% slice of Amazon makes her one of the world’s richest women.
- In 2018, Amazon had $230 billion in revenues and a record $10 billion in net profit, up from $3 billion the prior year.
- In February, Amazon announced it was canceling plans for a second headquarters in Long Island City, New York after local lawmakers opposed the plan.
- Bezos owns The Washington Post and Blue Origin, an aerospace company that is developing a rocket for commercial use.
#2 Bill Gates
Cofounder, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
REAL TIME NET WORTH
$103.2B
as of 8/19/19
2019 Billionaires NET WORTH
$96.5B
as of 3/4/19
- With his wife Melinda, Bill Gates chairs the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest private charitable foundation.
- The foundation works to save lives and improve global health, and is working with Rotary International to eliminate polio.
- Gates has sold or given away much of his stake in Microsoft — he owns just over 1% of shares –and invested in a mix of stocks and other assets.
- He remains a board member of Microsoft, the software firm he founded with Paul Allen in 1975.
- In late 2016, Gates announced the launch of a $1 billion Breakthrough Energy investment fund with about 20 other people.
- To date, Gates has donated $35.8 billion worth of Microsoft stock to the Gates Foundation.
#3 Warren Buffett
CEO, Berkshire Hathaway
REAL TIME NET WORTH
$79B
as of 8/19/19
2019 Billionaires NET WORTH
$82.5B
as of 3/4/19
- Known as the “Oracle of Omaha,” Warren Buffett is one of the most successful investors of all time.
- Buffett runs Berkshire Hathaway, which owns more than 60 companies, including insurer Geico, battery maker Duracell and restaurant chain Dairy Queen.
- The son of a U.S. congressman, he first bought stock at age 11 and first filed taxes at age 13.
- He’s promised to give away over 99% of his fortune. In 2019 he donated $3.6 billion, much of it to the foundation of friends Bill and Melinda Gates.
- In 2010, he and Gates launched the Giving Pledge, asking billionaires to commit to donating half their wealth to charitable causes.
#4 Bernard Arnault & family
Chairman and CEO, LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton
REAL TIME NET WORTH
$93.5B
as of 8/19/19
2019 Billionaires NET WORTH
$76B
as of 3/4/19
- One of the world’s ultimate taste-makers, Bernard Arnault oversees an empire of 70 brands including Louis Vuitton and Sephora.
- His luxury goods group, LVMH, posted record sales and profits in 2018, thanks in part to increased spending by Chinese customers.
- The arts patron is the visionary behind the $135 million Frank Gehry-designed Foundation Louis Vuitton museum near Paris, opened in 2014.
- Arnault and LVMH pledged over $220 million to help repair the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris following a devastating fire in mid April 2019.
- His daughter Delphine is executive vice president of Louis Vuitton, and a member of LVMH’s executive committee.
- His father made a small fortune in construction; Arnault put up $15 million from that business to buy Christian Dior in 1985.
#5 Carlos Slim Helu & family
Honorary Chairman, América Móvil
REAL TIME NET WORTH
$54.5B
as of 8/19/19
2019 Billionaires NET WORTH
$64B
as of 3/4/19
- Mexico’s richest man, Carlos Slim Helu and his family control America Movil, Latin America’s biggest mobile telecom firm.
- With foreign telecom partners, Slim bought a stake in Telmex, Mexico’s only phone company, in 1990. Telmex is now part of America Movil.
- He also owns stakes in Mexican construction, consumer goods, mining and real estate companies and 17% of The New York Times.
- His son-in-law Fernando Romero designed the Soumaya Museum in Mexico City, home to Slim’s extensive, eclectic art collection.
#6 Amancio Ortega
REAL TIME NET WORTH
$65.7B
as of 8/19/19
2019 Billionaires NET WORTH
$62.7B
as of 3/4/19
- Amancio Ortega is one of the richest men in Europe and the wealthiest retailer in the world.
- A pioneer in fast fashion, he cofounded Inditex, known for its Zara fashion chain, with his ex-wife Rosalia Mera (d. 2013) in 1975.
- He owns about 60% of Madrid-listed Inditex, which has 8 brands, including Massimo Dutti and Pull & Bear, and 7,500 stores around the world.
- Ortega typically earns more than $400 million in dividends a year.
- He has invested his dividends primarily into real estate in Madrid, Barcelona, London, Chicago, Miami and New York.
#7 Larry Ellison
CTO and Founder, Oracle
REAL TIME NET WORTH
$65.2B
as of 8/19/19
2019 Billionaires NET WORTH
$62.5B
as of 3/4/19
- Larry Ellison cofounded software firm Oracle in 1977 to tap into the growing need for customer relationship management databases.
- He gave up the Oracle CEO role in 2014 but still serves as chairman of the board and chief technology officer.
- As part of Oracle’s push into cloud computing, it acquired cloud-software firm Netsuite for $9.3 billion in 2016.
- In May 2016, Ellison pledged $200 million to the University of Southern California for a cancer treatment center.
- In March 2018, Ellison launched a wellness startup called Sensei, whose first project is hydroponic farming on the Hawaiian island Lanai.
- Ellison joined Tesla’s board in December 2018, after purchasing 3 million Tesla shares earlier that year.
#8 Mark Zuckerberg
Cofounder, Chairman and CEO, Facebook
REAL TIME NET WORTH
$68.3B
as of 8/19/19
2019 Billionaires NET WORTH
$62.3B
as of 3/4/19
- After facing another year of criticism for fake news and abuse on Facebook, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said his priority in 2019 is tackling social issues.
- In April 2018, he testified before Congress after it was revealed that Facebook shared users’ data with political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.
- Zuckerberg started Facebook at Harvard in 2004 at the age of 19 for students to match names with faces in class.
- He took Facebook public in May 2012 and still owns about 15% of the stock.
- In December 2015, Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, pledged to give away 99% of their Facebook stake over their lifetimes.
#9 Michael Bloomberg
CEO, Bloomberg
REAL TIME NET WORTH
$55.3B
as of 8/19/19
2019 Billionaires NET WORTH
$55.5B
as of 3/4/19
- Michael Bloomberg cofounded financial information and media company Bloomberg LP in 1981.
- He put in the seed funding for the company and now owns 88% of the business, which has revenues north of $9 billion.
- Bloomberg got his start on Wall Street in 1966 with an entry level job at investment bank Salomon Brothers. He was fired 15 years later.
- An active philanthropist, he has donated more than $5 billion to gun control, climate change and other causes.
- He plans to spend at least $500 million to defeat Donald Trump in 2020.
#10 Larry Page
CEO, Alphabet
REAL TIME NET WORTH
$54.3B
as of 8/19/19
2019 Billionaires NET WORTH
$50.8B
as of 3/4/19
- Larry Page sits at the helm of Alphabet, the parent company of Google, healthcare division Calico, smart home appliance division Nest and more.
- He cofounded Google in 1998 with fellow Stanford Ph.D. student Sergey Brin.
- With Brin, Page invented Google’s PageRank algorithm, which powers the search engine.
- Page was Google’s first CEO until 2001. After serving as president of products, he took the CEO job again in 2011.
#11 Charles Koch
CEO, Koch Industries
REAL TIME NET WORTH
$42.2B
as of 8/19/19
2019 Billionaires NET WORTH
$50.5B
as of 3/4/19
- Charles Koch has been chairman and CEO of Koch Industries, America’s second largest private company by revenue, since 1967.
- The diversified company has some $110 billion in revenues from businesses including pipelines, chemicals, Dixie cups, and Stainmaster carpet.
- His father, Fred Koch, improved a method of refining heavy oil into gasoline in 1927 and started the family business in 1940.
- The Kansas native owns a 42% stake in the firm, as does his brother, David; they bought their two other brothers’ shares in 1983.
- His son Chase heads the company’s venture capital arm, which has invested in hybrid cloud firm Mesosphere and 3D metal printing startup Desktop Metal.
#12 David Koch
Director Emeritus, Koch Industries
REAL TIME NET WORTH
$42.2B
as of 8/19/19
2019 Billionaires NET WORTH
$50.5B
as of 3/4/19
- David Koch shares majority control of Koch Industries, the second largest private U.S. firm in terms of revenue, with his brother Charles.
- Koch stepped down from his role as executive vice president in July 2018, citing health concerns; he was named director emeritus.
- Koch Industries, which has revenues of $110 billion, refines crude oil, produces fertilizer and makes Dixie cups and Quilted Northern toilet paper.
- A well-known philanthropist, David is a donor to New York’s Lincoln Center and Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.
- David Koch ran as the Libertarian Party’s vice presidential candidate in 1980 on a ticket with Ed Clark; they won 1% of the vote.
#13 Mukesh Ambani
Founder and Chairman, Reliance Industries
REAL TIME NET WORTH
$50.7B
as of 8/19/19
2019 Billionaires NET WORTH
$50B
as of 3/4/19
- Mukesh Ambani chairs and runs $90 billion (revenue) oil and gas giant Reliance Industries, among India’s most valuable companies.
- Reliance was founded by his late father Dhirubhai Ambani, a yarn trader, in 1966 as a small textile manufacturer.
- After his father’s death in 2002, Ambani and his younger sibling Anil divvied up the family empire.
- In 2016, Reliance sparked a price war in India’s hyper-competitive telecom market with the launch of 4G phone service Jio.
- Jio has signed on more than 300 million customers by offering free domestic voice calls, dirt-cheap data services and virtually free smartphones.
#14 Sergey Brin
President, Alphabet
REAL TIME NET WORTH
$52.9B
as of 8/19/19
2019 Billionaires NET WORTH
$49.8B
as of 3/4/19
- Sergey Brin works as president of tech giant Alphabet, the parent firm of Google.
- He previously ran the secretive Google X division, which made the ill-fated Google glasses.
- Brin cofounded search engine firm Google with Larry Page in 1998.
- Brin and Page met at Stanford University while studying for advanced degrees in computer science.
- Google went public in 2004 and changed its name to Alphabet in 2015.
#15 Francoise Bettencourt Meyers & family
REAL TIME NET WORTH
$51.6B
as of 8/19/19
2019 Billionaires NET WORTH
$49.3B
as of 3/4/19
- Francoise Bettencourt Meyers is the richest woman in the world and the granddaughter of L’Oreal’s founder.
- Bettencourt Meyers and her family own 33% of L’Oreal stock, which recorded its best sales growth in more than a decade in 2018.
- She has served on L’Oreal’s board since 1997 and is chairwoman of the family holding company.
- Together, L’Oreal and Bettencourt Meyers’ family foundation are donating $226 million to repair Notre Dame cathedral following the April 2019 fire.
- She became France’s reigning L’Oreal Heiress in 2017 when her mother Liliane Bettencourt, then the world’s richest woman, died at age 94.
- Bettencourt Meyers serves as the president of her family’s philanthropic foundation, which encourages French progress in the sciences and arts.
#16 Jim Walton
Chairman and CEO, Arvest Bank Group, Inc.
REAL TIME NET WORTH
$51.7B
as of 8/19/19
2019 Billionaires NET WORTH
$44.6B
as of 3/4/19
- Jim Walton is the youngest son of Walmart founder Sam Walton.
- He runs the family’s Arvest Bank, which boasts assets of more than $19 billion.
- He sat on Walmart’s board for more than a decade before yielding the seat to his son, Steuart, in June 2016.
- Collectively Jim and other heirs of Sam Walton own about half of Walmart’s stock.
- Walmart is under pressure to raise hourly wages after Bernie Sanders came to the company’s annual meeting in June 2019 to push for higher pay.
#17 Alice Walton
Chairman, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
REAL TIME NET WORTH
$50.8B
as of 8/19/19
2019 Billionaires NET WORTH
$44.4B
as of 3/4/19
- Alice Walton is the only daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton.
- She has focused on curating art, rather than working for Walmart like her siblings, Rob and Jim.
- In 2011 she opened the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in her hometown, Bentonville, Arkansas.
- Crystal Bridges features works from the likes of Andy Warhol, Norman Rockwell and Mark Rothko.
- Her personal art collection is valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
#18 Rob Walton
Director, Walmart
REAL TIME NET WORTH
$50.6B
as of 8/19/19
2019 Billionaires NET WORTH
$44.3B
as of 3/4/19
- Rob Walton is the eldest son of Walmart founder Sam Walton.
- He ran the retailer for nearly 25 years; he first took over as chairman upon his father’s death in 1992.
- He retired as chairman in June 2015 and was replaced by his son-in-law, Greg Penner. He still sits on Walmart’s board.
- In January 2018, following the passage of the Congressional tax reform bill, Walmart announced that it would increase its minimum wage to $11 an hour.
- He and other heirs of Sam Walton collectively own about half of Walmart’s stock.
#19 Steve Ballmer
Owner, Los Angeles Clippers
REAL TIME NET WORTH
$50.8B
as of 8/19/19
2019 Billionaires NET WORTH
$41.2B
as of 3/4/19
- Steve Ballmer is the high-wattage former CEO of Microsoft, who led the company from 2000 to 2014.
- He joined Microsoft in 1980 as employee No. 30 after dropping out of Stanford’s MBA program.
- Ballmer oversaw Microsoft at a difficult time-after the first dot.com crash and through efforts to catch Google in search and Apple in mobile phones.
- The same year he retired from Microsoft he bought the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers for $2 billion.
- He has ramped up his philanthropy since 2014, putting over $2 billion into a donor-advised fund, with a focus on lifting Americans out of poverty.
#20 Ma Huateng
Chairman and CEO, Tencent Holdings
REAL TIME NET WORTH
$38B
as of 8/19/19
2019 Billionaires NET WORTH
$38.8B
as of 3/4/19
- Ma Huateng (also known as Pony Ma) chairs Chinese Internet giant Tencent Holdings, which ranks among the nation’s largest businesses by market cap.
- Tencent’s popular social messaging app WeChat has more than 1 billion users.
- The group listed its music-streaming subsidiary, Tencent Music, on the New York Stock Exchange in December 2018.
- In contrast to his outgoing rival at Alibaba, Ma has a low-profile style that befits his engineering background.
- Ma cofounded Tencent in 1998.
