World's Baked Billionaires: Sid harth
Sid Harth
Special Report
The World's Billionaires
Edited by Luisa Kroll, Matthew Miller and Tatiana Serafin, 03.11.09,
06:00 PM EDT
The richest people in the world have gotten poorer, just like the rest
of us. This year the world's billionaires have an average net worth of
$3 billion, down 23% in 12 months. The world now has 793 billionaires,
down from 1,125 a year ago.
After slipping in recent years, the U.S. is regaining its dominance as
a repository of wealth. Americans account for 44% of the money and 45%
of the list's slots, up seven and three percentage points from last
year, respectively. Bill Gates lost $18 billion but regained his title
as the world's richest man. Warren Buffett, last year's No. 1, saw his
fortune decline $25 billion as shares of Berkshire Hathaway fell
nearly 50% in 12 months. Mexican telecom titan Carlos Slim Helú
maintains his spot in the top three but lost $25 billion.
More ...
Billionaire Bust
Last year the world had 1,125 billionaires. Today there are 793. How
$1.4 trillion vanished.
FEATURED
I Just Can't Wait to Be King
Kerry A. Dolan
Royal obsession: Alwaleed minds his portfolio, even at his desert
retreat.
Last Man Standing
Anita Raghavan
Two years after being all but written off, metals mogul Mikhail D.
Prokhorov is back--as the richest man in Russia.
Une Affaire de Famille
Joshua Levine
The unhappy fallout between Europe's richest woman and her daughter--
and the man in the middle.
Billionaire Acrobatics
Matthew Miller
How Cirque du Soleil's fire-breathing billionaire Guy Laliberte
actually got richer in 2008.
Cocaine King
Jesse Bogan
Mexico's most wanted man, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, is one of 38 new
billionaires.
Where The (Still) Rich And Single Mingle
Maureen Farrell
From Monaco in May to Dubai in December, this is where the party keeps
rocking.
The Gulf's Newest Billionaire
Devon Pendleton
Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahayan of Abu Dhabi is spreading his
wealth in the U.K., gaining fans--and a few foes.
Battle Of The Billionaires
Daniel Fisher
The next race for the America's Cup could be decided a long way from
the water.
Campus Politics
Megha Bahree
If the protests die down and the bureaucracy speeds up, India might
just get a giant new university. Mining magnate Anil Agarwal is
putting $1 billion into this dream.
THE BILLIONAIRES
1. William Gates III
2. Warren Buffett
3. Carlos Slim Helú
4. Lawrence Ellison
5. Ingvar Kamprad
6. Karl Albrecht
7. Mukesh Ambani
8. Lakshmi Mittal
9. heo Albrecht
10. Amancio Ortega
11. Jim Walton
12. Alice Walton
13. Christy Walton
14. S Robson Walton
15. Bernard Arnault
16. Li Ka-shing
17. Michael Bloomberg
18. Stefan Persson
19. Charles Koch
20. David Koch
Rank 1 to 25
Rank 26 to 43
Rank 51 to 75
Rank 76 to 98
Rank 98 to 124
Rank 124 to 149
Rank 151 to 164
Rank 164 to 196
Rank 196 to 224
Rank 224 to 246
Rank 246 to 261
Rank 261 to 296
Rank 296 to 318
Rank 318-334
Rank 334 (tie)
Rank 376-397
Rank 397 (tie)
Rank 397-450
Rank 450 to 468
Rank 468 (tie)
Rank 468-522
Rank 522 (tie)
Rank 522 to 559
Rank 559 (tie)
Rank 601 (tie)
Rank 601 to 647
Rank 647 (tie)
Rank 647 (tie pg.2)
Rank 701 (tie)
Rank 701 (tie pg. 2)
Rank 701 (tie pg. 3)
Rank 701 (tie pg. 4)
Edited by Luisa Kroll, Matthew Miller and Tatiana Serafin.
...and I am Sid Harth
Sid Harth
Special Report
The World's Billionaires 2009
03.11.09, 06:00 PM EST
The World's Billionaires 2009
Rank Name Citizenship Age Net Worth ($bil)
Residence
1 William Gates III United States 53 40.0 United
States
2 Warren Buffett United States 78 37.0 United
States
3 Carlos Slim Helu & family Mexico 69 35.0 Mexico
4 Lawrence Ellison United States 64 22.5 United
States
5 Ingvar Kamprad & family Sweden 83 22.0
Switzerland
6 Karl Albrecht Germany 89 21.5 Germany
7 Mukesh Ambani India 51 19.5 India
8 Lakshmi Mittal India 58 19.3 United
Kingdom
9 Theo Albrecht Germany 87 18.8 Germany
10 Amancio Ortega Spain 73 18.3 Spain
11 Jim Walton United States 61 17.8 United
States
12 Alice Walton United States 59 17.6 United
States
12 Christy Walton & family United States 54 17.6 United
States
12 S Robson Walton United States 65 17.6 United
States
15 Bernard Arnault France 60 16.5 France
16 Li Ka-shing Hong Kong 80 16.2 Hong Kong
17 Michael Bloomberg United States 67 16.0 United
States
18 Stefan Persson Sweden 61 14.5 Sweden
19 Charles Koch United States 73 14.0 United
States
19 David Koch United States 68 14.0 United
States
21 Liliane Bettencourt France 86 13.4 France
22 Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud Saudi Arabia 54 13.3 Saudi
Arabia
23 Michael Otto & family Germany 65 13.2 Germany
24 David Thomson & family Canada 51 13.0 Canada
25 Michael Dell United States 44 12.3 United
States
For billionaires with publicly traded fortunes, net worths were
calculated using share prices and exchange rates from February 13,
2009.
A billionaire is a billionaire no matter how he got his fortune but
one question, why isn't Sir Alan sugar or mel gibson in this list,
they're both billionaires.
Posted by Jesyoung | 05/01/09 02:24 PM EDT
OK guys I agree with everything you may say about ethics in the
Jaoquin Loera's case, but what about an insane monopolizer like Carlos
Slim? Does it make any difference between a drug trafficker who [Read
More]
Posted by Edgarpi | 03/21/09 02:49 PM EDT
To all fo you who can't see how this is an insult to people who have
suffered personal losses, including Lisa Kroll, due to murders
commited by people involved in the drug trade, let me put it differ
[Read More]
Arindam Banerjee
"Sid Harth" <shar...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:63e6f963-5818-4af3...@n11g2000yqb.googlegroups.com...
so what's your ranking?
Sid Harth
Seeking Business Allies, Clinton Connects With India’s Billionaires
Rajanish Kakade/Associated Press
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton with members of a women’s
group in Mumbai on Saturday. Mrs. Clinton’s trip is the first to India
by a top official from the Obama administration.
Published: July 18, 2009
MUMBAI, India — India’s booming economy has turned some business
executives into rock stars. So it was perhaps not surprising that
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton — a celebrity in her own
right — would stop first in India’s commercial capital for a power
breakfast with bankers and billionaires.
Times Topics: Hillary Rodham Clinton | IndiaMrs. Clinton was to go to
New Delhi on Sunday for meetings and ceremonies the next day with
government leaders. But she began her visit to India, the first by a
top official from the Obama administration, by discussing climate
change, education and health care with private-sector potentates.
Flanked by Mukesh Ambani (estimated net worth: $19.5 billion) and
Ratan Tata (estimated net worth: $1 billion), Mrs. Clinton heard ideas
from seven other guests about how Indian companies could provide
health care, education and banking services to India’s desperately
poor.
“You’re so right, Ratan,” Mrs. Clinton said to Mr. Tata when he
explained how his Tata Group was delivering nutrients to children and
young mothers through daily staples like milk. “If we could get the
nutritional status of children to improve, it would solve so many
problems.”
The purpose of her visit, Mrs. Clinton said at a news conference on
Saturday, was to “broaden and deepen” dialogue between the United
States and India. Given the potential for friction in the issues that
face the two countries — climate change, trade and the insurgency in
Pakistan — Mrs. Clinton’s visit with business leaders was more than a
sidelight.
The United States is clearly hoping that Indian business will help
bridge potential gaps between the two countries.
Mr. Ambani, for example, proposed that Indians and Americans work
together to develop “clean technologies” that would reduce carbon
emissions. The Indian government is resisting the Obama
administration’s push for a global treaty that would mandate cuts in
carbon emissions, arguing that developing economies deserve to grow
without compulsory constraints.
“Rather than argue about who has a right to pollute,” Mr. Ambani said,
“we will move forward to create institutions.”
As the richest man in India, Mr. Ambani is influential. But he may
soon face his own problems with the United States. His conglomerate,
Reliance Industries, operates refineries that sell fuel to Iran. That
could make him vulnerable to sanctions against Iran being proposed in
Congress.
The choice of Mumbai as Mrs. Clinton’s first port of call was steeped
in symbolism for another reason: It offered her a platform to speak
out against the coordinated terrorist attacks here last November that
killed 173 people and wounded more than 300.
Mrs. Clinton told an Indian broadcaster, Times Now, that she stayed at
the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower, one of two hotels that had been
attacked, partly as a “rebuke” of the terrorists.
Last week, she encouraged India to support Pakistan’s effort to stem a
radical insurgency in Pakistan, a request that may unsettle some
Indians. India and the United States blamed a Pakistan-based militant
group for the Mumbai attacks, and India has long complained that
Pakistan is not serious enough in cracking down on militants.
Mrs. Clinton met with the hotel’s general manager, who lost his wife
and child in the attack, as well as other employees, before signing a
condolence book.
“Just as India supported America on 9/11, these events are seared in
our memory,” she said at the news conference, adding that terrorism is
“global, it is ruthless, it is nihilistic, and it must be stopped.”
Mrs. Clinton delivered her message on an outdoor terrace at the hotel
that had been littered with bloodied bodies during the siege. Just
before the news conference, the Indian police urged her not to speak
there for security reasons, but she resisted.
The rest of her day was devoted to two longtime interests: women’s
issues and education.
She visited a shop run by the Self Employed Women’s Association, a
cooperative of 1 million women who make and sell embroidery and other
products using microfinance methods. In 1995, Mrs. Clinton visited the
group as the first lady; she has stayed in touch since then.
Inevitably, some of these encounters are more successful than others.
In the category of less successful was a panel discussion on education
at a Jesuit college, at which Mrs. Clinton appeared with Aamir Khan, a
prominent Indian film star who campaigns for better teaching.
While Mrs. Clinton offered an earnest discussion of teaching standards
in Arkansas, Mr. Khan appeared to condone dropping out of school to
pursue entertainment careers.
Mrs. Clinton appeared unfazed, closing with a quote from the Rev. Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr., who, she noted, “of course learned so much
from Gandhi.”
Sid Harth
From The Sunday Times May 24, 2009
Billionaire club in bid to curb overpopulation
America's richest people meet to discuss ways of tackling a
'disastrous' environmental, social and industrial threatJohn Harlow,
Los Angeles
SOME of America’s leading billionaires have met secretly to consider
how their wealth could be used to slow the growth of the world’s
population and speed up improvements in health and education.
The philanthropists who attended a summit convened on the initiative
of Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, discussed joining forces to
overcome political and religious obstacles to change.
Described as the Good Club by one insider it included David
Rockefeller Jr, the patriarch of America’s wealthiest dynasty, Warren
Buffett and George Soros, the financiers, Michael Bloomberg, the mayor
of New York, and the media moguls Ted Turner and Oprah Winfrey.
These members, along with Gates, have given away more than £45 billion
since 1996 to causes ranging from health programmes in developing
countries to ghetto schools nearer to home.
They gathered at the home of Sir Paul Nurse, a British Nobel prize
biochemist and president of the private Rockefeller University, in
Manhattan on May 5. The informal afternoon session was so discreet
that some of the billionaires’ aides were told they were at “security
briefings”.
Stacy Palmer, editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy, said the summit
was unprecedented. “We only learnt about it afterwards, by accident.
Normally these people are happy to talk good causes, but this is
different – maybe because they don’t want to be seen as a global
cabal,” he said.
Some details were emerging this weekend, however. The billionaires
were each given 15 minutes to present their favourite cause. Over
dinner they discussed how they might settle on an “umbrella cause”
that could harness their interests.
The issues debated included reforming the supervision of overseas aid
spending to setting up rural schools and water systems in developing
countries. Taking their cue from Gates they agreed that overpopulation
was a priority.
This could result in a challenge to some Third World politicians who
believe contraception and female education weaken traditional values.
Gates, 53, who is giving away most of his fortune, argued that
healthier families, freed from malaria and extreme poverty, would
change their habits and have fewer children within half a generation.
At a conference in Long Beach, California, last February, he had made
similar points. “Official projections say the world’s population will
peak at 9.3 billion [up from 6.6 billion today] but with charitable
initiatives, such as better reproductive healthcare, we think we can
cap that at 8.3 billion,” Gates said then.
Patricia Stonesifer, former chief executive of the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation, which gives more than £2 billion a year to good
causes, attended the Rockefeller summit. She said the billionaires met
to “discuss how to increase giving” and they intended to “continue the
dialogue” over the next few months.
Another guest said there was “nothing as crude as a vote” but a
consensus emerged that they would back a strategy in which population
growth would be tackled as a potentially disastrous environmental,
social and industrial threat.
“This is something so nightmarish that everyone in this group agreed
it needs big-brain answers,” said the guest. “They need to be
independent of government agencies, which are unable to head off the
disaster we all see looming.”
Why all the secrecy? “They wanted to speak rich to rich without
worrying anything they said would end up in the newspapers, painting
them as an alternative world government,” he said.
Arindam Banerjee
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/world/asia/19clinton.html
Published: July 18, 2009
AB: And I suspect you have a problem about lowering your eyes, as your neck
has got strained after so much awed upward watching.
bademiyansubhanallah
Posted: Fri, Aug 21 2009. 10:28 PM ISTBooks
Facebook Fiction?
How the website we are all hooked to was born, and why it clicked with
the worldVeena Venugopal
It was probably the third cocktail that did the trick,” starts Ben
Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaires. That, and the pair of shapely
legs in golden stilettos on its cover, and you would be forgiven for
assuming it is the latest lad-lit title to hit the stores. A male
Bridget Jones perhaps, getting drunk and embarrassing himself.
But this is the story of Facebook, a non-fiction account of how the
Internet phenomenon started— late one evening, by a Harvard geek who
was drunk and trying to land a girlfriend.
Site specifics: The book is written like a thriller.
Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin meet as freshmen in a Harvard
Jewish mixer. Zuckerberg is the typical pasty geek, more comfortable
with computer algorithms than social soirees. Saverin had made
$300,000 (around Rs1.44 crore now) trading oil futures prior to
joining Harvard. Together they obsess about finding girls—hot girls;
hot Asian girls. At least Saverin does, and the author assumes
Zuckerberg must have too. Why else would he hack into Harvard’s
computer systems, download photographs of all the girls and write a
program that allows fellow students to vote these girls as “Hot or
Not”?
In 30 minutes, the site, Facemash, gets 400 visitors and 22,000 votes.
The Harvard newspaper reports it the next day and some campus women’s
groups send letters of protest. Zuckerberg escapes expulsion from
college, but the idea that would eventually become Facebook is born.
At the same time, campus jocks and identical twins, Cameron and Tyler
Winklevoss, are looking for a programmer to help them with the Harvard
Connection, a website that would help Harvard students socialize,
connect and date. When Zuckerberg’s Facemash story hits the campus
paper, they decide he is the man for the job. They meet and
Zuckerberg agrees to write the code for this “interesting idea”. Three
months later, Zuckerberg launches Thefacebook.com, a site that allows
Harvard students to search for people in the school, to look up what
courses they are taking and check out friends’ friends. The website is
funded by Saverin, who invests $1,000 of his oil hedging money. They
divvy up the share— 70% to Zuckerberg whose idea it is and who creates
it, and 30% to Saverin, and the twins are nowhere in the picture.
Mezrich suggests that the origin of Facebook was only about sex. Then
he reiterates it, just in case you missed the first dozen references.
And since this is non-fiction written in a fictional style, he even
throws in imaginary sex scenes whenever the story veers towards the
technical process of making a social network website or later, the
financial and business complexity involved in running one.
Zuckerberg moves west to Silicon Valley to a world of fast cars,
venture capitalists, koala meat and Victoria’s Secret models. Saverin
stays back on the East Coast and eventually finds himself diluted of
his share in the company and denuded of his status as co-founder of
Facebook. He joins the Winklevoss twins as people who “were screwed”
and are suing Zuckerberg.
The Accidental Billionaires is written like a thriller—with re-created
dialogues, descriptions and imaginary situations. Facebook and
Zuckerberg did not meet the author and the book is worse off for this.
What Mezrich didn’t know, he imagined.
In the post-James Frey world, this means there is a near 300-word
“Author’s Note” at the beginning of the book explaining the
fictitiousness. And that stays with you through the 250 pages that
follow—that while Facebook is Zuckerberg’s baby, The Accidental
Billionaires is the story of Saverin.
bademiyansubhanallah
28/08/2009
Billion-Dollar Donors
By David Whelan, Tatiana Serafin and Cristina von Zeppelin
These 14 philanthropists are the most generous people on the planet.
The most exclusive subset of the world's wealthy may be this one:
those living philanthropists who have already given away $1 billion or
more. For the first time ever, Forbes has put together a list of the
world's billion-dollar donors. Of the 793 billionaires in the world,
only 11 made it into this group.
In Pictures: Billion-Dollar Donors
In Pictures: 10 Billionaire Weddings
In Pictures: Most Powerful Billionaire Boards
In Pictures: Legendary Billionaire Parties
In Pictures: Top Billionaire Art Collectors
Three others including SAP co-founder Dietmar Hopp, mutual fund guru
James Stowers and former banking billionaire Herbert Sandler qualified
for this top givers club though their donations helped knock them out
of the ranks of the world's wealthiest. "I'm surprised there aren't
more," says Sandler, "It's a shame there aren't a lot more."
Leading the elite group by almost an order of magnitude is Microsoft
co-founder Bill Gates, who has cut checks worth $28 billion during his
lifetime. Most of his money has flowed through his family's Bill &
Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates' impassioned speeches and brand of
high-profile international-scale, hands-on giving--mostly to fight
disease and eradicate poverty in developing countries -- have
influenced many others to accelerate their giving.
Among those inspired is Gates' bridge buddy Warren Buffett who
announced in June 2006 that, rather than start his own foundation,
he'd transfer $30 billion in stock over 20 years into the Gates
foundation. Buffett, who has given $6.4 billion so far, has said that
the death of his wife Susan and the Gates' early success made him
rethink his earlier plan to wait until after his own death to give
away money. "How can we do the most good for the most people?" Buffett
asked while announcing the historic gift.
Based on our rankings, Buffett is the fourth most generous donor in
the world. In second place is hedge fund manager George Soros, who has
given out $7.2 billion to such diverse causes as clean-needle clinics
in California and scientific research in Russia. Also high on the list
is Intel founder Gordon Moore, who has given away a total of $6.8
billion mostly to his and his wife Betty's foundation, which backs
environmental causes, including saving rain forests in South America
and supporting marine ecosystems.
Scholars of philanthropy have noticed some interesting patterns about
these super-philanthropists. Inherited wealth more often stays horded.
"People who make their own money, entrepreneurs, are the most
generous," says Leslie Lenkowsky, a professor at Indiana University's
Center on Philanthropy. "They understand they've been very fortunate,
and their good fortune in society depended on the schools they
attended and their communities."
All but one of Forbes' billion-dollar givers are self-made, including
New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Hong Kong's richest person, Li
Ka-shing, who dropped out of school at age 15. Five of these billion-
dollar donors made their fortunes in technology including Gates,
Moore, Michael Dell and two founders of German software outfit SAP.
The only silver spoon among the super generous is Swiss billionaire
Stephen Schmidheiny, who donated his company, Grupo Nueva, to a trust
that distributes its profits to social causes in Latin America.
Still even these mega-generous are a bit less generous now that the
markets have fallen. That is partly explained by the fact that a good
portion of these donations are given in the form of stocks, many of
which have lost value. The wealthy also have more incentive to give
during up markets as it is one way to get a tax deduction on hefty
gains. In 2006, the year Buffett started his Gates donations, the U.S.
recorded a record 22 gifts of at least $100 million, according to the
Chronicle of Philanthropy's database. Since then, the number of those
high-value gifts has fallen by a third.
Giving USA, an annual survey that measures total giving, has recorded
a 2% drop-off during the current recession. Buffett, who donates
Berkshire Hathaway shares once a year, donated shares worth $1.25
billion in July, $500 million less than last year and 2007 and $350
million less than in 2006. "That should bounce back in the next year
or so, much like giving did after the 1973 to 1975 downturn, says
Lenkowsky.
Another phenomenon that can't be missed about the super generous is
the predominance of Americans. Ten of the 14 are from the U.S., even
though only 45% of the world's billionaires reside here. The U.S. has
a storied history of generous philanthropists including notable
figures such as Andrew Carnegie and David Rockefeller. The same is not
true in many parts of the world. Says Peter Fuchs, head of Viva Trust,
Schmidheiny's foundation, "One of the big advantages of the U.S. is
its great philanthropists. Latin America does not have the
institutions to support philanthropic giving. It is very difficult to
change mindsets."
Hong Kong's Li, who is the only Asian to qualify for this list, has
been outspoken on the topic. "In Asia, our traditional values
encourage and even demand that wealth and means pass through
lineage ... I urge and hope to persuade you that if we are in a
position to do so, that we transcend this traditional belief," Li said
in a 2006 speech, "Even if our government structure is not yet geared
towards supporting a culture of giving, we must in our hearts see
building society as a duty in line with supporting our children."
There is some evidence that international neighbors are catching on in
places like China, but there are few, if any, who are close to Li's
league.
Our methodology doesn't make it easy to qualify. To calculate this
list, Forbes honed in on individuals, not large, extended families. We
scoured our database on billionaires and contacted not-for-profit
directors, foundation experts, economists and billionaires themselves.
Only gifts, not pledges, that have been paid out during the person's
lifetime were counted, and details of each of those gifts had to be
disclosed. William Barron Hilton, for example, has pledged over $1
billion to his foundation, but most of that total will transfer from
his estate when he dies, so he was not counted in this list. Nor is
Mexico's Carlos Slim Helú, who founded Fundacion Carlos Slim with a
reported endowment of $4.5 billion but whose office did not provide
details or dates of the giving, explaining that they were
confidential.
Forbes valued the donations at the time they were made using
historical exchange rates where appropriate. We did not adjust for
inflation. As a result some philanthropists whose giving, when
adjusted, exceeds $1 billion also missed out including SAP co-founder
Hans Plattner who gave $900 million in 1998, equivalent to $1.3
billion today, and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who has given $900
million during his lifetime, worth more than $1 billion today.
Source: forbes.com
...I am Sid Harth
Sid Harth
Billionaire Ross Invests in Satyam After Losing Bid for Control
By Pooja Thakur
Aug. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Billionaire investor Wilbur Ross has acquired
the second-largest stake in Satyam Computer Services Ltd.’s U.S.
securities, after missing out in an April auction for control of the
Indian software developer.
Invesco Private Capital Inc., controlled by Ross, bought 1.8 million
American depositary receipts, according to filings to the Securities &
Exchange Commission. The securities, equivalent to two of Satyam’s
Indian shares, were worth $3.11 apiece at the end of June, according
to the filing. Ross in April offered the equivalent of 80 cents per
depository receipt for a controlling stake.
Satyam, at the centre of India’s biggest corporate fraud, has more
than doubled since Pune-based Tech Mahindra Ltd., a software provider,
won the auction on April 13. The government took over the management
of Satyam after founder Ramalinga Raju’s January admission that he
overstated assets by $1 billion.
Tech Mahindra Chairman Anand Mahindra, who outbid billionaire Ross and
Larsen & Toubro Ltd. with a $579 million offer in April, has said he’s
taking a “calculated risk” in buying Satyam before the company
restates accounts and without clarity on liabilities from lawsuits in
the U.S.
Ross, who made his fortune taking over bankrupt steel, coal and
textile companies, offered 20 rupees and Larsen bid 45.9 rupees a
share, Satyam Chairman Kiran Karnik said on April 13.
Ross didn’t immediately respond to e-mailed questions about his
investment in Satyam.
The investment makes Invesco the second-largest shareholder in
Satyam’s depository receipts, behind Security Investors LLC, according
to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Ross invested in SpiceJet Ltd. India’s second-largest budget airline,
in July last year after record fuel costs deepened the Indian
carrier’s losses. In February 2007, Ross acquired OCM India Ltd. a
worsted suiting maker, for about $37 million, in his first investment
in India.
To contact the reporter on this story: Pooja Thakur in Mumbai at
pth...@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: August 28, 2009 04:15 EDT
chhotemianinshallah
Taysha Valez: the young billionaire
May 27th, 2009 - 8:36 pm ICT by GD -
Taysha Valez is the author of “Young Black Millionairess: How To Start
a Million Dollar Business“, the owner of H. Couture Beauty LLC and at
27, is a self made billionaire. She is Taysha Smith Valez.
Though there is no article on her in Wikipedia yet, it would be there
soon, as this beauty takes the world, as well as the cyber world by
storm, with everyone eager to know who Taysha Valez is.
Taysha Valez is famously known for her Socialite Collection line of
beauty and skin care and make up products. She has recently launched a
new telecommunication company called Tri-my Tay Telecom. In Hawaii,
she was recently spotted having lunch and attending business for the
new company.
Though Taysha manages to keep away from the spotlight most of the
time, she has been linked to a host of big celebrities, including
Usher.
Haute.lanta Fashion Week displayed a staggering five million dollars
in diamond encrusted beauty products, courtesy Taysha Valez.
The New York mogul has strong inclination for fashion and trends, as
can be made out from her rare public appearances. The young
billionaire chooses to be fashionably conscious keeping up with the
latest trends.
She was recently featured in The Young, Black and Fabulous
(theybf.com)
She also owns the by-appointment-only haute vintage departmental store
TAYSHA’s in New York.
Though the cyber world is going crazy over her, the billionaire beauty
chooses to stay away from intense public glare in person, but stays in
news through her business.
She is the world’s youngest billionaire presently.
Through her achievements, Taysha Valez is an inspiration to all,
irrespective of color and race.
Sid Harth
Daughters of billionaires ready to roar
Indrani Rajkhowa Banerjee, TNN
These young ladies are not satisfied by the corner room marked for the
boss's daughter. They roll up their sleeves if dad's company demands,
at times even starting their own ventures.
Akshata Murthy
AKSHATA MURTHY
DAD: Narayan Murthy, Infosys
When Narayan Murthy's daughter Akshata Murthy got married to Rishi
Sunak, a British citizen of Indian origin, at a wedding very low key
for an IT billionaire's daughter, she proved that it's normal not to
have a fairy-tale life just because she's one of those privileged
princesses! Akshata, who herself holds 1.4 per cent stake in Infosys
at a net worth of Rs 1,700 crore, figures among the daughters of
India's billionaires, being prepared for a role in their parents'
business empires. Starting out as a venture capitalist in the US,
Akshata is now marketing director with Tendris, a Dutch cleantech
incubator fund. "She has always wanted to be in marketing," says a
proud Narayan Murthy.
If earlier, young women entrepreneurs got to occupy the corner room
only because of their family connections, today most prefer to work
their way up. Some are even apprenticing with businesses outside their
family domain. And yes, they adore their dads and love to "beat him at
his own game". Together, these father-daughter duos have their share
of fun, tears, bruises and rifts… but at the end of the day, they know
it's all business!
Ambika Hinduja Macker
AMBIKA HINDUJA MACKER
DAD: A P Hinduja, Hinduja Group
She's the daughter of Ashok Hinduja, the youngest of the four Hinduja
brothers, ranked among the richest in the world. She had the world of
business at her feet. Yet, when she announced her decision to become a
filmmaker, her dad didn't bat an eyelid. "I have always encouraged her
to follow her dreams. She's passionate, hands-on about everything she
does; it's either all the way or not at all."
On her part, Ambika thinks her father and uncles "are exemplars of
what it is to combine brilliance, charm, tact and toil. They've taught
me to achieve the impossible." She adds, "I think of myself as a
professional, a daughter, a spouse, and a friend. But I don't think I
can make a career out of vacationing. I would go crazy if all I did
was to get manicures!"
Upasna Reddy Kamineni
UPASNA REDDY KAMINENI
GRANDDAD: Dr P C Reddy, Apollo Hospitals
Upasna Reddy has many role models. Her maternal grandfather is the
head of the largest private healthcare provider in Asia and the third
largest in the world. Armed with a Global Marketing Management degree
from the UK, she says, "My grandfather, who was a top surgeon in the
US, was so touched by the grim conditions here when he came for a
vacation that he decided to stay. He's allowed his four daughters to
run the company, never missing not having a son. I too want to touch a
million lives. I'm starting by taking care of the 'Save a Child's
Heart' Foundation." The best time, she says, is when the family packs
off to London, and "we watch movies, shop, but business invariably
pops up!"
Roshni Nadar
ROSHNI NADAR
DAD: Shiv Nadar, HCL Corp
Her father, IT czar Shiv Nadar, heads a billiondollar company. She
could have asked for a corner office at the HCL headquarters, yet
Roshni Nadar opted to work as an intern with CNN in the US. It was
when she was working as a news producer with Sky News in London, that
her dad asked her, "Do you want to come back? There is a huge
responsibility back home."
Roshni, an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management,
returned from the US in October last year, and was involved with HCL
before taking over as the executive director and CEO. Right now she's
in charge of VidyaGyan, the company's education initiative. The
transition from media to business hasn't been easy, but her dad's been
a pillar of strength. On her initiation into the education
initiative , she has said, "I have been thrown into the ocean and now
I have to swim."
Devita Saraf
DEVITA SARAF
DAD: Raj Saraf, Zenith Computers
Devita is one lucky girl. Her doting dad, industrialist Raj Saraf, who
heads the second largest PC maker company in India, knew early on that
his daughter had keen business sense. "I made her attend press
conferences and factory openings, when she was just four. At 22, I
threw her into the grind by making her director at Zenith."
Devita says her dad's never been the one to lecture, but "put me at
the centre of the action". She says, "My parents taught me to take
risks. They never stopped me, even as a teenager when I went
globetrotting." A BBA from the University of Southern California,
Devita takes care of Vu Tech, a spin-off she began. She is also an
executive committee member of FICCI. Does she see herself in her
father's chair one day? "I've a lot to learn."
Ashni Biyani
ASHNI BIYANI
DAD: Kishore Biyani, CEO, Future Group
Ashni Biyani's father is open about the fact that he has a succession
plan ready. He has pushed his successors, daughter Ashni and nephew
Vivek, into the limelight. He doesn't believe Ashni should waste time
working her way up. Says Ashni, "The way I see myself in the group is
not only about what I'm doing here today. I look beyond in terms of
thought leadership."
A Stanford passout, Ashni is a design manager with the company, and
has led the launch of a number of the group's specialty retail formats
and brands. Her dad's her role model. "He's also the toughest
taskmaster around. So, when he tells you that he's proud of you, it's
a once-in-a-lifetime moment," she says.
bademiyansubhanallah
Posted: Wed, Sep 9 2009. 12:30 AM IST
Profiles
A billionaire named Buffett
Warren Buffet has lost $25 billion on paper during the recession yet
few have capitalized on the crisis as deftly as BuffettGraham Bowley /
NYT
Warren E. Buffett has two cardinal rules of investing. Rule No. 1:
Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget Rule No. 1.
Well, a lot of old rules got trashed when the financial crisis struck—
even for the Oracle of Omaha.
Blindsided? Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett. On paper, he
personally lost an estimated $25 billion in the financial panic of
2008. Andrew Harrer / Bloomberg.
At 79, Buffett is coming off the worst year of his long, storied
career. On paper, he personally lost an estimated $25 billion (around
Rs1.22 trillion) in the financial panic of 2008, enough to cost him
his title as the world’s richest man. (His friend and sometime bridge
partner, Bill Gates, holds that honour, according to Forbes.)
And yet few people on or off Wall Street have capitalized on this
crisis as deftly as Buffett. After counselling Washington to rescue
the nation’s financial industry and publicly urging Americans to buy
stocks as the markets reeled, in he swooped. Buffett positioned
himself to profit from the market mayhem—as well as all those taxpayer-
financed bailouts—and thus secure his legacy as one of the greatest
investors of all time.
When so many others were running scared last autumn, Buffett invested
billions in Goldman Sachs—and got a far better deal than Washington.
He then staked billions more on General Electric Co. While taxpayers
never bailed out Buffett, they did bail out some of his stock picks.
Goldman, American Express, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, US Bancorp—
all of them got public bailouts that ultimately benefited private
shareholders such as Buffett.
If Buffett picked well—and, so far, it looks as if he did—his payoff
could be enormous. But now, only a year after the crisis struck, he
seems to be worrying that the broader stock market might falter again.
After boldly buying when so many were selling assets, his
conglomerate, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., is pulling back, buying fewer
stocks while investing in corporate and government debt. And Buffett
is warning that the economy, though on the mend, remains deeply
troubled.
“We are not out of problems yet,” Buffett said last week in an
interview, in which he reflected on the lessons of the last 12 months.
“We have got to get the sputtering economy back so it is functioning
as it should be.”
Still, Buffett hardly sounded shell-shocked in the wake of what he
once called the financial equivalent of Pearl Harbour. (An estimated
net worth of $37 billion would be a balm to anyone’s psyche.)
“It has been an incredibly interesting period in the last year and a
half. Just the drama,” Buffett said. “Watching the movie has been fun,
and occasionally participating has been fun too, though not in what it
has done to people’s lives.”
Investors big and small hang on Buffett’s pronouncements, and with
good reason: if you had invested $1,000 in the stock of Berkshire in
1965, you would have amassed millions of dollars by 2007.
Despite that formidable record, the financial crisis dealt him a
stinging blow. While he has not changed his value-oriented approach to
investing—he says he likes to buy quality merchandise, whether socks
or stocks, at bargain prices—Buffettologists wonder what will define
the final chapters of his celebrated career.
For the moment, Buffett seems to be retrenching a bit. Like so many
people, he was blindsided by the blow-up in the housing market and the
recession that followed, which hammered his holdings of financial and
consumer-related companies. He readily concedes he made his share of
mistakes. Among his blunders: investing in an energy company around
the time oil prices peaked, and in two Irish banks even as that
country’s financial system trembled.
Buffett declined to predict the short-run course of the stock market.
But corporate data from Berkshire shows his company was selling more
stocks than it was buying by the end of the second quarter, according
to Bloomberg News. Its spending on stocks fell to the lowest level in
more than five years, although the company is still deftly picking up
shares in some companies and buying corporate and government debt.
Among the stocks Buffett has been selling lately is Moody’s, the
granddaddy of the much-maligned credit ratings industry. Berkshire,
Moody’s largest shareholder, said last week that it had reduced its
stake by 2%.
The shift in Berkshire’s investments suggests Buffett is starting to
worry, said Alice Schroeder, the author of The Snowball, a biography
of Buffett.
But Schroeder said Buffett was also growing anxious about how he would
be remembered. He wants to remain relevant in the twilight of his
career, she said, and is taking a more prominent role on the public
stage. That shift means ordinary investors are getting a chance to
hear more of his sage advice, but it also carries some risk.
“Before, he always made sure to dole out the wisdom with an
eyedropper,” Schroeder said. In the past, Buffett “said it was a
mistake to believe that if you are an expert in one area that people
will listen to you in others,” she said.
Whatever his recent missteps, many people, from President Obama down,
listen to what Buffett has to say. He is important in his own right as
a billionaire businessman but also because millions of ordinary
investors follow his homespun aphorisms, copy his investing strategies
and await his pronouncements on the markets.
Buffett refused to be drawn out on where stocks are headed, but he
warned about the dangers of investing with borrowed money, or
leverage, which proved disastrous when the crisis hit.
As for regrets, he has a few. His timing was bad, he concedes. He
should have sold stocks sooner, before the markets tumbled. Then he
served up a Buffettism that any investor might heed.
Asked if anything was keeping him awake at night, he said there was
not. “If it’s going to keep me awake at night,” Buffett said, “I am
not going to go there.”
©2009/The New York Times
bademiyansubhanallah
Extra9/30/2009 6:00 PM ET
Forbes 400: Poor, poor billionaires
Because of the recession, almost all of America's richest citizens are
less wealthy this year, Forbes' annual report finds.
[Related content: rich, Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Wal-Mart, Marvel
Entertainment]
By Forbes.com
America's superrich are getting poorer. For only the fifth time since
1982, the collective net worth of The Forbes 400, our annual tally of
the nation's richest people, has declined, falling $300 billion in the
past 12 months, from $1.57 trillion to $1.27 trillion.
How to get rich
Faltering capital markets and real-estate prices, along with divorce
and fraud, pushed down the fortunes of 314 members and drove 32
plutocrats off the rankings.
Warren Buffett
Hurt the most: Warren Buffett, America's second-richest citizen. The
Oracle of Omaha dropped $10 billion from his personal balance sheet as
shares of Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A, news, msgs) fell 20% in 12
months. He is now worth $40 billion.
Beating out Buffett for the 16th straight year as America's richest
man is Microsoft (MSFT, news, msgs) co-founder Bill Gates. Sluggish
Microsoft shares and declining outside investments pushed the software
visionary's net worth down $7 billion in 12 months. (Microsoft is the
publisher of MSN Money.)
Rounding out the top 10 on The Forbes 400: Oracle (ORCL, news, msgs)
founder Larry Ellison ($27 billion); Wal-Mart Stores (WMT, news, msgs)
heirs Christy Walton ($21.5 billion), Jim C. Walton ($19.6 billion),
Alice Walton ($19.3 billion) and S. Robson Walton ($19 billion); media
maven Michael Bloomberg ($17.5 billion); and energy titans Charles and
David Koch ($16 billion each).
Price of entry falls below $1 billion
The 10 richest Americans lost a combined $39.2 billion in the past 12
months, a 14% decline.
Kirk Kerkorian
Other big losers include casino mogul Kirk Kerkorian, whose nest egg
shed $8.2 billion in the past year. Shares of his gambling giant, MGM
Mirage (MGM, news, msgs), have fallen 90% from their October 2007
high.
Also hitting the brakes: Enterprise Rent-A-Car founder Jack C. Taylor.
His fortune is down $7 billion in a year as the travel industry has
slowed and private-company valuations have fallen.
More from MSN Money and Forbes.com
Calculator: How to save $1 million
Slide show: The 400 richest Americans
Do it yourself: The year's best-performing stocks
A recipe for riches
10 investing basics from Warren Buffett
How billionaires control our lives
Andrew Beal
The biggest gainer is banker Andrew Beal, who tripled his net worth to
$4.5 billion by buying up cheap loans and assets as the markets
crumbled last fall.
Membership on the list was made easier as the price of admission
dropped $350 million, from $1.3 billion last year to $950 million this
year, paving the way for 19 newcomers and 19 returnees.
Newcomers to the list include Marvel Entertainment (MVL, news, msgs)
chief Isaac Perlmutter, whose net worth soared to $1.55 billion after
Walt Disney (DIS, news, msgs) agreed to buy the superhero outfit in
August for $4 billion in cash and stock.
Other new members include Bloomberg co-founder Charles Zegar ($1
billion), mapping-software magnate Jack Dangermond ($2 billion) and
trading titan Steven Schonfeld ($1 billion).
Slide show: The Forbes 400
New member with Madoff ties
Former New York lawyer and accountant Jeffry Picower makes his debut
on The Forbes 400 with a net worth of $1 billion. A longtime investor
with Bernard Madoff, Picower is likely worth billions more. (He is
alleged to have extracted billions of dollars from Madoff's fund
before it collapsed.)
Video: Battle of the billionaires
Picower and his foundation are identified in a lawsuit by the
liquidator for Madoff's investment business, who is seeking to recover
funds allegedly obtained through "fraudulent activity." Picower says
that if he'd known Madoff was a fraud he would not have transferred
money into Madoff accounts.
In December, the Picower Foundation shut down after losing its $1
billion endowment in Madoff's Ponzi scheme. The charity had given
millions to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Human Rights
First and the New York Public Library. Picower made his first fortune
selling medical-device maker Alaris in 2004.
Comebacks, comedowns and deaths
Among those returning is venture capitalist Michael Moritz, who rode
Amazon.com's (AMZN, news, msgs) purchase of online shoe retailer
Zappos and surging Google (GOOG, news, msgs) stock back onto the
list.
Divorce forced Google exec Omid Kordestani from the rankings, while R.
Allen Stanford lost his billionaire status when the feds froze his
assets after charging him with allegedly running an $8 billion Ponzi
scheme.
Several Forbes 400 mainstays also fell off the list, including former
Citigroup (C, news, msgs) czar Sanford Weill, mall developer Matthew
Bucksbaum and condo kingpin Jorge Perez.
Six members died, including glass giant William Davidson and newspaper
maven Frank Batten Sr.
The Forbes 400 is a snapshot of wealth on Sept. 10, 2009. Gap co-
founder Donald Fisher, who ranks No. 296 on the list, died Sept. 27 at
his home in San Francisco at age 81.
The 5 richest:
Rank Name Net worth Age Residence Source Bing and learn more about
1
Bill Gates
$50 billion
53
Medina, Wash.
Microsoft (MSFT, news, msgs)
The founding of Microsoft
2
Warren Buffett
$40 billion
79
Omaha, Neb.
Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A, news, msgs)
Warren Buffett's modest lifestyle
3
Larry Ellison
$27 billion
65
Redwood City, Calif.
Oracle (ORCL, news, msgs)
Larry Ellison's America's Cup obsession
4
Christy Walton
$21.5 billion
54
Jackson, Wyo.
Wal-Mart Stores (WMT, news, msgs)
How Sam Walton got his start
5
Jim Walton
$19.6 billion
61
Bentonville, Ark.
Wal-Mart Stores (WMT, news, msgs)
How big is Wal-Mart?
See the full list
5 energy titans:
Rank Name Net worth Age Residence Source Bing and learn more about
9
Charles Koch
$16 billion
73
Wichita, Kan.
Manufacturing, energy
The Koch family foundations
9
David Koch
$16 billion
69
New York
Manufacturing, energy
David Koch's conservative activism
24
George B. Kaiser
$9.5 billion
67
Tulsa, Okla.
Oil and gas, banking
Kaiser's efforts to fight child poverty
30
Dan Duncan
$8 billion
76
Houston
Energy
Dan Duncan's big-game trophies
39
Harold Hamm
$5.8 billion
63
Oklahoma City
Continental Resources (CLR, news, msgs)
Harold Hamm's wildcatter roots
See the full list
No longer billionaires:
Name Age Source Bing and learn more about
Sanford Weill
76
New York
Citigroup
Weill's big-dollar severance package
Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta
47 and 40
Las Vegas
Casinos, Ultimate Fighting Championship
Brothers' bet on Ultimate Fighting
Jorge Perez
60
Miami
Real estate
Developer's fund-raising for Democrats
Peter Thiel
41
New York
Clarium Capital
PayPal founder's Libertarian beliefs
R. Allen Stanford
59
Houston
Banking
The Ponzi-scheme charges against him
See the full list
bademiyansubhanallah
Just how rich is rich, really?
We all have our own idea of how much money it would take to fulfill
our financial fantasies. Some say they want to be 'comfortable.' Me,
I'd like to be rich.
Do you want to be rich?
I want to be rich. At least I thought I wanted to be rich. But what is
rich, exactly?
Not everyone attaches a dollar amount to that word, and not everyone
uses the R word to describe the life they want, as I discovered when I
asked the Women in Red that question.
But we all have vague, beautiful ideas billowing through our heads:
Carole: "I want to own a home in New York City; I want security,
stability. I want the flexibility to be able to do what I want."
Lyndsey: "Being rich means not living paycheck to paycheck. I'd like
to own a nice house, a nice car -- to help out my parents and my
brother, if they needed it."
Beth: "My idea of rich would be to pay any bill I get the instant I
get it. To quit my current job and maybe find one that inspires me
each day. To travel wherever and whenever I want. To ensure my
extended family is financially secure. So maybe just being comfortable
is enough for me."
Wealthy vs. comfortable
I can't tell whether my financial comrades think it would be tacky or
unrealistic (or both) to just admit that -- hell, yeah! -- they'd like
to be rich. Or whether they value stability and "being comfortable"
more than wealth.
See, I like the idea of being comfortable. But the more I consider
what it would cost to be comfortable, I think I'm actually aiming for
rich. Not only is my personal definition of "rich" at a crossroads
right now, like most Americans I find that the golden threshold keeps
moving farther and farther out of reach.
A 2003 Gallup poll found that although only 2% of Americans describe
themselves as rich, 31% said they thought it was very or somewhat
likely they would be rich one day. That number jumped to 51% for 18 to
29-year-olds -- and plunged to a sobering 8% for Americans 65 and
older.
According to Gallup, the public's median definition of "rich" was an
income of $120,000 -- or assets of $1 million. We asked the same
question of money-savvy MSN Money readers, and a majority of the more
than 11,000 who responded felt that they would need at least $5
million to consider themselves rich.
How rich is rich?
As Dr. Evil would say in his most evil voice, for some people "one
MILLION dollars" wouldn't even buy the R in rich. For others, it might
be a small fortune.
That's because what constitutes wealth is not only subjective, but
confusing.
Take Brice. She was the only one in the group who admitted to a
specific desire for gobs of money (besides yours truly). She wants to
be capital-R rrrrrrrrrich -- and she was also the only one with a
target amount in mind.
Brice would like to own a couple of houses ("and be able to afford the
mortgages comfortably"), a couple of cars, be able to "take great
trips" and pay for her children's education. And shop without fear or
guilt.
How much would that take?
"Millions," she said emphatically. "At least $10 million to $20
million."
In the eye of the beholder
My stars. It had never occurred to me to want $10 million.
Brice's estimate may be way beyond what most Americans would call
rich, but there's an amazing variation in dollar amounts that people
attach to that four-letter word.
Those who earned less than $30,000 thought that a household income of
$74,000 would qualify as rich.
Those who made $30,000 to $50,000 said an income of $100,000 would be
rich.
And people in the top half of earners were more likely to say that an
income of $200,000 earns you the right to the R word.
So the less money you have, the less money you think you'll need to
become rich. And the wealthier you are, I suspect, the more money it
takes to make you feel rich.
How to define wealth
In short, how you -- and I mean you, personally -- determine what
constitutes wealth depends on your expectations.
A million bucks, wisely invested, will yield an income of about
$40,000 a year, if you follow the financial planning rule of thumb
that says you can only draw income equal to 4% of your assets (a must
if you're not working and want to be sure your money lasts as long as
you do). That's comfortable, but hardly rich.
Carole started out saying she really didn't want to be rich. But when
I pressed her to clarify what her desired not-really-rich lifestyle
would look like, she ticked off the following:
A two-bedroom home in downtown Manhattan.
A car (and a garage to go with it).
Between $200,000 and $500,000 in savings.
$500,000 in her retirement accounts (which is about 10x what she has
now).
A couple of getaways per year.
"So although I just said I don't want to be rich -- that's a couple of
million right there," she said, quite surprised.
Other versions of rich
Before you all start sending me angry mail about how unrealistic the
New York lifestyle is, let's turn to Beth, who lives in Oregon.
She and her husband are squeezing every penny, trying to save enough
for both their daughter's college education and their own retirement
-- on a joint income of about $92,000.
They are crossing their fingers that they'll be able to swing a one-
week trip to California this year.
In order for Beth to be "comfortable" -- i.e. quit her job for a more
inspiring one, be able to provide for her family and "travel wherever
and whenever" she wants -- she and her husband would need a lot more
cash coming in. How much would it cost to have both freedom and family
security? Perhaps another $50,000 per year, perhaps more.
This Stephanie, 27, a newcomer to the Women in Red who lives in
Chicago, has a combined income with her husband of about $69,000. Like
Beth, she doesn't want to be rich, but comfortable. She estimates that
amount would be about $180,000 a year, almost triple her current
income
Right now, she and her husband live in a modest apartment and pay $850
per month in rent. Someday, they'd like to have kids, and Stephanie
admits to having a secret fantasy of being able to buy one of the
lovely, million-dollar houses she sees for sale in her neighborhood.
Let's say they saved their money, made a modest down payment of 10%
($100,000), and took out a 30-year mortgage at 7%. Their monthly
payments would be about $7,000, including property taxes. Even on a
$180K income, which sounds mighty plush, they couldn't afford that.
Can anyone afford to be rich?
My point is -- and this is why my own definition of rich is at a
crossroads -- that it's damned hard to afford the ordinary things in
an ordinary life. Forget anything near what most people envision as
rich!
If you dream of luxurious vacation homes, retiring early or sailing
the south Pacific in your yacht, remember that it takes more money
than you'd think to be rich. Paying your yacht staff, berthing fees --
not to mention the cute little nautical outfits -- phew! Imagine what
that would add up to.
Edward Wolff, a professor of economics at NYU who studies wealth,
points out that even the people we think of as being "rich and famous"
-- i.e. movie, rock and sports stars -- may not be as rich as you
think.
"These are people with big incomes, but that doesn't necessarily
translate to big wealth," he says. "Just getting it is half the battle
-- then you have to maintain it, and that takes a continuous flow of
big income."
What does it take?
About half of the very rich have inherited their wealth, Wolff says.
"The rest of the super-rich tend to be business owners or have an
(ownership) stake in their work."
Now, you don't have to be among the Forbes 400 to be wealthy (you'd
need $600 million just to hit the bottom of the list). But you do need
to ask yourself some hard questions:
Even if you just want to be "comfortable," does your vision of that
include some things that go well beyond mere comfort?
If you want to be rich, what does that look like? What kinds of
decisions (about your career, for example) or sacrifices would you
have to make to get there?
If you're not aiming for rich, could you be happy with what you have
instead of living a life of fruitless self-torture because you're not?
Sign up to be notified whenever MP publishes a new article.
Or, will this be the moment when you face the fact, as I am, that what
you do for a living will never make you rich (nor will your parents).
And thus, will you decide to switch gears?
These are big questions, but they're essential. At some point in this
crazy world, you have to level with yourself about who you are, what
kind of life you want, what will make you content. Are you on the path
to great wealth? Or have you achieved what millions of others might
consider -- what you yourself might want to consider -- a very wealthy
life indeed?
Rich, after all, is relative -- as the folks at Poke, a creative
agency in London, want to remind us. They created something called the
Global Rich List.
Based on World Bank data, this little calculator tells you how rich
you are compared to the rest of the world. By their estimate, I'm in
the top 0.7% of the world's wealthiest individuals. Now that's rich.
bademiyansubhanallah
The World's Richest People
Rank Name Citizenship Age Net Worth ($bil) Residence
1 William Gates III United States 50 50.0 United States
2 Warren Buffett United States 75 42.0 United States
3 Carlos Slim Helu Mexico 66 30.0 Mexico
4 Ingvar Kamprad Sweden 79 28.0 Switzerland
5 Lakshmi Mittal India 55 23.5 United Kingdom
6 Paul Allen United States 53 22.0 United States
7 Bernard Arnault France 57 21.5 France
8 Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud Saudi Arabia 49 20.0 Saudi
Arabia
9 Kenneth Thomson & family Canada 82 19.6 Canada
10 Li Ka-shing Hong Kong 77 18.8 Hong Kong
11 Roman Abramovich Russia 39 18.2 United Kingdom
12 Michael Dell United States 41 17.1 United States
13 Karl Albrecht Germany 86 17.0 Germany
14 Sheldon Adelson United States 72 16.1 United States
15 Liliane Bettencourt France 83 16.0 France
15 Lawrence Ellison United States 61 16.0 United States
17 Christy Walton United States 51 15.9 United States
17 Jim Walton United States 58 15.9 United States
19 S Robson Walton United States 62 15.8 United States
20 Alice Walton United States 56 15.7 United States
21 Helen Walton United States 86 15.6 United States
22 Theo Albrecht Germany 83 15.2 Germany
23 Amancio Ortega Spain 70 14.8 Spain
24 Steven Ballmer United States 50 13.6 United States
25 Azim Premji India 60 13.3 India
Rank Name Citizenship Age Net Worth ($bil) Residence
26 Sergey Brin United States 32 12.9 United States
27 Larry Page United States 33 12.8 United States
28 Abigail Johnson United States 44 12.5 United States
29 Nasser Al-Kharafi & family Kuwait 62 12.4 Kuwait
29 Barbara Cox Anthony United States 82 12.4 United States
29 Anne Cox Chambers United States 86 12.4 United States
32 Stefan Persson Sweden 58 12.3 Sweden
33 Charles Koch United States 70 12.0 United States
33 David Koch United States 65 12.0 United States
35 Raymond, Thomas & Walter Kwok Hong Kong NA 11.6 Hong Kong
36 Adolf Merckle Germany 71 11.5 Germany
37 Sulaiman Bin Abdul Al Rajhi Saudi Arabia 86 11.0 Saudi
Arabia
37 Vagit Alekperov Russia 55 11.0 Russia
37 Silvio Berlusconi Italy 69 11.0 Italy
37 Lee Shau Kee Hong Kong 78 11.0 Hong Kong
41 Vladimir Lisin Russia 49 10.7 Russia
42 Michael Otto & family Germany 62 10.4 Germany
43 Pierre Omidyar United States 38 10.1 United States
44 Leonardo Del Vecchio Italy 70 10.0 Italy
44 Michele Ferrero & family Italy 79 10.0 Monaco
44 Forrest Mars Jr United States 74 10.0 United States
44 Jacqueline Mars United States 66 10.0 United States
44 John Mars United States 69 10.0 United States
44 Viktor Vekselberg Russia 48 10.0 Russia
50 Mikhail Fridman Russia 41 9.7 Russia
Rank Name Citizenship Age Net Worth ($bil) Residence
51 Spiro Latsis & family Greece 59 9.1 Switzerland
52 John Kluge United States 91 9.0 United States
53 Carl Icahn United States 70 8.7 United States
53 Kirk Kerkorian United States 88 8.7 United States
55 Birgit Rausing & family Sweden 82 8.6 Switzerland
56 Mukesh Ambani India 48 8.5 India
56 Serge Dassault & family France 80 8.5 France
56 Hans Rausing Sweden 80 8.5 United Kingdom
59 Galen Weston & family Canada 65 8.4 Canada
60 Susanne Klatten Germany 43 8.1 Germany
61 Rudolf August Oetker & family Germany 89 8.0 Germany
62 Oleg Deripaska Russia 37 7.8 Russia
63 Sumner Redstone United States 82 7.7 United States
64 Alexei Mordashov Russia 40 7.6 Russia
65 Donald Newhouse United States 76 7.5 United States
65 Samuel Newhouse Jr United States 78 7.5 United States
65 Alain & Gerard Wertheimer France NA 7.5 France
65 Reinhold Würth Germany 70 7.5 Germany
69 Joseph & Moise Safra Brazil NA 7.4 Brazil
70 Philip Knight United States 68 7.3 United States
71 George Soros United States 75 7.2 United States
72 Ernesto Bertarelli Switzerland 40 7.1 Switzerland
72 Suleiman Kerimov Russia 40 7.1 Russia
74 Philip & Cristina Green United Kingdom NA 7.0 Monaco
74 Francois Pinault France 69 7.0 France
Rank Name Citizenship Age Net Worth ($bil) Residence
74 August von Finck Germany 76 7.0 Switzerland
77 Mohammed Al Amoudi Saudi Arabia 60 6.9 Saudi Arabia
77 Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair & family United Arab Emirates 52 6.9
United Arab Emirates
79 Maria-Elisabeth & Georg Schaeffler Germany NA 6.8 Germany
80 Charles Ergen United States 53 6.7 United States
80 Edward Johnson III United States 75 6.7 United States
82 Kun-Hee Lee & family South Korea 64 6.6 South Korea
82 Stefan Quandt Germany 40 6.6 Germany
84 Saleh Bin Abdul Aziz Al Rajhi Saudi Arabia 94 6.5 Saudi
Arabia
84 Rafael del Pino & family Spain 85 6.5 Spain
84 Stanley Ho Hong Kong 84 6.5 Hong Kong
84 Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Denmark 92 6.5 Denmark
84 Keith Murdoch United States 75 6.5 United States
89 Philip Anschutz United States 66 6.4 United States
89 Hasso Plattner Germany 62 6.4 Germany
89 Vladimir Potanin Russia 45 6.4 Russia
89 Mikhail Prokhorov Russia 40 6.4 Russia
93 Vladimir Yevtushenkov Russia 57 6.3 Russia
94 Micky Arison United States 56 6.1 United States
94 Curt Engelhorn Germany 79 6.1 Switzerland
94 Friedrich Flick Jr Germany 79 6.1 Austria
94 German Khan Russia 44 6.1 Russia
94 Ronald Perelman United States 63 6.1 United States
94 Johanna Quandt Germany 78 6.1 Germany
100 Dan Duncan United States 73 6.0 United States
bademiyansubhanallah
America's Richest
How Billionaires Control Our Lives
Keren Blankfeld, 09.30.09, 06:00 PM EDT
The wealthiest Americans control what you eat, what you wear and how
you listen to music. Here's a look at their influence on one fictional
New Yorker.
In Pictures: How Billionaires Control Our Lives Why should we care
about the rich?
Besides the obvious interest in their lavish lifestyles, everyone
should care about the super wealthy because, in many respects, they
control almost every thing we do, every hour of the day.
Don't believe it? Follow Alex, a fictional yuppie New Yorker who is
admittedly lazy and a bit of a lush.
It's Monday morning, exactly 6 a.m. Alex wakes up in her apartment at
Donald Trump's West Side Trump Place with a slight headache--the
residual reminder of a Patron tequila-induced hangover (thanks, John
Paul DeJoria) from a reckless Sunday night with friends. Her iPhone
jingles, playing the latest iTunes download, courtesy of Steve Jobs.
An hour later, Alex drags herself out of bed.
In Pictures: How Billionaires Control Our Lives
She steps onto her Sierra Pacific Industries hardwood floors (Archie
Emmerson). In a daze, Alex gets ready for work. She showers using
Kohler fixtures (Herbert Kohler), purchased last month at Home Depot
( HD - news - people ) (Arthur Blank, Bernard Marcus).
Alex tosses on some mascara and lip gloss (Ronald and Leonard Lauder),
then throws on some lingerie from Victoria's Secret (Leslie Wexner), a
pair of slacks and a cute button-down shirt and sweater set she'd
gotten with her mom at the Gap ( GPS - news - people ) (Fisher family)
last fall.
Why don't we also blame our parents for bring us into this crazy cruel
world and to be controlled by the RICH???
Breakfast is always a crisis of conscience: should she sit down at
home and enjoy a honeydew melon and banana from Dole Foods (David
Murdock)? Or hurry to work, grabbing a coffee and a Boston cream
doughnut from Dunkin' Donuts (Tom Lee, David Rubenstein, Daniel
D'Aniello, William Conway) on the way? Since it's Monday and her head
is still throbbing, Alex decides on the latter.
Alex is the rare New York driver who avoids public transportation at
all costs--any cost. After a silly mishap with her own car over the
weekend, she's forced to drive a rented Enterprise sedan (Jack
Taylor). She squints at the bright sunlight outside and slips on her
Oakley ( OO - news - people ) sunglasses (James Jannard).
When Alex finally arrives at her Times Square office (Leon Charney),
she has copies of the Daily News (Mort Zuckerman), New York Post and
The Wall Street Journal (Rupert Murdoch) waiting for her on her desk.
She turns on her Dell ( DELL - news - people ) computer (Michael
Dell), which runs with an Intel ( INTC - news - people ) processor
(Gordon Moore).
Alex is almost through the Page Six gossip column when her overbearing
boss pokes his head in, asking her to generate a spreadsheet on
Microsoft Excel (Bill Gates). Alex rolls her eyes, but it's 11 a.m.
and she might as well start working. She calls a client on her
cellphone, run on technology developed by Qualcomm ( QCOM - news -
people ) (Irwin Jacobs).
By 11:30 a.m., Alex is hungry and bored. She searches on Google ( GOOG
- news - people ) for a new restaurant while watching a hilarious
puppy video on YouTube (Sergey Brin, Larry Page). After much ado, she
decides to order pizza with her co-workers. Loaded on top: mozzarella
cheese from Leprino Foods (James Leprino).
Feeling a bit lethargic after lunch, and not really in the mood for
number-crunching or clients, Alex posts pictures of that embarrassing
(though funny) Saturday morning car mishap on her Facebook page (Mark
Zuckerberg). The digital pics were loaded on a memory card from
Kingston Technologies (David Sun and John Tu).
It's 3 p.m. and her boss has gone off to a client meeting. Alex slips
a (thin) issue of Vogue (SI Newhouse) from her purse and flips through
it.
Later, after checking several stocks on the office Bloomberg terminal
(Michael Bloomberg), Alex calls her Schwab broker to make a few trades
(Charles Schwab). Great timing: The mailman delivers her paycheck from
Paychex ( PAYX - news - people ) (B. Thomas Golisano).
Before getting off the phone with her broker, Alex has spent half her
paycheck on self-help books and fitness DVDs on Amazon.com ( AMZN -
news - people ) (Jeff Bezos). She considers spending the remainder at
WalMart.com (the Walton family), but manages to restrain herself.
Finally, it's 6 p.m.--time to clock out. Alex stops at a gas station
(George Kaiser) to refuel her rental car. Before heading home, though,
she makes good on her New Year's resolution and goes for a quick jog
in Central Park, sporting her brand new Nike ( NKE - news - people )
gear (Philip Knight).
When she gets home, Alex turns on CNN to catch up on the day's news
(Ted Turner). A football junkie, she heads to the neighborhood bar to
watch the Dallas Cowboys (Jerry Jones) take on the New England
Patriots (Robert Kraft) on Monday Night Football. After the game, she
watches The Daily Show and Colbert Report (Sumner Redstone). The cable
service is provided by Cablevision ( CVC - news - people ) (Charles
Dolan).
By midnight, Alex is ready to go to sleep. But as soon as her head
hits the pillow she starts worrying about her performance review
Tuesday, which she didn't prepare for at all. After much tossing and
turning, she goes to sleep with the help of a generic sleeping pill
bought at a pharmacy serviced by Kinray (Stewart Rahr).
As Alex falls into a deep slumber, hundreds of miles away, her
Saturday night dinner is being prepared. Crops and meats are being
processed in Ohio. (The Cargill and MacMillan families). Helping them
grow faster, larger and stronger: fertilizer produced by Koch
Industries (Charles & David Koch).
Meanwhile, documents she sent earlier in the day are being flown to
London via FedEx ( FDX - news - people ) (Frederick Smith). Her local
grocery store is being restocked with food brought in on trucks owned
by Schneider National (Donald Schneider).
In an hour, the cycle will begin again. This time, for breakfast, Alex
will choose to enjoy the fresh fruit. And after the disastrous
performance review, she'll decide she needs to spend more time working
and less time fooling around.
Reader Comments
Why don't we also blame our parents for bring us into this crazy cruel
world and to be controlled by the RICH???
Posted by emenot | 10/01/09 03:44 AM EDT
It may not be the billionaires who cause most of the problem; it may
well be the organizations they support. Would love to see billionaires
rated against religious organizations, the MacArthur, and R [Read
More]
Posted by pbr90 | 09/30/09 11:07 PM EDT
bademiyansubhanallah
bademiyansubhanallah
America's Richest
Countries Billionaires Could Buy
Keren Blankfeld, 09.30.09, 06:00 PM EDT
These American moguls could buy some of the world's economies.
In Pictures: Countries Billionaires Could Buy Castles in France.
Islands in the Caribbean. Private jets. With a collective $1.27
trillion at their disposal, the members of The Forbes 400 could buy
almost anything.
How about a country? A quick glance at the CIA Fact Book suggests the
individual fortunes of many Forbes 400 members are as big as some of
the world's economies.
Bill Gates, America's richest man with a net worth of $50 billion, has
a personal balance sheet larger than the gross domestic product (GDP)
of 140 countries, including Costa Rica, El Salvador, Bolivia and
Uruguay. The Microsoft ( MSFT - news - people ) visionary's nest egg
is just short of the GDP of Tanzania and Burma.
Warren Buffett, who lost $10 billion in the past 12 months and is this
year's Forbes 400 biggest dollar loser, still has a fortune the size
of North Korea's economy at $40 billion. (The Oracle of Omaha probably
would steer clear of that investment, though.)
One Forbes 400 member does actually run a small chunk of a state in an
official capacity: Mayor Michael Bloomberg. While he is busy serving
as the chief executive of New York City and grappling with its
sluggish economy, his own personal balance sheet--amassed through
financial information services and media company Bloomberg LP--equals
the value of all the goods and services produced in South Africa's
Republic of Zambia's ($17.5 billion).
Some say that land developer Donald Bren, whose assets throughout the
vicinity of Orange County, Calif., include 475 office buildings, 115
apartment communities, 41 retail centers, resort properties and new
housing, runs Orange County--he certainly owns most of it. And with a
net worth of $12 billion, he could, in theory, buy Haiti's economy,
too.
Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson's $9 billion net worth is akin to the
Bahamas' GDP ($9 billion). Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay ( EBAY -
news - people ), the world's biggest auction marketplace, could
theoretically control Somalia's market with his $5.5 billion fortune.
George Lucas, the famed Hollywood director behind the Star Wars and
Indiana Jones franchises and ILM, the world's most bankable special
effects shop, has a $3 billion fortune, making him worth as much as
the GDP of Guyana.
Hedge fund founder David Shaw's $2.5 billion net worth parallels
Belize's marketplace.
Investor John Paulson amassed much of his fortune by exploiting the
real estate bubble and shorting the subprime market in 2007. Today he
has a net worth of $6.8 billion--the equivalent of Montenegro's gross
domestic product.
Although Eli Broad's fortune suffered because of AIG's ( AIG - news -
people ) collapse last fall--he's lost $1.3 billion in the last 12
months--he still has a bank account that rivals Barbados' economy
($5.4 billion).
Forbes 400 members with net worths just under $1 billion still possess
fortunes that could operate the economies of significant fractions of
the globe. Gary Magness, who owns water rights in Colorado through his
ranch holdings, has a net worth of $990 million, which barely exceeds
Vanuatu's GDP ($988.5 million).
If this year's three poorest Forbes 400 members were to combine their
wealth (a combined $2.9 billion), their amassed fortune would be worth
more than the workings of Belize's entire economy.
bademiyansubhanallah
bademiyansubhanallah
chhotemianinshallah
Bill Gates richer than 140 nations
2 Oct 2009, 0346 hrs IST, PTI
NEW YORK: The economic crisis may have wiped off $300 billion from the
wealth of America’s richie-rich club, but the net worth of many
members such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett is still sufficient to
buy “almost anything” that includes many a country of the world.
“Castles in France. Islands in the Caribbean. Private jets. With a
collective $1.27 trillion at their disposal, the members of the Forbes
400 could buy almost anything,” business magazine Forbes said about
its annual ranking of America's 400 richest persons, whose collective
wealth have declined from $1.57 trillion a year ago.
“How about a country? A quick glance at the CIA Fact Book — which
chronicles economic, demographic and other details of all the
countries — suggests that the individual fortunes of many Forbes 400
members are as big as some of the world’s economies,” the magazine
further noted.
“Bill Gates, America’s richest man with a net worth of $50 billion,
has a personal balance sheet larger than the gross domestic product
(GDP) of 140 countries, including Costa Rica, El Salvador, Bolivia and
Uruguay... The Microsoft visionary’s nest egg is just short of the GDP
of Tanzania and Burma,” it added.
Although his wealth has fallen by $7 billion in a year, Gates has
retained his title as the richest American for 16th year in a row.
Gates’ friend and legendary investor Warren Buffett, ranked second
richest with a wealth of $40 billion, lost $10 billion in a year and
is the biggest loser on the list. Still, he has a fortune equivalent
to the size of North Korea’s economy, Forbes said, but noted that “The
Oracle of Omaha probably would steer clear of that investment,
though”.
The publication further said one of the Forbes 400 members actually
runs “a small chunk of a state in an official capacity: Mayor Michael
Bloomberg”.
"While he is busy serving as the chief executive of New York City and
grappling with its sluggish economy, his own personal balance sheet--
amassed through financial information services and media company
Bloomberg LP--equals the value of all the goods and services produced
in South Africa's Republic of Zambia's ($17.5 billion)."
Land developer Donald Bren, whose assets throughout the vicinity of
Orange County, include 475 office buildings, 115 apartment
communities, 41 retail centers, resort properties and new housing,
runs Orange County--he certainly owns the most of it. Bren with a net
worth of $12 billion, could, in theory, buy Haiti's economy, too.
Casion mogul Sheldon Adelson's $9 billion net worth is akin to the GDP
of Bahamas. Founder of the world's biggest auction marketplace eBay,
Pierre Omidyar could theoretically control Somalia's market with his
$5.5 billion fortune.
The famed Hollywood director George Lucas, with a net worth of $3
billion making him to buy worth as much as the GDP of Guyana. Hedge
fund founder David Shaw's $2.5 billion net worth parallels Belize's
marketplace.
Although Eli Broad's fortune suffered because of AIG's collapse last
fall--his wealth has declined by $1.3 billion in the last 12 months
and still has a bank account that "rivals Barbados' economy ($5.4
billion)."
"If this year's three poorest Forbes 400 members were to combine their
wealth (a combined $2.9 billion), their amassed fortune would be worth
more than the workings of Belize's entire economy," Forbes said.
The magazine said that investor John Paulson amassed much of his
fortune by exploiting the real estate bubble and shorting the subprime
market in 2007.
Besides, Paulson has a net worth of $6.8 billion--the equivalent of
Montenegro's gross domestic product.
...and I am Sid Harth
chhotemianinshallah
'Opportunities do not wait for strategies and strategists'
2 Oct 2009, 0232 hrs IST, Azim Premji,
I am not an entrepreneur by choice. In 1966, at the age of 21, I was
practically overnight thrust into the role of the CEO of a company
about $4 Azim Premji million in sales then, and not in the best of
shape. I was trying to take charge of a role for which I had no
training, no experience, no preparation and no demonstrated strength.
We used to make vegetable oil. The journey from there on over the last
four decades has not been easy. I learnt more from difficulties and
failures than from successes.
The first lesson is that to be successful you have to be challenged by
something, and then have the resolve to deal with it. This is the
surest way forward. I learnt that challenges, determination and
passion is what propel a person. I also learnt that often you have to
go out seeking challenges because challenges may not come seeking
you.
Rarely have I come across a successful entrepreneur, who became an
entrepreneur only to make money. In practically all the cases, people
became entrepreneurs because there is a challenge that excites them: A
challenge to change the world, a challenge to invent, a challenge to
create, etc—some deeply captivating challenge that appeals to them
personally, but rarely is the desire to make money the prime driver.
The second learning is if you want something very much, you can
actually make it happen, irrespective of the odds. As a living
example, despite my age and the ageing grey cells, I did complete my
Electrical Engineering degree at Stanford, 33 years later in 1999. Let
us also know that there is no substitute to action. That to me is the
starting and the ending point of being an entrepreneur. The most
important thing is to deal with the here and now. And I learnt that,
that can happen only through personal action. It has stayed with me
forever.
The fourth learning, and it may seem very elementary, is that hard
work and passion pays. With the passing years, I am even more
convinced that, all the thinking, the best of strategy and greatest of
intelligence, can achieve little in the absence of hard work and
passion. Also, one has to go against the grain of common wisdom. I
have learnt to respect wisdom more than strategy and intelligence.
However, I have also learnt that to build something, to create
something different one has to inevitably go against the grain of
common wisdom. However daunting it may seem, there are times when one
has to trust one’s instincts and act, ignoring all the wisdom around.
Opportunities don’t wait for any one, certainly not for strategies or
strategists.
Opportunities are here today and gone tomorrow. Also, while we may
have our role in creating opportunities, the big opportunities are
driven by changes in the world that we live in. We have to seize these
opportunities. The sixth and most important learning is a deep
unflinching commitment to values. I started off with this notion that
I would not compromise on Integrity. The fact is that I did not face a
conducive environment to practice Integrity, in those days. My notion
was that values come first and business success follows.
I can candidly admit that my belief was deeply tested through many
years of painful learning process that I went through. This
‘unflinching’ commitment that I talk about is not something that
happens just because of overnight resolve. At least it did not happen
with me.
We have seen the most severe economic meltdown the world has ever
seen, unmatched both in its geographic spread as well as severity. I
believe that however long it is, the core characteristic of the
entrepreneur will prevail. And the core characteristic of the
entrepreneur is hope.
bademiyansubhanallah
http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/11/worlds-richest-people-billionaires-2009-billionaires-intro.html
The World's Billionaires
Luisa Kroll, Matthew Miller and Tatiana Serafin, 03.11.09, 06:00 PM
EDT
It's been a tough year for the richest people in the world. Last year
there were 1,125 billionaires. This year there are just 793 people
rich enough to make our list.
In Pictures: The 50 Richest People In The World The world has become a
wealth wasteland. Like the rest of us, the richest people in the world
have endured a financial disaster over the past year. Today there are
793 people on our list of the World's Billionaires, a 30% decline from
a year ago.
Of the 1,125 billionaires who made last year's ranking, 373 fell off
the list--355 from declining fortunes and 18 who died. There are 38
newcomers, plus three moguls who returned to the list after regaining
their 10-figure fortunes. It is the first time since 2003 that the
world has had a net loss in the number of billionaires.
In Pictures: The 50 Richest People In The World
http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/10/50-richest-people-billionaires-2009-billionaires-wealth_slide.html
The world's richest are also a lot poorer. Their collective net worth
is $2.4 trillion, down $2 trillion from a year ago. Their average net
worth fell 23% to $3 billion. The last time the average was that low
was in 2003.
Bill Gates lost $18 billion but regained his title as the world's
richest man. Warren Buffett, last year's No. 1, saw his fortune
decline $25 billion as shares of Berkshire Hathaway (nyse: BRK.A -
news - people ) fell nearly 50% in 12 months, but he still managed to
slip just one spot to No. 2. Mexican telecom titan Carlos Slim Helú
also lost $25 billion and dropped one spot to No. 3.
It was hard to avoid the carnage, whether you were in stocks,
commodities, real estate or technology. Even people running profitable
businesses were hammered by frozen credit markets, weak consumer
spending or declining currencies.
The biggest loser in the world this year, by dollars, was last year's
biggest gainer. India's Anil Ambani lost $32 billion--76% of his
fortune--as shares of his Reliance Communications, Reliance Power and
Reliance Capital all collapsed.
Ambani is one of 24 Indian billionaires, all but one of whom are
poorer than a year ago. Another 29 Indians lost their billionaire
status entirely as India's stock market tumbled 44% in the past year
and the Indian rupee depreciated 18% against the dollar. It is no
longer the top spot in Asia for billionaires, ceding that title to
China, which has 28.
Russia became the epicenter of the world's commodities bust, dropping
55 billionaires--two-thirds of its 2008 crop. Among them: Dmitry
Pumpyansky, an industrialist from the resource-rich Ural mountain
region, who lost $5 billion as shares of his pipe producer, TMK, sank
84%. Also gone is Vasily Anisimov, father of Moscow's Paris Hilton,
Anna Anisimova, who lost $3.2 billion as the value of his
Metalloinvest Holding, one of Russia's largest ore mining and
processing firms, fell along with his real estate holdings.
The World's Billionaires 2009
Twelve months ago Moscow overtook New York as the billionaire capital
of the world, with 74 tycoons to New York's 71. Today there are 27 in
Moscow and 55 in New York.
After slipping in recent years, the U.S. is regaining its dominance as
a repository of wealth. Americans account for 44% of the money and 45%
of the list's slots, up seven and three percentage points from last
year, respectively. Still, it has 110 fewer billionaires than a year
ago.
Visit The http://www.Forbes.com
Those with ties to Wall Street were particularly hard hit. Former head
of AIG (nyse: AIG - news - people ) Maurice (Hank) Greenberg saw his
$1.9 billion fortune nearly wiped out after the insurance behemoth had
to be bailed out by the U.S. government. Today Greenberg is worth less
than $100 million. Former Citigroup (nyse: C - news - people )
Chairman Sandy Weill also falls from the ranks.
Last year there were 39 American billionaire hedge fund managers; this
year there are 28. Twelve American private equity tycoons dropped out
of the billionaire ranks.
Blackstone Group's (nyse: BX - news - people ) Stephen Schwarzman, who
lost $4 billion, and Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts' Henry Kravis, who lost
$2.5 billion, retain their billionaire status despite their weaker
fortunes.
Worldwide, 80 of the 355 drop-offs from last year's list had fortunes
derived from finance or investments.
While 656 billionaires lost money in the past year, 44 added to their
fortunes. Those who made money did so by catering to budget-conscious
consumers (discount retailer Uniqlo's Tadashi Yanai), predicting the
crash (investor John Paulson) or cashing out in the nick of time
(Cirque du Soleil's Guy Laliberte).
So is there anywhere one can still make a fortune these days? The 38
newcomers offer a few clues. Among the more notable new billionaires
are Mexican Joaquín Guzmán Loera, one of the biggest suppliers of
cocaine to the U.S.; Wang Chuanfu of China, whose BYD Co. began
selling electric cars in December, and American John Paul Dejoria, who
got the world clean with his Paul Mitchell shampoos and sloppy with
his Patrón Tequila.
Billionaire Bust
Last year the world had 1,125 billionaires. Today there are 793. How
$1.4 trillion vanished.
In Pictures: The World's Billionaires
http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/10/50-richest-people-billionaires-2009-billionaires-wealth_slide.html
Complete Methodology
IN PICTURES
New Billionaires Who Made Billions More
Notable Drop-offs Biggest Losers
Homes Of The Billionaires Celebrity Billionaires
Women We Admire Top Billionaire Cities
The Cost Of Living Large Billionaire Toys For Sale
Eligible Billionaires Richest Europeans
Russian Drop-offs Chinese Drop-offs
Japanese Drop-offs Indian Drop-offs
Obituaries
Name:
SORT LIST BY
Rank Name Citizenship
Age Net Worth Residence
FEATURED
Billionaire Acrobatics
Matthew Miller
Cocaine King
Jesse Bogan
Campus Politics
Megha Bahree
THE BILLIONAIRES
William Gates III
Warren Buffett
Carlos Slim Helú
Lawrence Ellison
Ingvar Kamprad
Karl Albrecht
Mukesh Ambani
Lakshmi Mittal
Theo Albrecht
Amancio Ortega
Jim Walton
Alice Walton
Christy Walton
S Robson Walton
Bernard Arnault
Li Ka-shing
Michael Bloomberg
Stefan Persson
Charles Koch
David Koch
View The Complete List
Rank 1 to 25Rank 26 to 43Rank 51 to 75Rank 76 to 98Rank 98 to 124Rank
124 to 149Rank 151 to 164Rank 164 to 196Rank 196 to 224Rank 224 to
246Rank 246 to 261Rank 261 to 296Rank 296 to 318Rank 318-334Rank 334
(tie)Rank 376-397Rank 397 (tie)Rank 397-450Rank 450 to 468Rank 468
(tie)Rank 468-522Rank 522 (tie)Rank 522 to 559Rank 559 (tie)Rank 601
(tie)Rank 601 to 647Rank 647 (tie)Rank 647 (tie pg.2)Rank 701 (tie)
Rank 701 (tie pg. 2)Rank 701 (tie pg. 3)Rank 701 (tie pg. 4)
VIDEO
Top Billionaire: Bill Gates
The financial crisis wiped out much wealth, but Gates, Buffett and
Slim are still on top.
Celebrity Billionaires
Oprah, Donald Trump and Richard Branson's billion-dollar star power.
Times Square Billionaire
Leon Charney on real estate fortune and where to invest now.
Prince Alwaleed's Royal Future
Saudi billionaire opens up about his investments and the possibility
of becoming king.
Cirque du Soleil's Guy Laliberte
On wealth and humility
On growing in a recession
On giving to charity
MAP
Surveying the Damage
Wealth has vanished all over the world. This map depicts the change in
the number of billionaires in each country over the past 12 months.
Edited by Luisa Kroll, Matthew Miller and Tatiana Serafin.
Reported by: Steven Bertoni, Andrew Farrell, Erin Gell, Duncan
Greenberg, Claire Obusan, Devon Pendleton, Keren Blankfeld Schultz,
Cristina von Zeppelin, Russell Flannery, Naazneen Karmali, Nilgün
Balci Cavdar, Kerry A.Dolan, Maha Atal, Jesse Bogan, Forbes Turkey,
Forbes Russia, Asher Hawkins, Nikolai Mazurin, Maxim Kashulinsky, Ozer
Turan.
Photos and graphics: Michele Hadlow, Gail Toivanen, Stephen Aviano and
David Lada
Additional Reporting by: Susan Adams, Monte Burke, Laurie Burkitt,
Heidi Brown, Danni Cao, Maggie Chen, Bernard Condon, Helen Coster,
Stephane Fitch, Forbes Poland, Zack O'Malley Greenburg, Christopher
Helman, Evan Hessel, Soyoung Ho, Clarita Jones, C.N. Krishnakumar,
Emily Lambert, Suzanne Nam, Lan Anh Nguyen, Jacek Pochlopien, Susan
Radlauer, Lucinda Schmidt, Tim Treadgold, Chaniga Vorasarun, Rodman
Williams, Jiang Yan.
Database Management: Mitchel Rand.
Online: Michael Noer (Editor); Jane Colihan, David M. Ewalt, Kai
Hecker, Merrilee Santoro
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bademiyansubhanallah
The 40 Richest Indians
Naazneen Karmali, 11.12.08, 10:00 PM EST
The global financial crisis has hit the subcontinent hard--the
wealthiest Indians are worth 60% less than a year ago.
India's Richest These are painful times for India's richest as the
ongoing global turmoil drastically reshapes their fortunes. The
country's once soaring stock market fell 48% in the 12 months, the
rupee depreciated 24% against the dollar and gross domestic product
growth is expected to slow down to 7.5%, partly owing to double-digit
inflation.
All of this conspired to knock 60% off the combined fortunes of the
nation's 40 wealthiest. Their total net worth fell $212 billion, to
$139 billion, down from $351 billion a year ago.
In Pictures: The Richest Indians http://www.forbes.com/2008/11/10/indiarichest08_all_slide_2.html
Last year's No. 1, U.K. resident Lakshmi Mittal, dropped $30.5 billion
amid plunging steel prices, but he slips only a bit, to No. 2. Mukesh
Ambani, who oversees petrochemicals giant Reliance Industries, grabs
the top spot for the first time, despite losing $28.2 billion in the
past year. His estranged brother, Anil, ranked third, is the biggest
dollar loser, down $32.5 billion.
Others were nearly wiped out entirely. India's wind power man Tulsi
Tanti and his brothers lost 91% of their fortune, amid reports about
the poor quality of Suzlon's wind blades. Real estate fortunes were
among those hit the hardest. K.P.Singh lost $27.2 billion since we
last published our listing but is down an astonishing $39 billion
since his DLF stock peaked in January. Property tycoon Ramesh
Chandra's net worth dropped 91% to $1 billion. His Unitech lost half
its market capitalization in one day last month.
Thirty-three of the 34 tycoons who returned to our ranking of India's
richest are at least 20% poorer than they were a year ago. Only one
fortune from last year's ranks increased, that of brothers Malvinder
and Shivinder Singh, who sold their 34% stake in generic drug firm
Ranbaxy Laboratories to Japan's Daiichi Sankyo at a hefty premium to
its current stock price. They added $550 million to their combined
wealth.
Six people dropped off our list altogether after losing a collective
$7.9 billion. They included flamboyant liquor and airlines tycoon
Vijay Mallya, whose Kingfisher Airlines (other-otc: KNGFY.PK - news -
people ) is racking up losses, and Gautam Thapar, whose Ballarpur
Industries is India's largest paper maker. Taking their places are
four newcomers, including Micky Jagtiani, who oversees a retailing
empire in the Middle East, and Hemant Shah, son of a Bollywood film
producer, who made his fortune in construction.
Returning to the list after a one-year absence are Yusuf Hamied, head
of generics producer Cipla, and Brijmohan Lall Munjal, patriarch of
Hero Group, which makes motorcycles and bicycles.
Some more sobering statistics: While all 40 tycoons were billionaires
last year, only 27 now have 10-figure fortunes, nine fewer than in
2006.
These net worths are snapshots of wealth taken on Nov. 3, when we
locked in market prices and exchange rates. Had we locked in just a
week earlier, the losses would have been still greater, as the
nation's main index gained 21% in the days leading up to our list
publication.
Privately held companies were valued by comparing them to similar
public companies. Indian nonresidents like Lakshmi Mittal were
included as long as they still hold Indian citizenship. This ranking,
unlike the Forbes billionaires list, includes family fortunes.
In Pictures: The Richest Indians
Additional reporting by C.N. Krishna Kumar, Maha Atal and Devon
Pendleton.
http://www.forbes.com/2008/11/10/indiarichest08_all_slide_2.html
http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/77/indiarichest08_Indias-Richest_Rank.html
India's Richest
11.12.08, 10:00 PM ET
Rank Name Net Worth ($mil) Age City
1 Mukesh Ambani 20,800 51 Mumbai
2 Lakshmi Mittal 20,500 58 London
3 Anil Ambani 12,500 49 Mumbai
4 Sunil Mittal 7,900 51 Delhi
5 Kushal Pal Singh 7,800 77 Delhi
6 Shashi & Ravi Ruia 7,600 64 Mumbai
7 Azim Premji 7,000 63 Bangalore
8 Kumar Birla 5,000 41 Mumbai
9 Adi Godrej 4,000 66 Mumbai
10 Gautam Adani 3,900 46 Ahmedabad
11 Dilip Shanghvi 3,100 53 Mumbai
12 Savitri Jindal 2,900 59 Delhi & Hisar
13 Malvinder & Shivinder Singh 2,800 36 Delhi
14 Anil Agarwal 2,400 55 London
15 Shiv Nadar 2,200 63 Delhi
16 Micky Jagtiani 2,000 57 Dubai
17 Indu Jain 1,800 72 Delhi
18 Cyrus Poonawalla 1,600 67 Pune
19 Uday Kotak 1,550 49 Mumbai
20 Chandru Raheja 1,500 68 Mumbai
21 G.M. Rao 1,470 58 Bangalore
22 Vivek Burman 1,300 71 Delhi
23 Anurag Dikshit 1,250 36 Gibraltar
24 Kalanithi Maran 1,200 43 Chennai
25 Venugopal Dhoot 1,100 57 Mumbai
26 Yusuf Hamied 1,060 72 London & Mumbai
27 Ramesh Chandra 1,000 69 Delhi
28 Subhash Chandra 970 58 Mumbai
29 N.R. Narayana Murthy 965 62 Bangalore
30 Rajan Raheja 950 54 Mumbai
31 Brijmohan Lall Munjal 940 85 Delhi
32 Baba Kalyani 935 59 Pune
33 Tulsi Tanti 930 50 Pune
34 Jaiprakash Gaur 890 77 Delhi
35 Niranjan Hiranandani 885 58 Mumbai
36 Murali Divi 870 57 Hyderabad
37 Hemant Shah 830 55 Mumbai
38 Gracias Saldanha 825 70 Mumbai
39 Anand Jain 810 51 Mumbai
40 Rahul Bajaj 760 70 Pune
Methodology: Unlike our annual billionaires list, this ranking has
been broadened to include family fortunes. For instance, Tulsi Tanti's
billion fortune represents his family's entire stake in Suzlon Energy,
not his personal stake that's reflected in the billionaire rankings.
Net worths were calculated using Nov. 3 market prices and exchange
rates. Privately held companies are valued by comparing them to
similar publicly traded companies. Indian nonresidents such as Lakshmi
Mittal are included as long as they still hold Indian citizenship.
This ranking, unlike the forbes billionaires list, includes family
fortunes.
Bappa
> http://www.forbes.com/2008/11/12/richest-Indian-billionaires-biz-indi...
>
> The 40 Richest Indians
> Naazneen Karmali, 11.12.08, 10:00 PM EST
>
> The global financial crisis has hit the subcontinent hard--the
> wealthiest Indians are worth 60% less than a year ago.
>
> India's Richest These are painful times for India's richest as the
> ongoing global turmoil drastically reshapes their fortunes. The
> country's once soaring stock market fell 48% in the 12 months, the
> rupee depreciated 24% against the dollar and gross domestic product
> growth is expected to slow down to 7.5%, partly owing to double-digit
> inflation.
>
> All of this conspired to knock 60% off the combined fortunes of the
> nation's 40 wealthiest. Their total net worth fell $212 billion, to
> $139 billion, down from $351 billion a year ago.
>
Rich cruel men with hearts of snow
Like Bushes and Bushlings, come and - go!
Eternity says that the richest men of all times and climes are more
insignificant than dust before "the lunatic, the lover and the poet".
Arindam Banerjee, with some help from William Shakespeare.
bademiyansubhanallah
It's millionaires and billionaires in Haryana polls
4 Oct 2009, 1940 hrs IST, IANS
CHANDIGARH: In a year when Haryana has got much less rainfall, it is
raining millionaires and billionaires in the state's electoral fray.
Over 50 percent of the candidates in the fray for the Oct 13 assembly
elections are millionaires and the ruling Congress is leading the pack
with 80 percent of its 90 candidates being millionaires and
billionaires.
Even more startling are the figures of the 42 legislators in the
previous assembly who are seeking re-election. Between the February
2005 and October 2009 elections, their assets have increased a
whopping 388 percent at an average of Rs.4.8 crore.
One legislator has recorded an increase of nearly 5,500 percent in
assets in just over four years.
The figures have been arrived at by a survey of the contestants done
by the NGOs, Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National
Election Watch (NEW).
At least 50 crorepati candidates have admitted to having assets worth
millions but have failed to provide any income-tax permanent account
number (PAN) - a must for all major financial dealings.
The ADR-NEW analysis, done from affidavits filed by the candidates,
has found that the Congress has given the poll tickets to 72
millionaires and billionaires while the Indian National Lok Dal (INLD)
has a list of 56 crorepati candidates.
Other parties are not far behind - Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC) has
44 millionaires, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) 41 and Bahujan Samaj
Party (BSP) 29.
The average assets of all candidates of the Congress are pegged at
over Rs.5 crore while for the INLD and HJC candidates the averages are
above Rs.3 crore each.
Millionaire candidates in the February 2005 assembly election were
only 19 percent of the 983 contestants compared to over 50 percent
millionaires among the 1,222 contestants this time.
HJC candidate Mohit for the Kosli assembly seat has assets of over Rs.
93 crore while the richest Congress candidate is industrialist-
businessman and former union minister Venod Kumar Sharma for the
Ambala city seat with assets of Rs.87 crore.
One of the richest women in India, Savitri Jindal, who belongs to the
Jindal Steel group family and is a Congress candidate for the Hisar
seat, has assets of over Rs.43 crore.
Ajay Singh Chautala, son of former chief minister Om Prakash Chautala,
has declared assets of over Rs.28 crore. He is contesting the Dabwali
assembly seat. BJP candidate Abhimanyu (Narnaul seat) also has assets
of over Rs.27 crore.
District-wise, the highest number of millionaires are from Faridabad
(45), Gurgaon (37) and Hisar (37).
At the other end of the assets spectrum, Ram Niwas, Samast Bharatiya
Party candidate for the Israna seat, has declared no assets at all.
Kailash Bhagat, INLD candidate for Kaithal, has declared assets of
over Rs.63 crore but has liabilities of Rs.55 crore. Former MP and HJC
president Kuldeep Bishnoi has declared assets of Rs.17 crore but has
liabilities of Rs.12 crore.
bademiyansubhanallah
Swraj Paul defends claiming 110K pounds in parliamentary expenses
4 Oct 2009, 1737 hrs IST, IANS
LONDON: Indian-origin industrialist Swraj Paul said Sunday he had done
"nothing wrong" after a newspaper disclosed he had claimed 110,000
pounds in expenses as a member of Britain's upper chamber of
parliament.
The Sunday Times said steel tycoon Paul had claimed the money despite
being one of the wealthiest members of the House of Lords and owning a
residential property with 25 luxury flats close to the houses of
parliament in London.
"I have not read the article but I can say that I have done nothing
wrong - I am entitled to these expenses," Paul, the founder-chairman
of the Caparo Group of industries, told IANS from his country home in
Beaconsfield, southeast England.
According to the newspaper, only two of the wealthiest peers worth
between 125 million and 1.2 billion pounds have made expense claims:
Lord Grantchester, who takes "small expenses way below his
entitlement", and Paul, who claims the maximum he is allowed.
Paul told IANS: "As to the question why I had claimed these expenses
while other wealthy peers hadn't, I would say that if they don't
attend sessions (in parliament) how can they be entitled to
expenses?"
The paper said Paul has kept a family home inside his London property
for the past 43 years, but five years ago started claiming back his
accommodation cost by saying his main home was outside the capital.
At first he designated a flat in a hotel he owns in Oxfordshire as his
main address, but then he switched to a 6.1 million pound country
mansion in Beaconsfield.
The report follows a recent political row in Britain over taxpayers'
money claimed by members of both houses of parliament as expenses that
have been widely condemned as unethical and dubious.
"I don't make the law, I just follow it," said Paul, whose 500 million
pound family fortune has helped him take the 88th spot on the Sunday
Times Rich List.
"I was asked if I needed the money, and I said 'I've always needed
money. All my life I have worked to make money'," he added.
bademiyansubhanallah
Top salary earners of over Rs 10 cr per annum
5 Oct 2009, 0327 hrs IST
Earning Rs 1 crore a year may have been a dream for top executives
till a couple of years ago, but no longer. The new aspiration level
for the country’s professionals is $1 million, or Rs 5 crore. The club
of crore-plus earners in the country is getting crowded, with hundreds
of new faces joining it last year.
As many as 640 directors of public listed companies took home more
than Rs 1 crore for the year ended March 2009, compared to 570 in the
previous year.
Here are the top salary earners of over Rs 10 crore:
ET Bureau
chhotemianinshallah
Wynn Says Macau Gambling Limits Will Benefit City’s Casinos
By Chia-Peck Wong and Bernard Lo
Oct. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Billionaire Stephen Wynn said Macau’s plans to
raise the casino age limit to 21 and restrict the number of gambling
tables in the city will benefit the industry and are “not a worry at
all” for his Wynn Macau Ltd.
“A casino is no place for children,” Wynn, chief executive officer of
Wynn Macau, said in a Bloomberg Television interview from Las Vegas
today. “Someone should be earning their own living before they think
about gambling.”
Wynn Resorts Ltd. and Las Vegas Sands Corp. fell in New York trading
yesterday and SJM Holdings Ltd. fell in Hong Kong today on concern new
limits will hurt casinos just as revenue recovers in Macau, the
world’s biggest gambling hub. Visitor arrivals and casino earnings
rose in August as growth picked up in China, which accounts for more
than half of Macau tourists.
“In the long run, these changes will be positive, as there won’t be
too much supply of gaming tables,” said Steven Leung, Hong Kong-based
director of institutional sales at brokerage UOB-Kay Hian Ltd. “People
are worried about unlimited growth.”
Macau may be seeking to prevent a repeat of the surge in gambling-
table numbers that followed the end of billionaire Stanley Ho’s
monopoly in 2002, Leung said in a phone interview.
Wynn declined 2.9 percent to $65.88 in New York trading and Las Vegas
Sands dropped 1.8 percent to $17.72. MGM Mirage fell 1.6 percent to
$12.08. Wynn Macau, which raised HK$14.5 billion ($1.87 billion) in
Hong Kong second-biggest initial public offering this year, rose 1.1
percent to HK$10.88 in the city today. The benchmark Hang Seng Index
advanced 0.8 percent.
“The idea of limiting somehow the number of gaming tables in the Macau
gaming area, that’s a very good idea,” Wynn said. “It makes the
industry safer. The primary objective of the government is of course
to raise money, but on the other hand they have a very strong interest
in how it affects the community.”
Gambling Tables
SJM, the casino operator controlled by Ho, fell 3.7 percent to HK$4.43
and Melco International Development Ltd., controlled by Ho’s son
Lawrence, dropped 4.3 percent to HK$4.93. Galaxy Entertainment Group
Ltd., part owned by Permira Advisers LLP, fell 0.8 percent to HK
$3.56.
Even with today’s drops, Galaxy has more than tripled this year, SJM
has more than doubled and Melco has risen 92 percent on optimism the
decline in Macau’s gaming revenue is over.
Macau is reviewing the number of gambling tables in the city,
according to a Portuguese-language statement posted on the government
Web site yesterday, citing Francis Tam, secretary for economics and
finance. The city is also drafting two laws, one to ban slot machines
from residential areas and another to raise the age for customers and
staff at casinos from 18.
‘Absolutely No Effect’
Age limits will have “absolutely no effect on us,” Wynn said. The
company doesn’t have slot machines in residential neighborhoods and
the restrictions are “not a worry at all.”
Macau’s six casino operators “recognized that the gambling industry
should not expand infinitely,” according to the government statement,
which gave details of a meeting with gaming executives. Tam also urged
casino resorts to make hiring local workers a priority.
From 2002, Macau, the only place in China where casinos are legal,
began offering new licenses to operators including Wynn, Las Vegas
Sands and Galaxy.
“The primary objective of the government is of course to raise money,
but they have a very strong interest in how it affects the community,”
Wynn said.
Wynn sold some of his stake in Macau as he grapples with falling
revenue at Wynn Resorts’ Las Vegas operations. Casino revenue in Macau
is rebounding as China’s economy recovers and curbs on mainland
visitors are loosened. Las Vegas Sands plans to raise funds in Hong
Kong to restart construction of a Macau resort.
Casino revenue in Macau jumped 53 percent in September, Portuguese
news agency Lusa said. Visitor arrivals rose 6.4 percent in August
from a year earlier, the first increase in 2009, according to the
city’s government.
To contact the reporters on this story: Chia-Peck Wong in Hong Kong at
cpw...@bloomberg.net; Bernard Lo in Hong Kong at bl...@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: October 13, 2009 05:57 EDT