DemocRATs Caught Lying, Again - World's Richest Got $19 Billion Poorer Last Year

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http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/worlds-richest-got-poorer/2016/01/02/id/707934/

World's Richest Got $19 Billion Poorer Last Year
Saturday, 02 Jan 2016

The richest people on Earth became a bit poorer this year.

The world’s 400 wealthiest individuals shed $19 billion in 2015,
according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Falling commodities
prices and signs of a slower-growing China spooked investors around
the world leading to the first annual decline for the daily wealth
index since its 2012 debut.

"After three great years, 2015 stock markets worry-wiggled sideways,"
said billionaire Ken Fisher, the founder of Fisher Investments that
manages more than $65 billion. "Fears over an oil glut, soft consumer
spending and China breaking like a plate and taking commodities with
it saw investors take fright."

Mexican telecommunications mogul Carlos Slim was the biggest decliner
on the index at the close of trading in New York on Dec. 28, as his
America Movil SAB dropped 25 percent in 2015. The world’s richest
person in May 2013, Slim fell to No. 5 this year after losing almost
$20 billion as regulators ratcheted up efforts to break apart the
business that controls the majority of Mexico’s landlines and mobile
phones.

U.S. investor Warren Buffett, the world’s third-richest person, lost
$11.3 billion as Berkshire Hathaway Inc. had its first negative annual
return since 2011. Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates, the world’s
richest person since May 2013, fell by $3 billion during the year.

Gates’s losses and the continued rise of Inditex SA, the world’s
largest fashion retailer, lifted Spain’s Amancio Ortega within about
$10 billion of the top slot. Ortega, Europe’s richest person since
June 2012, leapfrogged Slim and Buffett as he rose $12.1 billion to
$73.2 billion.

His 20 percent rise was still $19 billion short of the increase for
the year’s top-gainer, Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos. The New
Mexico-born billionaire more than doubled his fortune to $59 billion
as investors cheered profits at the world’s largest online retailer.
Bezos added $31 billion in 2015, undoing the $7.4 billion decline he
had in 2014 and propelling him up 16 positions to No. 4 on the index.

The shifts at the top came as global stock markets swung from
early-year increases to sharp declines in the later months, with the
MSCI ACWI Index falling 3.8 percent by the end of trading on Dec. 28.

WILD SWINGS

The world’s 400 richest people control a combined $3.9 trillion,
according to the index, more than the GDP of every country on Earth
except for the U.S., China and Japan. At their peak on May 18, the
billionaires had almost $4.3 trillion, a $267 billion increase from
Jan. 1. In August they lost those gains and more when a global sell
off claimed as much as $182 billion in a week.

Bezos and Ortega dominated the upside of the year’s gyrations, adding
$43 billion between them. The performance of the two billionaires
contrasted with the family that owns about half of Wal-Mart Stores
Inc., the world’s largest retailer. The five members of the Walton
family lost a combined $35 billion in 2015.

The market declines knocked 49 billionaires off the daily ranking
this year, including Glencore Plc. chief executive Ivan Glasenberg and
Wang Jing, a Chinese telecom entrepreneur who personally invested $500
million to help Nicaragua build an alternative to the Panama Canal.
Glasenberg lost two-thirds of his fortune as he raced to slash debt at
the Swiss commodities company and Wang fell by about 86 percent this
year.

Brazilian banking billionaire Andre Esteves, former head of Latin
America’s largest independent investment bank who was last ranked by
the index in 2014, fell even further this year when his fortune
declined by $1.5 billion. Esteves was hauled off to jail by police in
November for allegedly trying to interfere in a corruption
investigation.

After his arrest, he stepped down as Banco BTG Pactual SA’s chairman
and CEO and the stock plunged by almost half. His fortune, which
peaked at $4.9 billion in September 2014, ended the year at $1.8
billion. His lawyers said in December that the billionaire was
arrested solely because he’s rich. He was released after the country’s
supreme court ended the imprisonment after three weeks and remains
under house arrest.

Esteves is the latest to fall in the biggest corruption investigation
in Brazil’s history as the government cracks down on graft among the
country’s economic elite. The probe, along with a political crisis, a
currency rout and a recession took its toll, leaving only four of the
11 Brazil-based fortunes on the index with gains in 2015.

Jorge Paulo Lemann, the co-founder of New York-based buyout firm 3G
Capital and Brazil’s richest person, led the gains with a $2.2 billion
jump. His partners Marcel Telles and Carlos Sicupira increased their
fortunes by about $1.7 billion combined, as 3G joined forces with
Warren Buffett to merge Kraft Foods Group with H.J. Heinz. The three
billionaires are also key shareholders in Anheuser-Busch InBev NV, the
beer giant that agreed to buy to acquire SABMiller Plc in a $110
billion deal.

China’s billionaires had the wildest ride in 2015. On Jan. 1, there
were 23 Chinese billionaires on the index with a combined net worth of
$205 billion. At their May 27 peak there were 31 with a combined $348
billion. On Dec. 28 there were 28 billionaires with $256 billion.

As markets there surged, China became a veritable billionaire
factory, with more than 50 new billionaires minted in the first half
of the year. By July, the bubble had burst. Out of the 50 billionaires
created in the first half of the year, only 19 remained billionaires
in August.

Russia’s wealthiest continued to experience their own tumult. The
country’s richest people lost $55 billion in 2014 after the West
imposed sanctions in the wake of President Vladimir Putin’s annexation
of eastern Ukraine.

This year, plunging oil prices and the enduring chill of sanctions
contributed to the country’s first economic contraction in six years.
There were 19 Russians on the 400 on Dec. 28 who lost $8 billion
during the year. The group was on track to claw back their 2014 losses
until June, when the price of oil -- Russia’s biggest export -- began
to dive.

Technology was the best-performing industry for billionaires in 2015.
The 44 technology billionaires added $81 billion to their total net
worth, led by Bezos’s $31 billion rise. Facebook Inc. CEO Mark
Zuckerberg became $12 billion wealthier as the social network embarked
on a renewed mobile advertising push and its vast audience grew even
bigger. Strong ad sales also boosted the fortunes of Sergey Brin and
Larry Page, the co-founders of Google parent, Alphabet Inc. They
gained a combined $20 billion.

The 31 metals, mining and energy billionaires on the index were hit
hard as a collapse in prices for oil copper, iron ore and other
natural resources shaved $32 billion from their fortunes. Australia’s
richest person, Gina Rinehart, lost more than a quarter of her wealth
as iron ore plunged by almost half. Rinehart started shipping iron ore
from her $10 billion Roy Hill mine this month, boosting global supply
which some analysts say could contribute to a further slide in price.
She’s the world’s 10th-richest woman with almost $10 billion.

In Nigeria, where tumbling oil prices caused slower growth and the
Nigerian Stock Exchange All Share Index dropped 22 percent, Africa’s
richest man, Aliko Dangote, suffered his second-straight year of
losses. The owner of the continent’s biggest cement producer, Dangote
now has $14 billion, about half what he had at his peak in January
2014.

The billionaires cited either declined to comment or didn’t respond to
calls and e-mails requesting comment.

The Bloomberg index uncovered 115 new or little-known billionaires in
2015. In November, Wal-Mart heiress Christy Walton lost her title as
America’s second richest woman after recently-unsealed court documents
revealed that her late husband, John T. Walton, gave a third of his
Wal-Mart shares to their son, Lukas. At 29, he’s the 92nd-richest
person in the world with $11 billion.

Elsewhere in the U.S., the rise of dominant investment banks, Goldman
Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. made billionaires of their
respective chairmen, Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon, both of them
rare instances of hired managers accumulating extraordinary wealth.
The October initial public offering of iconic supercar-maker Ferrari
NV cemented the billion-dollar fortune of second-generation heir,
Piero Ferrari.

In Hong Kong, Yeung Kin-man has amassed a $10 billion net worth
through Biel Crystal Manufactory, one of the biggest makers of glass
covers for iPhones and other smartphones. Yeung’s rise came on the
heels of the March initial public offering for Biel competitor Lens
Technology Co. Ltd. that made Zhou Qunfei China’s richest woman.
Zhou’s fortune increased more than $5 billion to $7.9 billion this
year, a rise of 254 percent, the largest on the index.

As turbulent as 2015 may have been, 2016 may be even more so,
according to Larry Adam, chief investment officer for Wealth
Management Americas at Deutsche Bank AG.

"We’re going to see a lot more volatility than we’ve seen over the
past couple of years,"said Adam, who sees emerging-market currencies
and uncertainty around the U.S. election among the major market risks.
"Much more muted performance and much more volatility. Caution is
warranted."

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