Popular American magazine Forbes has issued 36th annual ranking of the world’s richest people. Compared to last year, 87 people failed to make it to the list as war, the COVID-19 pandemic and slow markets badly hit the world’s billionaires this year.
According to Forbes, there are 2,668 billionaires included in the list with 236 new comers, while 1,000 billionaires are richer now than they were a year ago.
United States still leads the world, with 735 billionaires worth a collective $4.7 trillion (about Rs867 trillion). This includes Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors, who topped the World’s Billionaires list for the first time, while China (including Macau and Hong Kong) remained number two, with 607 billionaires worth a collective $2.3 trillion (almost Rs424 trillion).
Surprisingly, Russia and China witnessed a major drop in the number of billionaires. In Russia, there are 34 fewer billionaires than last year following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, while in China, a government crackdown on tech companies has led to 87 fewer billionaires on the list.
And 236 newcomers have become billionaires over the past year — including the first ever from Barbados, Bulgaria, Estonia and Uruguay.
Musk tops the list with net worth of $274.3 billion, followed by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos with $180.2 billion and Bernard Arnault & family which owns the LVMH empire of some 70 fashion and cosmetics brands, including Louis Vuitton and Sephora, having worth of $166.4 billion.
According to the Forbes magazine, Indian businessman Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries is the 10th richest person in the world, followed by Infrastructure tycoon Gautam Adani and his family, who claimed the 11th spot on Forbes’ annual world’s billionaires list.
“We used stock prices and exchange rates from March 11, 2022 to calculate net worths,” said the magazine.
