List of richest people in the world

List of richest people in the world- 2019

No.	Name	Net worth (USD)	Age	Nationality	Source(s) of wealth
1	Jeff Bezos	$131 billion	55	United States	Amazon
2	Bill Gates	$96.5 billion	63	United States	Microsoft
3	Warren Buffett	$82.5 billion	88	United States	Berkshire Hathaway
4	Bernard Arnault	$76 billion	70	France	LVMH
5	Carlos Slim	$64 billion	79	Mexico	América Móvil, Grupo Carso
6	Amancio Ortega	$62.7 billion	82	Spain	Inditex, Zara
7	Larry Ellison	$62.5 billion	74	United States	Oracle Corporation
8	Mark Zuckerberg	$62.3 billion	34	United States	Facebook
9	Michael Bloomberg	$55.5 billion	77	United States	Bloomberg L.P.
10	Larry Page	$50.8 billion	45	United States	Alphabet Inc

 

1.JEFF BEZOS 

Jeffrey Preston Bezos  was born on January 12, 1964 is an American internet and aerospace entrepreneur, media proprietor, and investor. He is best known as the founder, Chief executive officer, and president of Amazon.com, Inc. The first centi-billionaire on the Forbes wealth index, Bezos was named the "richest man in modern history" after his net worth increased to $150 billion in July 2018.In September 2018, Forbes described him as "far richer than anyone else on the planet" as he added $1.8 billion to his worth when Amazon became the second company in history to have a market cap of $1 trillion.

Bezos was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and raised in Houston, Texas. He graduated from Princeton University in 1986 with degrees in electrical engineering and computer science. He worked on Wall Street in a variety of related fields from 1986 to early 1994. He founded the online retailer Amazon in late 1994 on a cross-country road trip from New York City to Seattle. The company began as an online bookstore and has since expanded to a wide variety of other e-commerce products and services, including video and audio streaming, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence. It is currently the world's largest online sales company, the largest internet company by revenue, as well as the world's largest provider of AI assistance and cloud infrastructure services via its Amazon Web Services arm.

Bezos added to his business interests when he founded the aerospace manufacturer and sub-orbital spaceflight services company Blue Origin in 2000. A Blue Origin test flight successfully first reached space in 2015, and the company has plans to begin commercial suborbital human spaceflight in 2019. He purchased major American newspaper publisher The Washington Post in 2013 for US$250 million in cash, and manages his other businesses and investments through his venture capital firm, Bezos Expeditions.

2.BILL GAETS

William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate, software developer, investor, and philanthropist. He is best known as the co-founder of Microsoft Corporation.During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of chairman, chief executive officer (CEO), president and chief software architect, while also being the largest individual shareholder until May 2014. He is one of the best-known entrepreneurs and pioneers of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s.Born and raised in Seattle, Washington, Gates co-founded Microsoft with childhood friend Paul Allen in 1975 in Albuquerque, New Mexico; it went on to become the world's largest personal computer software company. Gates led the company as chairman and CEO until stepping down as CEO in January 2000, but he remained chairman and became chief software architect. During the late 1990s, Gates had been criticized for his business tactics, which have been considered anti-competitive. This opinion has been upheld by numerous court rulings.In June 2006, Gates announced that he would be transitioning to a part-time role at Microsoft and full-time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the private charitable foundation that he and his wife, Melinda Gates, established in 2000.He gradually transferred his duties to Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie. He stepped down as chairman of Microsoft in February 2014 and assumed a new post as technology adviser to support the newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella.

Since 1987, he has been included in the Forbes list of the world's wealthiest documented individuals. From 1995 to 2017, he held the Forbes title of the richest person in the world all but four of those years.In October 2017, he was surpassed by Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos, who had an estimated net worth of US$90.6 billion compared to Gates' net worth of US$89.9 billion at the time. As of November 9, 2019, Gates had an estimated net worth of US$107.1 billion, making him the second wealthiest person in the world, behind Bezos. On November 15, 2019, following a 48% increase in Microsoft shares, he surpassed Bezos to once again become the richest person in the world.

3. WARREN BUFFETT

Warren Edward Buffett (born August 30, 1930) is an American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist, who is the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. He is considered one of the most successful investors in the world and has a net worth of US$88.9 billion as of December 2019, making him the fourth-wealthiest person in the world.

Buffett was born in Omaha, Nebraska. He developed an interest in business and investing in his youth, eventually entering the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1947 before transferring and graduating from the University of Nebraska at the age of 19. He went on to graduate from Columbia Business School, where he molded his investment philosophy around the concept of value investing that was pioneered by Benjamin Graham. He attended New York Institute of Finance to focus his economics background and soon after began various business partnerships, including one with Graham. He created Buffett Partnership, Ltd in 1956 and his firm eventually acquired a textile manufacturing firm called Berkshire Hathaway, assuming its name to create a diversified holding company. In 1978, Charlie Munger joined Buffett and became vice chairman of the company.

Buffett has been the chairman and largest shareholder of Berkshire Hathaway since 1970. He has been referred to as the "Oracle" or "Sage" of Omaha by global media outlets. He is noted for his adherence to value investing and for his personal frugality despite his immense wealth. Research published at the University of Oxfordcharacterizes Buffett's investment methodology as falling within "founder centrism" – defined by a deference to managers with a founder's mindset, an ethical disposition towards the shareholder collective, and an intense focus on exponential value creation. Essentially, Buffett's concentrated investments shelter managers from the short-term pressures of the market.

Buffett is a notable philanthropist, having pledged to give away 99 percent of his fortune to philanthropic causes, primarily via the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He founded The Giving Pledge in 2009 with Bill Gates, whereby billionaires pledge to give away at least half of their fortunes. He endorsed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and will judge current U.S. President Donald Trump by his results on national safety, economic growth and economic participation when deciding if he will vote for him in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

4.BERNARD ARNAULT

Bernard Jean Étienne Arnault (French: born 5 March 1949) is a French billionaire business magnate, and art collector. Arnault is the chairman and chief executive of LVMH Moët Hennessy – Louis Vuitton SE, LVMH, the world's largest luxury-goods company. He is one of the richest people in the world with a net worth of $109 billion, since November 2019. In April 2018, he became the richest person in fashion, topping Zara's Amancio Ortega.After graduating from the Lycée Maxence Van Der Meersch in Roubaix, Arnault was admitted to the École Polytechnique in Palaiseau, from which he graduated with a M.Sc, degree in 1971.

His father, Jean Leon Arnault, a graduate of École Centrale Paris, was a manufacturer and the owner of the civil engineering company, Ferret-Savinel.In 1984, with the help of Antoine Bernheim, a senior partner of Lazard Frères, Arnault acquired the Financière Agache, a luxury goods company. He became the CEO of Financière Agache and subsequently took control of Boussac Saint-Frères, a textile company in turmoil. Boussac owned Christian Dior, the department store Le Bon Marché, the retail shop Conforama, and the diapers manufacturer Peaudouce. He sold nearly all the company's assets, keeping only the prestigious Christian Dior brand and Le Bon Marché department store.

From 1998 to 2001, Arnault invested in a variety of web companies such as Boo.com, Libertysurf, and Zebank through his holding Europatweb. Groupe Arnault also invested in Netflix in 1999.

In 2007, Blue Capital announced that Arnault owns jointly with the California property firm Colony Capital 10.69% of France's largest supermarket retailer and the world's second-largest food distributor Carrefour.

In 2008, he entered the yacht business and bought Princess Yachts for 253 million euros. He subsequently took control of Royal van Lent for an almost identical amount.

In 1998, with businessman Albert Frère he purchased Château Cheval Blanc in a personal capacity. LVMH acquired Arnault's share in 2009 to add to the group's other wine property

5.CARLOS SLIM

Carlos Slim Helú (born 28 January 1940 in Mexico City) is a Mexican business tycoon, investor, philanthropist, and engineer.From 2010 to 2013, Slim was ranked as the richest person in the world by the Forbes business magazine. He derived his fortune from his extensive holdings in a considerable number of Mexican companies through his conglomerate, Grupo Carso. As of October 2019, he is the eighth-richest person in the world according to Forbes'listing of The World's Billionaires, with he and his family having a net worth estimated at $59.5 billion. He is the richest person in Latin America.

His conglomerate includes education, health care, industrial manufacturing, transportation, real estate, media, energy, hospitality, entertainment, high-technology, retail, sports and financial services. He accounts for 40% of the listings on the Mexican Stock Exchange, while his net worth is equivalent to about 6 percent of Mexico's gross domestic product. As of 2016, he is the largest single shareholder of The New York Times Company.

Slim was born on 28 January 1940, in Mexico City, to Julián Slim Haddad (born Khalil Salim Haddad Aglamaz) and Linda Helú Atta, both Maronite Christians from Lebanon.Slim always knew he wanted to be a businessman and began to develop his business and investment acumen at a young age. He received business lessons from his father Julián, who taught him finance, management and accounting, teaching him how to read financial statements as well as the importance of keeping accurate financial records, a practice that Slim carries on to this day.

At the age of 11, Carlos invested in a government savings bond that taught him about the concept of compound interst. He eventually saved every financial and business transaction he made into a personal ledger book which he keeps to this day. At the age of 12, he made his first stock purchase, by purchasing shares in a Mexican bank. By the age of 15, Slim had become a shareholder in Mexico's largest bank. At the age of 17, he earned 200 pesos a week working for his father's company. He went on to study civil engineering at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, where he also concurrently taught algebra and linear programming.

Though Slim was a civil engineering major, he also displayed an interest in economics. He took economics courses in Chile once he finished his engineering degree. Graduating as a civil engineering major, Slim has stated that his mathematical ability and his background of linear programming was a key factor in helping him gain an edge in the business world, especially when reading financial statements.

6.AMANCIO ORTEGA

Amancio Ortega Gaona ( born 28 March 1936) is a Spanish billionaire businessman. He is the founder and former chairman of Inditex fashion group, best known for its chain of Zara clothing and accessories shops. As of December 2019, Ortega had a net worth of $68.3 billion, making him the second-wealthiest person in Europe after Bernard Arnault, and the sixth-wealthiest in the world. For a brief period of time in 2015, he was the richest man in the world, bypassing Bill Gates when his net worth peaked to $80 billion as Zara's parent company, Inditex’s, stock peaked.

In 1972, he founded Confecciones Goa to sell quilted bathrobes.

In 1975, he opened his first Zara store with his wife Rosalía Mera.

In 2009, Zara was part of the Inditex group (Industrias de Diseño Textil Sociedad Anónima), of which Ortega owned 59.29%, and aside from over 6,000 stores included the brands Zara, Massimo Dutti, Oysho, Zara Home, Kiddy's Class, Tempe, Stradivarius, Pull and Bear, Bershka and has more than 92,000 employees.His public appearance in 2000, as part of the warm-up prior to his company's initial public offering on the stock market in 2001, made headlines in the Spanish financial press. However, he has only ever granted interviews to three journalists.

In 2011, Ortega announced his imminent retirement from Inditex, parent company of the Zara chain, stating that he would ask Inditex vice-president and CEO Pablo Isla to take his place as head. In 2012 Ortega donated about €20 million to Caritas Internationalis, a Roman Catholic relief organisation.He purchased the Torre Picasso skyscraper in Madrid. He also purchased the Epic Residences and Hotel in Miami, Florida.As of 2016, he owned around 60% of Inditex, which is the holding company for Zara and related chains.

In July 2017, for its second edition of the AEF awards, the Spanish Association of Foundations awarded Amancio Ortega in the 2017 Philanthropic Initiative category. He also donated 300 million euros to fight cancer across Spain, which were invested in the purchase of 440 machines to detect the disease. As a result of this, the number of Spanish public hospitals equipped with stereotactic radiotherapy machines has risen from 20 to 70. However, these decisions were not unanimously welcomed and were criticized by some political parties like Podemos. Recently, news indicate that he has bought the Troy Block complex, known to the public as one of the buildings where Amazon Seattle has its headquarters.

7.LARRY ELLISON

Lawrence Joseph Ellison (born August 17, 1944) is an American businessman, entrepreneur, and philanthropist who is a co-founder and the executive chairman and chief technology officer (CTO) of Oracle Corporation As of October 2019, he was listed by Forbes magazine as the fourth-wealthiest person in the United States and as the sixth-wealthiest in the world, with a fortune of $69.1 billion, increased from $54.5 billion in 2018.

Larry Ellison was born in New York City, to an unwed Jewish mother. His biological father was an Italian American United States Army Air Corps pilot. After Ellison contracted pneumonia at the age of nine months, his mother gave him to her aunt and uncle for adoption He did not meet his biological mother again until he was 48.

Ellison moved to Chicago's South Shore, then a middle-class neighborhood. He remembers his adoptive mother as warm and loving, in contrast to his austere, unsupportive, and often distant adoptive father, who had adopted the name Ellison to honor his point of entry into the United States, Ellis Island. Louis Ellison was a government employee who had made a small fortune in Chicago real estate, only to lose it during the Great Depression.

Although Ellison was raised in a Reform Jewish home by his adoptive parents, who attended synagogue regularly, he remained a religious skeptic. Ellison states: "While I think I am religious in one sense, the particular dogmas of Judaism are not dogmas I subscribe to. I don't believe that they are real. They're interesting stories. They're interesting mythology, and I certainly respect people who believe these are literally true, but I don't. I see no evidence for this stuff." At age thirteen, Ellison refused to have a bar mitzvah celebration. Ellison says that his love affair with Israel is not connected to religious sentiments, but rather due to the innovative spirit of Israelis in the technology sector

Ellison studied at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, withdrawing after his second year, without taking final exams, because his adoptive mother had just died. After spending the summer of 1966 in California, he then attended the University of Chicago for one term, where he first encountered computer design. In 1966, aged 22, he moved to Berkeley, California.

8.MARK ZUCKERBERG

Mark Elliot Zuckerberg ( born May 14, 1984) is an American internet entrepreneur and philanthropist. Zuckerberg is known for co-founding and leading Facebook, Inc. and its namesake social networking website as its chairman, chief executive officer, and controlling shareholder. He also co-founded and is a board member of the solar sail spacecraft development project Breakthrough Starshot.

Born in White Plains, New York, Zuckerberg attended Harvard University, where he launched Facebook from his dormitory room on February 4, 2004, with college roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes. Originally launched to select college campuses, the site expanded rapidly and eventually beyond colleges, reaching one billion users by 2012. Zuckerberg took the company public in May 2012 with majority shares. His net worth is estimated to be $74 billion as of December 2019, increasing over the past year with Facebook stock as a whole. In 2007, at age 23, he became the world's youngest self-made billionaire. As of 2019, he is the only person under 50 in the Forbes ten richest people list, and the only one under 40 in the Top 20 Billionaires list.

Since 2010, Time magazine has named Zuckerberg among the 100 wealthiest and most influential people in the world as a part of its Person of the Year award. In December 2016, Zuckerberg was ranked 10th on Forbes list of The World's Most Powerful People. 

Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984, in White Plains, New York. His parents are Karen (née Kempner), a psychiatrist, and Edward Zuckerberg, a dentist. He and his three sisters, Randi, Donna and Arielle, were brought up in Dobbs Ferry, New York, a small Westchester County village about 21 miles north of Midtown Manhattan.Zuckerberg was raised in a Reform Jewish household, and his ancestors hailed from Germany, Austria and Poland. He had a Star Wars themed Bar Mitzvah when he turned 13 and once "questioned things" before deciding "religion is very important".

At Ardsley High School, Zuckerberg excelled in classes. After two years, he transferred to the private school Phillips Exeter Academy, in New Hampshire, where he won prizes in mathematics, astronomy, physics, and classical studies. In his youth, he also attended the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth summer camp. On his college application, Zuckerberg stated that he could read and write French, Hebrew, Latin, and ancient Greek. He was captain of the fencing team.

9.MICHEAL BLOOMBERG

Michael Rubens Bloomberg (born February 14, 1942) is an American politician, businessman, and author. He is the co-founder, CEO, and majority owner of Bloomberg L.P. He was mayor of New York City from 2002 to 2013. He is a candidate in the Democratic Party primaries for the 2020 United States presidential election.

Bloomberg grew up in Medford, Massachusetts and attended Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Business School. He began his career at the securities brokerage Salomon Brothers, before forming his own company in 1981 and spending the next twenty years as its chairman and CEO. He is the co-founder, CEO, and majority owner of Bloomberg L.P., a global financial services, software and mass media company that bears his name, and is known for its Bloomberg Terminal, a computer software system providing financial data widely used in the global financial services industry. As of November 2019, this made him the 9th richest person in the United States and the 14th richest person in the world; his net worth was estimated at $58 billion. Since signing The Giving Pledge whereby billionaires pledge to give away at least half of their wealth, Bloomberg has given away $8.2 billion. Of $3.3 billion he gave to the school, his $1.8 billion gift in 2018 to Johns Hopkins University for student financial aid was the largest private donation ever made to a higher education institution.

Bloomberg served as the 108th mayor of New York City, holding office for three consecutive terms, beginning his first in 2002. A lifelong Democrat before seeking elective office, Bloomberg switched his party registration in 2001 to run for mayor as a Republican. He defeated opponent Mark J. Green in a close election held just weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks. He won a second term in 2005 and left the Republican Party two years later. Bloomberg campaigned to change the city's term limits law and was elected to his third term in 2009 as an independent on the Republican ballot line. His final term as mayor ended on December 31, 2013. Bloomberg also served as chair of the board of trustees at his alma mater, Johns Hopkins University, from 1996 to 2002. After a brief stint as a full-time philanthropist, Bloomberg re-assumed the position of CEO at Bloomberg L.P. by the end of 2014.

Bloomberg officially launched his campaign for the Democratic Party's nomination in the 2020 presidential election on November 24, 2019, following weeks of speculation that he would join the race as a late entry.

10.LARRY PAGE

Lawrence Edward Page (born March 26, 1973) is an American computer scientist and Internet entrepreneur. He is best known for being one of the co-founders of Googlealong with Sergey Brin.

Page was the chief executive officer of Alphabet Inc. (Google's parent company) until stepping down on December 3, 2019. After stepping aside as Google CEO in August 2001, in favor of Eric Schmidt, he re-assumed the role in April 2011. He announced his intention to step aside a second time in July 2015, to become CEO of Alphabet, under which Google's assets would be reorganized. Under Page, Alphabet is seeking to deliver major advancements in a variety of industries. On December 4, 2019 Page stepped down from his CEO position from Alphabet. Both Page and Sergey Brin will remain controlling shareholders of Alphabet.

As of October 2019, Page is the 9th-richest person in the world, with a net worth of $55.8 billion. Forbes placed him 10th in the list "Billionaires 2019".

Page is the co-inventor of PageRank, a well-known search ranking algorithm for Google, which he wrote with Brin. Page received the Marconi Prize in 2004 with Brin.

Page is an investor in Tesla Motors. He has invested in renewable energy technology, and with the help of Google.org, Google's philanthropic arm, promotes the adoption of plug-in hybrid electric cars and other alternative energy investments. He is also a strategic backer in the Opener startup which is developing aerial vehicles for consumer travel.

Page is also interested in the socio-economic effects of advanced intelligent systems and how advanced digital technologies can be used to create abundance (as described in Peter Diamandis' book), provide for people's needs, shorten the workweek, and mitigate the potential detrimental effects of technological unemployment.

Page also helped to set up Singularity University, a transhumanist think-tank. Google is one of the institution's corporate founders and still funds scholarships at Singularity University.