According to the 2015 Forbes Billionaires list, Bill Gates is The World’s richest man with a net worth of 79.2 Billion Dollars, Gates has held this position an astonishing 16 times in the past 21 years!
The second richest man in The World is Mexican Carlos Slim Helu self–made Billionaire and father to 6, and is worth 77.1 Billion! Carlos has made his fortune in the Mexican telecom industry over the last two decades, according to Forbes, he paid $5.6 billion to buy out AT&T’s 8.3% stake in pan-Latin American wireless carrier America Movil.
Ranking number 3 is Warren Buffett, who is this year’s top gainer with an astounding increase of $14.7 Billion for his Berkshire Hathaway’s rising share price.
Sitting at number 4 is Spain’s Amancio Ortega who is The World’s richest retailer and co-founder of Zara, and also a self-made Billionaire.
The remainder of the top 10 include Larry Ellison at number 5- founder of the database software firm Oracle, Charles and David Koch , Christy and Jim Walton of Wal-Mart and Liliane Bettencourt, daughter of Eugene Schueller, who founded L’Oreal.
There is no surprise that majority of The World’s top Billionaire’s come from the United States with a huge 7 out of the top 10 alone. California has 131 out of the full 1826 Billionaire’s worldwide coming third to the entire countries of the USA and China. The third top Billionaire producing country is Germany with 103 followed by India with 90 and Russia with 88.
Nearly 200 Women made it onto the World list of Billionaire’s this year, this is another record, although 90% of the list is male. 46 of the list were under 40 and the average age of the top 20 was 60.
65% of the World’s Billionaires made their fortunes alone, 24 made the list from crafting casino and gambling games, and 4 from video game development. 19 grew their Billions in the alcohol industry while 42% of billionaires who earned their fortune before the age of 40 did it in technology fields.
See Top 10 Billionaires below (click to enlarge)