On Thursday, Jeff Bezos overtook Bill Gates and became the richest person in the World, only for a limited time though. As the huge gains of the Amazon stock started to slow down, his net worth went below the $90 billion mark and he cemented a place at the second position, with the top place going back to the Microsoft Founder Bill Gates. As the records of Forbes, Bill Gates has got the title of the World’s richest person 18 times in the past 23 years.
Forbes has been tracking and maintaining records of the rich-list for nearly 30 years. A surprising fact is that in all these years, only 7 people have been at the top of the list. Presented here is some relevant information of these individuals who managed to succeed financially through their hard work and intelligence:
Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos, on 27th July, became one of the few to have topped the rich-list of Forbes, though his stint only lasted for 4 hours. The Founder, Chairman and the CEO of the World’s largest Online Shopping retailer Amazon has had a meteoric rise to the top. His firm’s potential for growth is increasing with each day and is in neck-to-neck competition with the other global leaders: Microsoft, Google (Subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.), and Apple.
Aside from Amazon, Bezos has other businesses including Blue Origin, an aerospace manufacturer which aims to develop technology to enable humans to access the space outside our Planet Earth; and a popular American Daily Newspaper The Washington Post.
Bill Gates
Probably every person who doesn’t live under a rock knows about Bill Gates, he has been the richest person in the world for a long time now. However, after co-founding the World’s largest software Company Microsoft and leading it to greatness, he shifted his focus and attention towards the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation from 2006. Then in 2014, he quit as the Chairman of the Company, and currently serves as the Technology advisor to the new Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Now that he is not a part of the day-to-day operations of Microsoft, he is busy in his work of Philanthropy and leading his Foundation.
Warren Buffett
Warren Buffett is someone considered to be one of the most successful investors in the World, and his experience in the art of investing money on businesses had made him top the List of World’s richest people in 2008. The primary reason for his success is the immense knowledge in economics and investing he had gathered since his young ages, the application of this knowledge is what made him reach this far.
He is currently the CEO, Chairman, and President of Berkshire Hathaway Inc, a multinational conglomerate holding company which has acquired shares in major companies like Apple, The Coca-Cola Company, and IBM, and also holds major parts of a few Airline Companies while having some wholly-owned business in the sectors of Insurance, Retail and Chemicals among others.
Amancio Ortega
Amancio Ortega is a Spanish Businessman who likes to keep his life completely private, so much that his first photograph ever published was in 1999, 24 years after he set-up his first Zara store with his wife. Coming to Zara, he was the Co-Founder of Inditex Fashion Group, which owns the large chain of Zara clothing and accessories retail stores.
After leaving school at an early age of 14 due to his father’s job transfer(he was a railway worker), his interest went into the art of cloth-making. After working in shops and learning to make clothes by hand, he found success after setting up his business and came at the top of the rich-list twice in 2015 and 2016.
Yoshiaki Tsutsumi
Yoshiaki Tsutsumi, a Japanese Real Estate businessman was the first person to be listed at the top of the Forbes list of Billionaires in 1987. Presently, he has no place in the list as his company Seibu Corporation fell and was removed from the Tokyo Stock Exchange because of a huge scandal unearthed in 2005, which involved falsification of information regarding the shares held by the major shareholders of the company.
To be listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, there’s a rule that does not allow major shareholders to hold more than 80% of the stakes in a firm, but in Seibu Corporation, over 88% of the shares were held by the major shareholders, and this fact was hidden by presenting false information and claiming that the major shareholders held only 64% shares of the Company. He was arrested in 2005 for a period of four years due to this scandal and fell off the Forbes Billionaire list in 2007.
Carlos Slim
Carlos Slim is a Mexican investor who reigned for a three year period from 2010-2013 as the Richest person in the world. His educational background is interesting, as he completed his civil engineering and then took a sharp turn towards studies in economics, the reason being his acute curiosity in the world of Business and Investment. Slim always wanted to be a businessman since his childhood, his father helped him along the way and taught him the various concepts of financial accounting, the knowledge of which he still has to this day.
His knowledge and ability in accounting are so great that apparently, he doesn’t even keep a Computer in his office! Carlos slim prefers to record, classify and maintain his financial data in an old-fashioned way through pen and notebooks. However, considering the huge scale of his investments and business, it’s likely that he definitely would be taking some technological help to solve some of his problems in accounting. Like Warren Buffett, Carlos Slim also achieved most of his fortune through ingenious ways of investing and grabbing shares. A majority of his wealth came from the holdings in companies he made through Groupo Carso, a conglomerate company.
Taikichiro Mori
The late Taikichiro Mori, a Japanese Real Estate Tycoon and the founder of the Mori Building Company in Tokyo. His interest in the world of Real Estate made him quit his job as an economics professor and then after entering into business, he became the richest person in the world in 1991 for a period of 2 years. Unfortunately, he died on January 30, 1993, due to a heart failure at the age of 88.