Friday, March 11, 2011

The World’s Top Billionaires: List of Emerging Market Billionaires Grows

A little over half of the world’s new billionaires hail from Emerging Markets, particularly from the BRIC (Brazil,Russia, India, China)

According to Forbes,

Brazil, Russia, India and China produced 108 out of the 214 new names added. Lakshmi Mittal of ArcellorMittal fame topped the list at No. 6 among the rich guys in the BRIC countries. His net worth was put at $31.5 billion. ArcellorMittal is the world’s largest steel maker. Brazilian investor and owner of a number of oil and mining companies, Eike Batista, will probably forever be known as the man who helped bring the 2016 Summer Olympics to Rio de Janeiro. His net worth is around $30 billion. Not bad being the son of the guys behind the world’s leading iron ore exporter, Brazilian multinational Vale.

Others in the Top 20:

9. Mukesh Ambani, India, Reliance Industries, $27 billion
11. (This name is perfect…with a name like this, you have to be filthy rich) Li Ka-Shing, China, Hutchinson Whampoa, $26 billion
14. Vladimir Lisin, Novolipetsk Steel, $24 billion

see list here

Let me add that among the top 500, there are lots of non-BRIC emerging markets billionaires. The distribution appears diffused where some are from Latin America (Columbia, Chile, Mexico, Argentina) MENA (Saudi Arabia, South Africa) and ASEAN.

For ASEAN region we have:

Malaysia: Robert Kuok, Lee Shin Cheng, Quek Leng Chan, Teh Hong Piao, Syed Mokhtar AlBukhary and Yeoh Tiong Lay & family

Philippines: Henry Sy (ranked 173rd)

Indonesia: Michael Hartono, Peter Sondakh, Martua Sitorus and Low Tuck Kwong

Thailand: Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi

The growing list of Emerging Market billionaires are just symptomatic of the wealth convergence happening from today’s ‘globalized’ environment.

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