$84.3 Billion
Cofounder, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Age
61
Source Of Wealth
Microsoft, Self Made
From his perch atop the world's largest private charitable foundation, Gates keeps pushing to save lives in the developing world through efforts to eliminate polio, attack malaria and expand childhood vaccinations. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is also focused on K-12 education in the U.S., although it admitted this year that it's a "real struggle" to make changes to the system. In June 2016 his team created a chicken coop in a Manhattan skyscraper to showcase the importance a few chickens can have for some of the world's poorest people. "There is no investment that has a return percentage anything like being able to breed chickens," Gates said at the time. Read more...
CEO, Berkshire Hathaway
Age
86
Source Of Wealth
Berkshire Hathaway, Self Made
Self-Made Score
8
Residence
Omaha, NE
Citizenship
United States
Marital Status
Widowed, Remarried
Children
3
Education
Bachelor of Arts / Science, University of Nebraska Lincoln; Master of Science, Columbia University
The Oracle of Omaha, Warren Buffett ranked number two on the Forbes 400 for 15 years straight. That streak ended in September 2016 when he was overtaken (by Jeff Bezos) despite adding $3.5 billion to his fortune in the previous year. The last time he ranked so low, Bill Clinton was in the White House. He spent parts of 2016 stumping for Hillary, and promised to release his tax returns if Donald Trump did the same. Unlike Trump, Buffett does not think America needs to be made great again. "The babies being born in America today are the luckiest crop in history," he wrote in his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders. "For 240 years it's been a terrible mistake to bet against America, and now is no time to start." Such optimism makes sense coming from one of the most successful investors in history. Shares of Berkshire Hathaway remain near all-time highs. One investment not doing well: Wells Fargo. The company, in which Berkshire has a 10% stake, is mired in scandal for creating 2 million accounts for customers without their permission. Berkshire also has stakes in American Express and Coca-Cola and owns Geico, Dairy Queen and Fruit of the Loom. In July 2016 Buffett gave away nearly $2.9 billion in Berkshire stock to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and his family members' foundations, in what has become his annual summer gift. Known for his relative frugality, Buffett still lives in the Omaha home he purchased for $31,500 in 1958. He says his best investment was buying Benjamin Graham's legendary book, "The Intelligent Investor," in 1949.
Age
80
Source Of Wealth
Zara, Self Made
Residence
La Coruna, Spain
Citizenship
Spain
Zara founder Amancio Ortega is the richest man in Europe and the wealthiest retailer in the world. He started manufacturing textiles through a small family company in 1963 before cofounding Zara with his ex-wife Rosalía Mera (d. 2013) in 1975. By the mid-1980s, Ortega had expanded throughout Spain, and he opened his first store in America in 1989. As he expanded his empire, which today includes Zara, Massimo Dutti and Pull&Bear, he caught the retail establishment by surprise, limiting advertising, expanding aggressively, and controlling much of his own supply chain. Louis Vuitton fashion director Daniel Piette once called Inditex "possibly the most innovative and devastating retailer in the world. Ortega powered through his country's financial crisis, personally gaining $45 billion from 2009 to 2014 as shares of Inditex defied the rest of the Spanish stock market. He stepped down as chairman of Inditex in 2011 but still hauls in more than $400 million in dividends annually. He has been plowing his spare cash into real estate investments all over the world, including Madrid, Barcelona, London, Chicago, Miami and New York, amassing a portfolio worth more than $8 billion.
