Forbes' billionaires list gets bigger, and richer too

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With an estimated $73 billion fortune, Carlos Slim Helu tops Forbes' list of the world's richest billionaires for the fourth year in a row.

This year Forbes has uncovered a record 1,426 billionaires. That is 200 more than we found in 2012, another record breaking year. It’s also nearly 10 times as many as Forbes pinned down in 1987, the year we began tracking fortunes around the world.

The group is worth $5.4 trillion, an astounding 17 percent jump from a year ago. The average net worth of a Forbes billionaire is $3.8 billion, $100 million more than a year ago. More than two-thirds of the world’s richest added to their fortunes. Only 259 from last year’s list are poorer than a year ago. Sixty dropped out of the ranks, including Zynga’s Mark Pincus and former Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon. Another eight passed away.

Mexico’s Carlos Slim is the richest person in the world for the fourth year in a row, followed by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. At number three for the first time is Spaniard Amancio Ortega, founder of fast fashion phenom Zara. He is worth $57 billion, up $19.5 billion, making him the year’s biggest gainer. Legendary investor Warren Buffett slips to number 4, the first time since 2000 that he hasn’t been among the top 3. L’Oreal heiress Liliane Bettencourt moves back into the top 10 for the first time since 1999 and reclaims the title of world’s richest woman.

Among the notable newcomers were founders of some of the world’s hottest brands – such as Dolce & Gabbana, Tory Burch and Chobani yogurt, as well as the first ever billionaires from Angola, Guernsey, Nepal, Swaziland and Vietnam.

No. 1: Carlos Slim Helu & familyNet Worth: $73 billion
Source: telecom
Citizenship: Mexico

• World's richest man for the fourth year in a row.
• Net worth up $4 billion versus 2012 but still $1 billion shy of his all-time record; boost came from surging stock prices at his financial arm, Grupo Financiero Inbursa, and at his Grupo Carso industrial and retail giant.
• Pan-Latin American mobile telecom outfit America Movil remains his most valuable holding at $36.3 billion; the company spread its wings to Europe in the past year, buying pieces of Dutch telecom company KPN and Telekom Austria
• Bought a majority of struggling Spanish soccer team Real Oviedo.
• Latin America’s most generous person, his foundation pledged to translate into Spanish 1,000 videos from the Khan Academy education nonprofit website. Slim also hosted Bill Gates in late February; the two men announced they are funding research to improve farmers' yields and reduce hunger.

No. 2: Bill GatesNet worth: $67 billion
Source: Microsoft
Citizenship: U.S.A

• World's biggest philanthropist has given away $28 billion, the vast majority of it to his foundation, which is working to eradicate such diseases as polio and malaria.
• Net worth is up by $6 billion vs. March 2012 due to gains in his investment portfolio. Holdings include tech hygiene firm Ecolab and Mexican Coke bottler FEMSA, both up more than 20% in the past year.
• Microsoft stock --he owns about 5% of the company -- accounts for just 18% of his net worth.
• In February the first 12 non-Americans joined Bill Gates’ and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge, in which the ultra-wealthy pledge to give away at least half their net worth to charity. New pledgers include Richard Branson of the U.K. and India’s Azim Premji.
• Gates recently said the only thing left on his bucket list was, "Don't die."

No. 3: Amancio OrtegaNet worth: $57 billion
Source: Zara
Citizenship: Spain

• Year’s biggest gainer: fortune up $19.5 billion
• Moves to number 3, up from number 5 richest last year. Now ahead of Warren Buffett.
• Driving the jump is a more than 50% rise in value of Inditex shares; Ortega, who stepped down as the firm’s chairman in 2011, still owns nearly 60% of the shares.
• He also has real estate portfolio, estimated to be worth more than $4 billion, that includes iconic Torre Picasso, a 43-story skyscraper in Madrid (Google is a tenant), plus properties in Madrid, London, Chicago, San Francisco and New York.

No. 4: Warren BuffettNet worth: $53.5 billion
Source: Berkshire Hathaway
Citzenship: U.S.A.

• Year’s second biggest gainer added $9.5 billion to his fortune as Berkshire Hathaway shares rose 26% year over year
• First time he’s not among top three richest since 2000.
• Investors applaud his dealmaking savvy, and this year was no exception as he made a couple of notable moves: in February, announced a deal with Brazilian billionaire Jorge Paulo Lemann's 3G Capital to snap up iconic ketchup producer H.J. Heinz Co. for $23.2 billion; bought Oriental Trading in November 2012.
• World’s second most generous person, he gave $1.5 billion to the Gates Foundation in July 2012, bringing his lifetime giving to nearly $17.3 billion. On his birthday in August 2012 Buffett pledged $3 billion of stock to his children's foundations.

No. 5: Larry EllisonNet worth: $43 billion
Source: Oracle
Citizenship: U.S.A.

• Software mogul is $7 billion richer than a year ago, thanks to more than 20% jump in the value of Oracle stock.
• In June he bought 98% of Hawaiian island of Lanai from billionaire David Murdock for a reported $500 million.
• Just recently bought Island Air, a Hawaiian airline. Purchase price was not disclosed.
• Continues to buy property in Malibu.
• Gearing up for the America’s Cup yacht races in San Francisco later in 2013.
• Supports the Ellison Medical Foundation, which does research on aging and age-related diseases. Gave $45 million worth of Oracle shares to the foundation in April 2012.

No. 6: Charles Koch/ No. 6: David Koch (tie)Net worth: $34 billion
Source: diversified
Citizenship: U.S.A.

• World’s richest siblings added $9 billion apiece to their fortunes over the past year.
• They own a combined 84% of Koch Industries, country’s second largest private company with $115 billion in estimated sales, up 15% in the past year
• Also got boost from improving operations at Georgia Pacific, maker of Angel Soft and Quilted Northern toilet paper, Brawny paper towels, and Dixie cups. Sold more than $1 billion worth of toilet paper in 2011.
• David, who runs the chemical technology side of Koch Industries, is the richest New Yorker.
• Things didn’t go so well on the political front as brothers failed in their quest to unseat Barack Obama from the White House ("Bitterly disappointing," he told Forbes in an interview after the election).

No. 8: Li Ka-shingNet worth: $31 billion
Source: diversified
Citizenship: Hong Kong

• Once again Asia’s richest person and the only one from the region among the world’s top 20 richest.
• His fortune jumped $5.5 billion to $31 billion, as shares of his biggest holdings, Cheung Kong, Hutchison Whampoa and Husky Energy, all rose more than 10%. He also received 2012 dividends of $860 million.
• Li's businesses employ 260,000 ­people around the world in 52 countries.
• Li-controlled companies bought British gas supplier Wales & West Utilities for $1 billion in October; his third utilities acquisition in the U.K. in 24 months. He now supplies gas to a quarter of all Brits.
• Investor in such tech outfits as Facebook, spotify, and social TV platform Stevie.

No. 9: Liliane Bettencourt
Net worth: $30 billion
Source: L’Oreal
Citizenship: France

• Heiress to L’Oreal cosmetics fortune jumps to 9th richest in 2013 from 15th richest last year, thanks to a more than 30% rise in the price of L’Oreal stock. Her net worth is $6 billion higher than a year ago.
• Now the world’s richest woman. She last cracked the top 10 in 1999.
• Her father founded L’Oreal. Bettencourt and her family own more than 30% of the company.
• Bettencourt’s assets were placed under the guardianship of her daughter in 2011 after a three-year legal battle. Bettencourt, widowed and age 90, suffers from dementia. Her grandson, Jean-Victor Meyers, took her spot on the L’Oreal board in February 2012.

No. 10: Bernard Arnault
Net worth: $29 billion
Source: LVMH
Citizenship: France

• Falls from no. 4 in world to no. 10 due to more information about his ownership stake.
• Also a factor: Forbes now values his direct stake in Christian Dior, which in turn has a 41% stake in LVMH and trades at a near 20% discount to the underlying shares; previously we had valued the shares in LVMH.
• LVMH shares rose more than 6%; U.S. sales grew at a faster rate than sales in Asia region in the fourth quarter
• Arnault denied reports that his request for Belgian citizenship last year was related to the country’s tax policies.
• It was announced in October that he will be knighted for his services in the U.K.

More stories from Forbes

• See more of The World's Billionaires
• Billionaire Newcomers
• The World's Youngest Billionaires
• The World's Richest Women
• Billionaire Dropoffs

Forbes' billionaires list gets bigger, and richer too

Forbes: Is Cuba The Next Emerging Market?

forbes

By Alexa van Sickle

On Dec. 11, Cuba authorized the formation of non-agricultural cooperatives. The latest in a series of small liberalizations, this measure could lead to the formation of small and mid-sized businesses in Cuba, and transform sectors of the country’s economy.

Small changes allowing some private enterprise in Cuba are coinciding with the U.S.’s own policy shifts: As a result, the economic embargo, which prevents most business and travel in Cuba for U.S. firms and citizens, is becoming more porous. In 2009 President Obama relaxed travel restrictions and remittances for Cuban-Americans, enabling them to invest in small private businesses. U.S. citizens can now legally travel to Cuba. But is it time to look at Cuba as a viable emerging market?

U.S. public opinion is shifting in favor of normalizing ties, and the American business lobby in particular wants to take advantage of the untapped market, which it believes is worth $1 billion a year.

Agricultural Products

The U.S. is, despite the embargo, the largest exporter of food and agricultural products to Cuba, providing around 30% of Cuba’s food imports. Under the 2000 Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act, hundreds of U.S. businesspeople travel to Cuba every year to sell agricultural goods. The catch is that Cuba must pay cash up front on these transactions.

Regardless, Cuba has bought over $3.5 billion in agricultural products from the United States since trade began in 2001. Modest sales of $138 million that year climbed steadily to a peak of $710 million in 2008, according to statistics from the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council.

U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba have declined in recent years, as Cuba’s economic troubles have caused it to look elsewhere for cheaper and less complex terms — for example from Vietnam and Venezuela. The U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council noted that agricultural exports declined 6% in 2011, following a 31% decline in 2010.

Peter Orsi, reporting for the Associated Press from an agricultural fair in Havana in November 2012, observed that “some purchases of U.S. goods have held steady, like soybean and poultry, [but] others have tanked, including branded processed food and grains.” But he added that U.S. firms at the fair – which included Kellogg’s, Gatorade, Hormel, and Hunt — were optimistic, and “jockeying to be in position” when the embargo is lifted.

Chilly Business Climate

Cuba has potential opportunities for growth in a number of sectors, including tourism, high-value agriculture and even natural resources, but conducting business there is still challenging, noted Richard E. Feinberg in a Brookings Institution report titled ‘The New Cuban Economy: What Role Foreign Investment?”

“In principle, Cuba’s foreign investment laws offer favorable conditions and … some JVs [joint ventures] are successfully navigating the Cuban economic system. But the government has been keeping many suitors waiting for the final green light.”

He said foreign investors encounter an “elastic legal framework” and a “chilly business climate,” but explains that there are some benefits in Cuba’s socialist economy for foreign companies: “Once admitted, JVs are often granted monopolies, or dominant market shares, in key market segments … The Cuban state restricts market entry by other foreign competitors or by national enterprises.”

In the growing tourism sector, many European and Canadian companies are going ahead with large hotel and golf developments — despite some high-profile cases in which foreign executives have ended up in jail — because they believe getting in from the ground up will pay off hugely when the country opens up for U.S. tourists.

A Matter of Time?

How likely is it that the embargo will soon be lifted? On the U.S. side, the embargo won’t shift without congressional approval, and there is still significant opposition to engaging with the island. It would take a bigger change within Cuba, which might not happen next week or even next year. But Cuba’s increasing emphasis on foreign investment is an opportunity for sustainable growth and change. There has also been a significant, but less remarked-upon, development: In 2011 it became legal, for the first time in 50 years, for Cubans to buy and sell property. This could very well lead to major societal shifts and, eventually, political ones, which could help thaw U.S.-Cuba relations.

Feinberg concludes that until the embargo is lifted, the U.S. should “build on the recent liberalization regarding remittances and travel to further facilitate assistance to the emerging private sector in Cuba.”

It may be too soon to jump in, but certainly not too soon for American companies to start thinking about the future and investigating opportunities in Cuba. Businesses should monitor U.S.-Cuba relations and the developments for private enterprise in Cuba. The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control publishes alerts when Cuban policy is amended, and the office also recently loosened business travel restrictions.

“Cuba is becoming a more and more important market for U.S. companies … Everybody wants to have some kind of presence,” Hector Rainey, managing director of Atlanta’s Intervision Foods, told Orsi at the Havana agricultural fair. “If something changes all of a sudden, they have an angle here.”

Forbes: Is Cuba The Next Emerging Market?

China's economy is a Ponzi scheme

By  Gady Epstein 

China's economy is the envy of the world. As developed nations struggle to eke out a bit of growth and to get unemployment rates out of double digits, Chinese output gallops ahead at an 8% annual rate. This $4.7 trillion economy, it seems, is the world's dynamo and the prototype for the future.

Take a close look, however, and you may come away thinking China resembles nothing so much as Japan shortly before its stock and property markets melted down two decades ago. A speculative frenzy of borrowing and bidding up is at work. If and when prices crash, there will be hell to pay.

Signs of the times: government bureaucracies funding themselves by foisting debt on state-owned business enterprises; local governments raising capital by selling land at sky-high prices to corporations they own; and a People's Bank of China lavishing liquidity on the entire system in a way that makes Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke look downright stingy.
"It's a Ponzi scheme whose head is the central bank, and it can print money," says Victor Shih, a China expert at Northwestern University.

FULL STORY...

China's economy is a Ponzi scheme

A Day In The Life Of Yuri Milner, Web Billionaire

DST Global founder Yuri Milner; photo by Paul Eng

Parmy Olson

You wouldn’t think Yuri Milner was in a hurry. When I first interviewed him in London last January with Forbes’ San Francisco bureau chief Eric Savitz, it was clear that the Internet investor we’ve just ranked a billionaire liked to take his time in conversation. Biting into a crustless tuna sandwich, the former physicist would methodically chew it before answering a question about the way social networks were connecting the world. “When you have a few billion people connected with screens, not voice… screens are important,” he said in a Russian accent tinged with an American lilt. Chew, chew, chew. Zen-like pause. “You can transmit a thousand times more information.”

More Here >>

A Day In The Life Of Yuri Milner, Web Billionaire

China y Rusia, la ‘casa’ de los ricos

Moscú es ahora la ciudad que cuenta con el mayor número de multimillonarios, 79, seguida por Nueva York con 58, dijo Forbes en su lista anual de la gente más rica del mundo.

China y Rusia, la 'casa' de los nuevos ricos

China y Rusia, la ‘casa’ de los ricos