Billionaire Watch
Billionaires worth over $100 billion made $270 billion in 2020
Latest data reveals that the world’s top billionaires gained $270.35 billion in 2020.
The year 2020 was good to the world’s richest people on the planet despite an era disrupted by one of the worst pandemics in human history.
The top five richest people in the world have a wealth valuation of at least $100 billion and unsurprisingly four of such rich individuals are from the technology sector.
Data retrieved from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index revealed such billionaires gained $270.35 billion in 2020.
READ: World’s richest people lose 2.1% of their wealth in a day
Jeff Bezos
Top on the list is Jeff Bezos, the CEO, and founder of Amazon.
- He is presently valued at about $190 billion, showing a gain of a whopping $75.4 billion.
- Coming from strong gains in his online retail company, now worth over $1.63 trillion, Amazon is the world’s largest retail cyber company site, in terms of market value.
READ: Jeff Bezos becomes first person to cross $200 billion net worth, as Zuckerberg crosses $100 billion
Elon Musk
Tech whiz kid, Elon Musk, who recently overtook the founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, is ranked 2nd. He is now estimated to be worth about $170billion, showing a yearly gain not seen in modern history, of about $142 billion.
- He founded and leads top tech companies like Tesla, Space X, and Neuralink, which has shown admirable strides in the tech ecosystem.
- Tesla Stock surprisingly has returned about 650% in 2020 alone to investors and now has a market capitalization that stands at $669 billion (far bigger than Africa’s largest economy).
- He is within the striking distance of the present world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos.
READ: Elon Musk needs $20 billion wealth gain to clinch world’s richest man title
Bill Gates
In the third position is another popular tech founder, Bill Gates, the founder of the most valuable software company, Microsoft.
- Bill Gates made his wealth when he simplified the computer operating system by creating Microsoft Windows, the leading operating system in personal computers globally today.
- For many years, Gates had been the world’s richest man. He now has a wealth fortune of $132 billion with a yearly gain of about $18.6 billion.
READ: This is what Dangote wants to emulate from Bill Gates
Bernard Arnault
Europe’s top entrepreneur and French celebrated fashion icon, Bernard Arnault, is fourth on the list with a fortune now estimated to be worth $114 billion, with a yearly gain of $9.15 billion.
- He is the only billionaire on the top 5 that isn’t from the tech ecosystem.
- The french-born billionaire got extremely wealthy through his flair for investing in leading luxury brand chains.
- Most of his wealth comes from his controlling stake of LVMH, which he controls through his holding known as Christian Dior.
READ: This billionaire made $39 billion in 2019, thanks to his luxury brands
READ: Top 5 richest people gain over $200 billion in 365 days
Mark Zuckerberg
Facebook’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, is fifth on the list, with a fortune estimated to be worth $104 billion and a yearly gain of about $25.2 billion.
- He owns the biggest online social medial company, popularly referred to as Facebook, and other household tech brands including Instagram and WhatsApp.
READ: Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, worth $104 billion keeps $2.3 billion in cash
Bottom line
Through stock holdings and investments prevailing in the world’s biggest companies, their founders, major shareholders unsurprisingly made the list of 2020 top gainers amid an era that has seen the wealth of the middle-class earners erode globally due to rising inflation.
- Finally, as global jobs and social mobility go remote, tech brands are better positioned to gain in the near term, thereby printing more gains to their owners as seen above.
Billionaire Watch
How young Elon Musk started and sold 3 businesses for $1.9bn before Tesla
We look at the 3 successful businesses Elon Musk founded and sold for a collective $1.9bn before starting Tesla.
Success is never an accident. It is most times the result of many years of hard work and consistent effort. Elon Musk is popular today for his electric car company Tesla and his space project SPACE X. But long before these, he was already a multi-millionaire and had founded 3 successful companies which he sold for a collective $1.9bn.
The purpose of this article is to paint a clear picture of what it takes to be among the top 1% of any field. It takes years of consistent hard work to get there. Elon Musk is the perfect example of an individual with a very strong work ethic. His story below will prove that to you.
This article will briefly look at the 3 successful businesses Elon Musk founded and sold for a collective $1.9bn before starting Tesla. Let’s go!
READ: Blue Origin Vs Space X: Bezos and Musk’s subtle battle for supremacy
Blaster ($500)
A 12-year-old Elon Musk facing bullying in high school and a not so friendly dad taught himself how to code. According to the Inc. Magazine, he mastered BASIC a general-purpose coding language making use of a commodore PC he acquired himself. He later that year, sold the code for his PC game Blastar to a PC magazine for approximately $500.
This was his first business endeavour which he started and sold.
READ: Tesla investor sues Elon Musk for causing problems with his tweets
ZIP 2 ($340m)
After the sale of Blastar for $500, Elon Musk and his brother Kimbal took a $28,000 seed money from their dad and started another internet venture, Zip 2. They rented an office and slept in it because they couldn’t afford a house.
Zip 2 was a web software startup that created online city guides for newspapers. The software was patronized by the New York Times and other notable media companies.
Elon Musk and his brother Kimbal sold Zip 2 to PC giants Compaq for $340m. The year was 1999 and Elon Musk was 28 years old.
READ: Reinvestment: The powerful strategy used by the 2 richest men in the world
X.com/PayPal ($1.5bn)
Elon Musk continued on his journey of starting companies and selling them. He took $10m out of his earnings from the Zip 2 deal and joined the internet boom.
He founded x.com an online platform he envisioned to be the future of internet banking. In 2000 X.com merged with a Fintech startup, Confinity, founded by Peter Thiel, another would-be billionaire. Both companies combined to become what we know as PayPal today. Elon musk was named CEO of PayPal and had the highest number of shares in the company.
In 2002 PayPal was acquired by eBay for a whopping $1.5bn.
READ: Elon Musk gains $25 billion in a day, as Tesla surges by 20%
What you should know
Elon Musk has often stressed the need to be consistent and have strong work ethics. In a graduation ceremony by the USC Marshall School Of Business, Elon Musk shared his opinion on work ethics according to CNBC.
“You need to work super-hard. Work hard every waking hour,” Musk said in 2014.
“If you do the simple math, and say if somebody else is working 50 hours [a week] and you’re working 100, you’ll get twice [as much] done in the course of a year as the other company.”
We hope this Monday article will inspire you to work harder and strive to get more work done in record time.
Billionaire Watch
Meet Nassef Sawiris of Egypt, the second richest man in Africa after Dangote
The Sawiris family is the richest family in Egypt with vast investments and companies in nearly all sectors of the nation’s economy.
We are all familiar with Alhaji Aliko Dangote, the richest man in Nigeria and the whole of Africa, whose current worth is estimated at $16.4 billion according to Bloomberg.
He is followed by Nassef Sawiris, an Egyptian billionaire and business magnate who runs the most lucrative part of his family’s business Empire. According to Forbes, Nassef Sawiris is worth $8.5bn and is currently the 297th richest man in the world.
READ: Aliko Dangote is the only African among the world’s 100 richest peopl
Meet the Sawiris family
The Sawiris family is the richest family in Egypt with vast investments and companies in nearly all sectors of the nation’s economy. The patriarch of the Sawiris family is Onsi Sawiris. The 90 years old business magnate started the business in 1950 and has successfully transferred it to his two sons, Nassef and Naguib.
Nassef is the younger of the sons and also the richest.
READ: Dangote’s stakes in his sugar enterprise has earned him N90 billion in 365 days
Nassef Sawiris ($8.5bn)
Nassef Sawiris owns and runs Orascom construction, the construction arm of the Sawiris family business. He also has several personal investments and dealings aside from the family business. Here is a brief outline of his major business portfolios and investments according to Forbes.
- He runs OCI, one of the world’s largest nitrogen fertilizer producers, with plants in Texas and Iowa.
- He runs Orascom construction, one of the biggest construction companies in Egypt.
- He has a 5% stake in Adidas and sits on the supervisory board of the company. This is his biggest and most lucrative investment according to Forbes.
- Nassef Sawiris has a huge stake in West African Cement Company, Lafarge Holcim.
- His latest acquisition is a 5% stake in New York-listed firm, Madison Square Garden Sports, owner of the NBA Knicks and the NHL Rangers teams.
READ: Jeff Bezos is world’s richest man, as Elon Musk loses $15 billion in a day
What you should know
Nassef Sawiris and Aliko Dangote share similarities in the sense that they both enjoy immense support from the Egyptian and Nigerian government respectively.
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