5 top billionaires who died in the past year

In 2022, 26 billionaires died around the world. They were worth a total of $40.9 billion, according to Forbes.

Americans made up almost half of the list of dead billionaires last year. There were also numerous deaths of billionaires from France, Austria, and India.

In this article, we will look at five of these late billionaires, focusing on how much they earned last year.

Leonardo Del Vecchio: In 1961, Del Vecchio opened an eyewear workshop in a small Italian town. This workshop eventually grew into Luxottica, the world’s largest manufacturer and retailer of sunglasses and prescription glasses.

He was one of five children raised in Milan and was placed in an orphanage at the age of seven because his mother could no longer afford to care for him. He opened his eyewear workshop at the age of 25 on a small plot of land provided by the government.

After acquiring brands like Ray-Ban, Oakley, and Sunglass Hut, Luxottica is now a market leader. In 2018, Luxottica and Essilor, a major player in French visual health, merged to form EssilorLuxottica.

He passed away in June 2022 at the age of 87 and had a $24.8 billion net worth.

Dietrich Mateschitz: In 1987, Mateschitz cofounded Red Bull, which completely changed the western world’s market for energy drinks.

In 1980, while serving as a marketing executive for a German consumer products company, he first encountered energy drinks while travelling through Asia. Soon after, he joined forces with Thai businessman Chaleo Yoovidhya to create Red Bull by adding carbonation to the Asian energy drinks Chaleo was already producing.

Red Bull invested a lot of money in marketing campaigns that associated its energizer with action sports and a fast-paced lifestyle. Red Bull made $8 billion in sales and 9.8 billion cans in 2021. At the time of his passing, Mateschitz ranked as the 71st richest man in the world.

He passed away in October 2022 at age 78 and had a $20.2 billion net worth

Pallonji Mistry: Mistry served as the chairman of the Shapoorji Pallonji group, a major engineering and construction company that constructed iconic structures such as the Reserve Bank of India building in Mumbai and the palace of the Sultan of Oman.

At the age of 18, he began working for his family’s construction business, which he eventually took over after his father’s passing in 1975. Under Mistry’s direction, his company expanded to include projects in Africa, such as the Ghanaian president’s office. With an 18.4% stake in Tata Sons, the holding company for the Tata group, Mistry was the single-largest shareholder and the source of a large portion of his wealth.

He passed away in June 2022 at the age of 93 and had a $15 billion net worth.

Kim Jung-ju: The South Korean online gaming company Nexon was founded in 1994 by Kim, who also went by the name Jay, and he served as chairman of its holding company NXC. He became a billionaire in 2011, and by 2021, he would rank third in terms of wealth in South Korea.

The Kingdom of the Winds, created by Nexon, was the first massively multiplayer online role-playing game. The most well-known game produced by the company, MapleStory, debuted in 2003 and now has more than 180 million registered users worldwide.

He passed away in February 2022 at the age of 54 and had a net worth of $10.9 billion.

Edward “Ned” Johnson III:  Johnson oversaw the growth in managed assets from $3.9 billion in the early 1970s to $1.7 trillion in 2014, the year he stepped down from his position as CEO of the mutual fund company Fidelity. Founded by his father Edward Johnson II in 1946, Fidelity is a family business currently run by Johnson’s daughter Abigail, who assumed the position of CEO in 2014.

Johnson began to appear on The Forbes 400 list of America’s wealthiest people every year in 1985, and at the time of his death, he was ranked 67th. The Edward C. Johnson Fund, a charitable organization run by his family, has distributed almost $1 billion since 2000.

He passed away in March 2022 at the age of 91 and had a $10.1 billion net worth.

Bonus; Pele Edson Arantes: Though not a billionaire, Pele was well-known and regarded as the greatest soccer player of all time. At the time, he was arguably the most prominent and successful athlete in the entire world. He was a part of each of Brazil’s three World Cup-winning squads (1958, 1962, and 1970). He was a great kicker who was also adept at interpreting other players’ body language.

Following the 1958 World Cup, the Brazilian government declared Pelé a national treasure in an effort to keep him in the country and fend off lucrative advances from European clubs. On November 19, 1969, in his 909th first-class match, he scored his 1,000th goal.

He passed away in December 2022 at age 82 and had a net worth of $100 million.