Young Billionaires

According to a new report, today Asia has more billionaires than North America or Europe. As of January, the world has 1,453 people with a personal wealth of $1 billion dollars or more. Asia had 608 billionaires, North America 440 and Europe 324. It estimated the total wealth of these billionaires is about $5.5 trillion, almost equals to the size of the entire Japanese economy. However, the report's author cautions: “This list is based strictly on factual wealth that can be verified. Some people deliberately hide their wealth as they gained it through illegal ways, so we do not know exactly how many billionaires are there as we can only publish the list based on facts."

Among countries, the U.S has 408 Billionaires and China has 317 Billionaires. Among U.S billionaires about two third come from technology and financial investments areas where most of China's billionaire is in lands development, constructions and retails businesses. Another key contrast is many U.S billionaires are young, many are even less than 40 years old but a majority of China's billionaires are older, many are in their 60s or 70s.

The richest man on earth is Carlos Slim (Telecommunication); the second is Bill Gates (Software) then Amancio Ortega (Fashion clothing) and Warren Buffet (Financial investments). On the list, there are 29 new young billionaires; all of them are younger than 40 years old with 10 come from Information Technology area. The youngest is Dustin Moscovitz, the co-founder of Facebook who is 28 years old. Today he does not work for Facebook but follows Bill Gates' advices to give most of his wealth away for charity. He lives simply in a small apartment, and rides a bicycle to work. The founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg is also 28 years old, spent most of his time building the company. Another young billionaire is Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter and Mobile payment Square. Beside managing two companies, he also is known for his love of music and often attends concerts all over the world. Another young billionaire from Russia is Maxim Nogotkov, started his empire by building and selling software for mobile phone. He was among the few people who recognized that mobile apps could be a high growth area in Russia. Another young billionaire from Japan is Yoshitaku Tanaka, who found a Japanese social network called Gree. He is considered the Japan's Mark Zuckerberg.

Not long ago, most billionaires were older and come from the finance and manufacturing industries but as the global market changed, today more and more young people are moving up in the list of billionaires. There are 29 young people and 10 come from information technology area. However, if we look at the list of millionaires there is another surprise, among the 100 young millionaires who are less than 30 years old, 87 of them come from the information technology areas.

Sources

  • Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University