The richest in the world: the same, but richer

The drama of wars – especially in Ukraine and the Middle East – and economic crises on almost every continent are the global landscape as we wake up in 2024. Despair, uncertainty. But for some (few) this is not the case: the Bloomberg and Forbes investigations into megamillionaires indicate that 2023 will be a year of recovery for them, especially for what the bags represented for them. And regardless of the ups and downs of these lists, these are not concerns for them.

Elon Muskso “fashionable” among us thanks to Milei’s allusions, he has regained his status as number 1 among Bloomberg’s super-rich since his fortune amounts to 232.4 billion dollarsthanks to a 107% revaluation of its Tesla brand (although in 2021 it exceeded 277,000 million).

But Musk had to put aside many of his projects, for example the high-speed train (Hyperloop One), a futuristic development in which he had invested 450 million dollars: it did not go beyond a test track in the Nevada desert or a Model by train at 175 km per hour. “Maybe in the future I will invest or advise companies in charge of doing so, but I don’t have time now,” the tycoon said. Curiously, ten years ago, Musk questioned the California state government about a high-speed rail project, as Walter Isaacson recalls in Musk’s recent biography.

Second place, according to the Bloomberg table, is for Bernardo ArnaultPresident Louis Vuitton (LVMH), with 193.5 billion dollars, despite his company not being the most popular in Europe, a position occupied by the Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Dirsk. Well-known and common names in these positions appear immediately: Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon) is 3rd with 178.3 billion dollarsone place ahead Bill Gates. The founder of Microsoft accumulates 140.5 billion dollars (he had $109,500 in his account from the previous year) and announced that he will donate everything to the foundation created with his ex-wife Melinda. Other tech names are Steve Ballmerformer CEO of Microsoft, with 130.5 billion dollars; Marco Zuckerberg (6th con 129.6 billion dollars) AND Larry Page (Co-founder of Google, 7th con 126.8 billion dollars). Zuckerberg returned to the top 10 (the year before he had fallen to 25th place) thanks to cuts on Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.

Carlos Slimthe Mexican owner of America Movil, has already accumulated 104.4 billion dollars and he is first among Latinos, eleventh overall, as has been the case for more than a decade.

The richest Spaniard is yet Amancio Ortegawhose fortune amounts to 87.6 billion dollars. Founder of Inditex – the textile company that has Zara as its emblematic brand – increased his profits in 2023 thanks to stock market movements and his real estate investments. For example, through his company Pontegadea, he has just purchased two boutique hotels in the center of Palma de Mallorca.

In the case of Inditex, its turnover last year was 25.6 billion euros and it also benefited from the growing pace of the Spanish stock market, which recorded its best year since 2009. Other European retail companies, like the British Marks & Spencer and H&M also recorded the highest profits of the last two decades.

Forbes, whose list has some discrepancies with that of Bloomberg but agrees on the general concept, underlines that “for many rich people, 2023 was the year we became ultra-rich. With stock markets recovering around the world, more than half of the planet’s 2,568 billionaires are richer than when the year began.

According to their estimates, the ten biggest winners of the year they added a total of 490,000 million dollars to their assets. And 7 of its companies come from the technology sector (Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Nvidia, Tesla and Meta).

Among the billionaires who have grown at a dizzying pace in 2023, in addition to the aforementioned cases of Musk and Amancio Ortega, the Indonesian petrochemical, wood and energy magnate stands out, Prajogo Pangestu. He now has a net worth of $52.8 billion (up $47.9 billion from the previous year). All thanks to its listing on the Indonesian stock exchange, where it entered in March and since then its shares have skyrocketed by more than 200%.