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The global economic recovery is fragile at best, but that didn’t stop 155 new faces from graduating at the top of their respective industries.
A new survey, the Wealth X and UBS Billionaire Census, reveals that 155 brand-new billionaires were minted this year, a 7.1% increase from 2013. This year’s census saw the addition of 500 new billionaires although the net gain from 2013 was 155 billionaires.
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An impressive 57 new billionaires were minted in the U.S. this year, with 52 from Asia and 42 from Latin America and the Caribbean.
It brings the people with a net worth of $1 billion to 2,325, the highest number of billionaires ever recorded. Their combined net worth? A whopping $7.3 trillion.
Basketball superstar and entrepreneur Michael Jordan is reportedly the only newly minted African American billionaire.
Apart from Jordan, Media Queen, Oprah Winfrey is the only other African American on the list.
Other global billionaires of color who made the cut include Nigeria’s Aliko Dangote, Mike Adenuga and Folorunsho Alakija, Sudanese born telecom mogul Mo Ibrahim, South African mining giant Patrice Motsepe, and Angola’s Isabel Dos Santos.
Dos Santos, Winfrey and Alakija are the only black female billionaires on record.
According to Forbes, Jordan, who is also the only African American NBA team majority owner, joined the billionaires club after increasing his stake in the Charlotte Hornets to “89.5% from 80% over the past several months.”
M.J. may have retired as a ballplayer, but he’s still not done breaking NBA records. He’s now the first NBA player to be worth a billion bucks.
He now joins Oprah Winfrey as the only two African American billionaires.
Dr. Dre came knocking, but he’s still reportedly a couple of hundred million dollars away from kicking in the door.
Here’s the breakdown from the Wealth-X billionaire census.
- 609 billionaires are in North America with a combined net worth of $2,371 billion. 560 billionaires are in Asia. They’re worth $1,410 billion.
- The Middle East has 154 billionaires who have collectively racked up $413 billion. Latin America and the Caribbean have 153 billionaires with $511 billion banked and Africa has 40 in the billionaire club worth $114 billion.
- Europe has the largest number with 775 billionaires worth $2,375 billion. Go figure. However, the United States has the most billionaires of any one country. The number of people in the U.S. in the top-tier segment of the world’s ultra-affluent comes to 571.
- China has 190 billionaires, the United Kingdom has 130, Germany has 123, and Russia rounds out the top five with 114.
- New York has the most billionaires of any city, but according to the survey, eight of the world’s top 20 billionaire cities are in Asia.
- Most of the billionaires, 26.8%, are ages 55 – 64.
- 25% are between the ages of 65 and 74. Only 1% are younger than 35.
Check out more about the findings on the next page…
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The survey also finds that on average it takes 45 years to become a billionaire with 93% of the world’s billionaires older than that age.
Now here’s the kicker: 55% of the billionaires are self-made; 26% inherited some of their money and then worked to double or triple it, and only 19% simply inherited their enormous wealth.
65% of the billionaires had college degrees, compared with 35% who didn’t graduate from college.
About 90% of male billionaires are married, 6% are divorced, 3% are single, and 2% are widowed.
Of female billionaires, 65% are married, 10% are divorced, 4% are single, and 21% widowed.
The top five industries for minting these fat cats are finance and banking, industrial conglomerates, real estate, manufacturing and textiles, and apparel and luxury goods.
The survey also says billionaires hold $600 million of their net worth in cash. Check out or download the fascinating Wealth-X report here.
Wealth-X is a leading ultra-high net worth intelligence and prospecting firm with the largest collection of curated research on UHNW individuals, defined as those with net assets of US$30 million and above.