8 ms·
Bill Gates is named world's richest person again
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- byEngineer 12y agoStill better than everybody equally poor, like in socialism
- biscuitt 12y agoAlthough there is no confirmed amounts(obviously), a lot of people feel that Putin is the world's richest man with all the Russian money has stashed away to personal accounts
- aluhut 12y agoAny credible people there too?
- vehementi 12y agoSo I guess the koch brothers' combined estate is really #1?
- bryanlarsen 12y agoThe Walton family fortune is considerably larger. Only 2 Walton's make the top 10, but there are 6 Walton billionaires, for a total of $175 billion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walton_family http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walton_family
- kyleblarson 12y agoBefore the fiscal cliff, WMT moved their dividend pay date forward by a few days so that the Waltons could pay 2012 cap gains on their dividend. They saved over 100 million in tax on ONE single dividend. This level of wealth is almost beyond comprehension. (http://money.cnn.com/gallery/investing/2012/12/21/fiscal-cliff-tax-dodgers/4.html http://money.cnn.com/gallery/investing/2012/12/21/fiscal-cli...)
- johansch 12y agoAnd still he could only buy about 10% of AAPL.
- xpop2027 12y agoI wonder what Steve Job's net worth would have been if he never sold his shares.
- romanovcode 12y agoIt doesn't matter tho since he did.
- driax 12y agoAnd more important: I he hadn't he wouldn't have had the money to found NeXT, which was quite probably required for Apple to survive.
- pietro 12y agoHe owned 13.9% of the shares post-IPO. That's equivalent to about $104B at today's prices.
- jedberg 12y agoWhen he died the greatest contribution to his net worth was his Disney money actually.
- damon_c 12y ago...and Disney stock has roughly tripled since he died.
- nivla 12y agoWell, had Microsoft not sold their "share" of loan to AAPL, they would have held a good chuck ~ 18.1 million shares [1]. Based off the AAPL splits, today those shares would have been 10 times more in count and 100 times more in price. [1] http://www.tuaw.com/2014/05/20/what-ever-became-of-microsofts-150-million-investment-in-apple/ http://www.tuaw.com/2014/05/20/what-ever-became-of-microsoft...
- known 12y agohttp://www.moneymeters.org/ http://www.moneymeters.org/
- davesque 12y agoI actually feel really good about this. I like Bill. I think he tries hard to figure out the right way to spend his fortune. Glad to see he's back on top.
- worldsayshi 12y agoYou could fund a lot of curiosity rovers with that money.
- thrillgore 12y agoHighways, bullet trains, tons of research grants...
- MollyR 12y agoThis kind of reality check is extremely effective. I think I'll steal this. Thanks
- littletimmy 12y agoThese lists are pretty arbitrary. They don't include more than $32 trillion hidden in off shore accounts. Putin, Gaddafi, Mubarak, and other third world dicators have many trillions stashed away. That is not even to count the monarchs who practically own entire countries.
- virmundi 12y agoI agree on the arbitrariness. But do you have a some links for the $32 trillion hidden offshore. I'm just interested.
- littletimmy 12y agohttp://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/22/us-offshore-wealth-idUSBRE86L03U20120722 http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/22/us-offshore-wealth... That's a lot of money.
- speeder 12y agoAlthough I think people superestimate the wealth of some leaders (like Putin and Khadaffi when he was alive), there is some people much wealthier than Bill Gates. I met once a guy that worked for some banks that handled middle-east money, and he said it was not uncommon to see some accounts moving around numbers with a crazy amount of zeroes, although he didn't knew what was personal money, what was family money, and what was company money, the amount of money flow still was much, much more than what western people move... but middle easterns don't care about disclosing it.
- duiker101 12y agoI wonder what would anyone do with a trillion dollars... I really can't comprehend this numbers...
- ChuckMcM 12y agowhat ever they want.. :-) I agree, even a billion dollars, as free cash (as opposed to illiquid property holdings) is mind boggling. At IMF .9% interest rates that is $25,000 a day you would have to spend just to spend off the interest income.
- webwanderings 12y agoAlmost 2000 billionaires. Almost 100 in India. 200+ in China. 500 plus in US. 100 some in Russia. WTH.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- nashashmi 12y agoI wonder how he keeps getting so wealthy. He does not own much of Microsoft anymore. 95% of his wealth is not Microsoft. So how does he keep getting wealthy?
- bryanlarsen 12y ago- Bill Gates only owns about $13Billion of Microsoft stock directly. - Over half of his net worth is in Cascade Investment LLC, a private investment fund run by Michael Larson. Mr Larson appears to be singularly responsible for Bill Gates' return to the top. - The Bill & Melinda Gates foundation is worth over $42 Billion, and is not included in Bill Gates' net worth http://www.wsj.com/articles/this-mans-job-make-bill-gates-richer-1411093811 http://www.wsj.com/articles/this-mans-job-make-bill-gates-ri...
- speeder 12y agoBill gates keep selling shares on several companies and donating stuff, also he does not do any "work" anymore, he only do volunteer stuff. Why his net worth keeps increasing?
- 21echoes 12y agoinvestments, along with the rate of return to wealth in investment markets being greater than the economic growth rate (http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/05/economist-explains http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/05/ec...)
- cjeane 12y agoI was going to link to that. Instead here is Mr. Gates' take. http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Why-Inequality-Matters-Capital-in-21st-Century-Review http://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Why-Inequality-Matters-Capit...
- smackfu 12y agoMSFT stock has been performing well in the last few years.
- cfederico 12y agoI think he is happier for what he has done with Microsoft more than his net worth.Money is only the consequence of a good job.
- npalli 12y agoThis list is static and not really useful given the swings in net worth of people. A far better and modern list is the bloomberg billionaires index, it is updated nearly daily. http://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/2015-02-27/aaa http://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/2015-02-27/aaa
- sharkweek 12y agoSeveral friends of mine work at the Gates Foundation up here in Seattle and they comment a lot about the pressure they're under to GIVE AWAY the Gates' money faster. There's a running "joke" internally there (Gates himself does not find it funny and puts a lot of pressure internally on the folks responsible) that it's been nearly impossible to outspend Gates' financial gains as his own wealth keeps growing too fast. Kind of a funny thought.
- josefresco 12y agoThis seems to fly in the face of the approach that Bill and Melinda have publicly claimed to have taken. Instead of "writing a big check" they're managing (very directly it seems) the allocation of funds to effective and worthwhile programs. There may internal pressure to "give money away" but I doubt many have the freedom to start writing checks for ...anything.
- sharkweek 12y agoDespite the internal commentary, which is mostly in jest, spending arbitrarily is going to get you fired pretty quick. But there is still a metric ton of pressure to find the right things to spend money on, and they struggle to do so in a lot of cases. It's interesting to think about from an entrepreneurial perspective, that The Gates Foundation has plenty of capital to "invest" but the companies and programs are often not mature enough to warrant massive grants. There might be a ton of small NGOs doing awesome work all over the world, and they can take small grants (XX,000-XXX,000), but imagine what a nightmare it becomes for them if given the burden of tens of millions of dollars all the sudden. Money solves a lot of problems in the nonprofit world, but sudden cash infusions can often create a lot of bizarre problems. And on the other side, even if The Gates Foundation gives thousands of six figure grants out, that's not going to make a dent in the overall pool of cash.
- josefresco 12y agoI wonder if an element of the foundation could be helping to scale or "staff up" these NGO's to be able to scale/deal with an influx of funding? Obviously, "staffing up" is time intensive, but I would think they would need an alternative approach if finding worthy organizations becomes difficult.
- blahblah3 12y agoa $3 billion dollar return on $76 is not that impressive, this is about a 3.9% return. to put this in perspective, in January 2014 30 year treasuries were yielding 3.92% (although they have come down quite a bit since then).
- archagon 12y agoI assume you mean $76 billion. Because otherwise that would be a healthy 3,947,368,421% return. ;)
- blahblah3 12y agohaha yes, $76 billion. also note that if bill gates had simply put all his money in an sp500 index fund last year he would have earned %13.69, or $10.8 billion
- makeset 12y agoAlso note that putting that kind of money anywhere creates so much market impact in practice that the gains diminish considerably. E.g. SPY, the most active S&P500 index (also the single most heavily-traded U.S. stock), had a total dollar volume of $275B for all of 2014. Buying billions' worth of it, even over long periods, would drive the price up in the process and make further purchases more costly.
- blahblah3 12y agohe obviously wouldn't put it all into spy, you can buy a diversified portfolio of stocks that basically replicates the s&p 500. http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=DailyMarketSummary http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=DailyMarketSummar... (74 billion dollars traded in one day)
- bhayden 12y agoThere is likely a lot of reasons why investing billions of dollars is not comparable to millions. You stop becoming a participant in markets and become an influencer. I am sure there would be an issue with investing $76 billion in treasuries too.