Micheal Jordan joins Forbes' Billionaires List 2015 Ranking

Record 290 Newcomers Join Forbes Billionaires List, Including Michael Jordan

A record 290 newcomers joined the Forbes billionaires list in the last year as world markets defied international turmoil. While wars, diseases and currency crises made headlines, tycoons from every continent but Antarctica managed to mint new 10-figure fortunes.

Nearly 25% of this year’s first-time billionaires hail from China, which produced a world-leading 71 newcomers. The United States came in second, with 57, followed by India, with 28, and Germany, with 23.

The most famous rookie on the billionaires list? Michael Jordan, arguably the greatest basketball player of all time and indisputably the best-paid athlete of all time. Forbes first outed Jordan as a billionaire last June. Most of his cash comes from Nike payouts on his iconic brand. The Jordan brand grossed an estimated $2.25 billion in 2013, earning his Airness some $90 million. But his most valuable asset is his stake in the Charlotte Hornets, worth more than $500 million.

When ex-Microsoft MSFT +0.07% CEO Steve Ballmer bought the Los Angeles Clippers for a stunning $2 billion, values of all NBA teams skyrocketed, creating three new billionaires. Jordan’s old boss Jerry Reinsdorf, owner of the Chicago Bulls, joined the list with a fortune of $1.3 billion, and Houston Rockets owner Leslie Alexander boosted his net worth to $1.6 billion.

Aside from Jordan, the Silicon Valley kids are the stars of the incoming class. Garrett Camp, Travis Kalanick and Ryan Graves, the trio of early Uber members, have seen plenty of bad publicity over the last year. India temporarily banned their service, Spain shut it down entirely, and an Uber executive brought on a torrent of criticism when he suggested digging up dirt on the personal lives of journalists. None of the news has scared away investors, who have put over $4 billion into the company already, valuing it at $41.2 billion. Camp and Kalanick are now worth an estimated $5.3 billion, and first-employee Graves is worth $1.4 billion.

Brian Chesky, Nathan Blecharczyk and Joe Gebbia, the three Airbnb creators, are also facing regulatory concerns, with their couch-crashing business coming up against legal issues in New York City. No matter: The company has 1 million listings for places to stay and is worth more than Hyatt Hotels. Each of the cofounders have $1.9 billion fortunes.

Record 290 Newcomers Join Forbes Billionaires List, Including Michael Jordan

The youngest newcomers to the list are Bobby Murphy and Evan Spiegel, the Snapchat founders who brazenly turned down $3 billion in cash from Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg for their disappearing photo app in 2013. Smart move: Snapchat is now reportedly getting offers that would value the company at $19 billion, and Forbes estimates Murphy and Spiegel are worth $1.5 billion apiece.

The tech boom isn’t just limited to the United States. Brothers Marc, Oliver and Alexander Samwer are known for shamelessly ripping ideas off of successful Silicon Valley companies and creating foreign knockoffs. The three brothers join the billionaire ranks after successfully taking both Zappos-copycat Zalando and Berlin-based incubator Rocket Internet public in October 2014.

The richest first-timer on the list is Maria Franca Fissolo, the widow of Nutella king Michele Ferrero. She shares her $23.4 billion fortune with her family, and her son Giovanni is CEO of the Ferrero Group, which owns the brands Nutella, Kinder, Ferrero Rocher and Tic Tacs.

Despite plunging oil prices and a weakened euro, the ranks of the world’s wealthiest defied global economic turmoil and expanded yet again. For our 29th annual guide to the globe’s richest, we found a record 1,826 billionaires with an aggregate net worth of $7.05 trillion, up from $6.4 trillion a year ago.  The total includes 290 newcomers, 71 of whom hail from China. Youth are on the rise: A record 46 among the ranks are under age 40. One earthward note: The average net worth of list members came in at $3.86 billion, down $60 million from 2014.


Bill Gates is once again the richest person on the planet, a title he’s held for 16 of the past 21 years. His fortune grew $3.2 billion since last year to $79.2 billion, despite a gift of $1.5 billion in Microsoft MSFT +0.07% shares to The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in November 2014.


Carlos Slim Helu of Mexico comes in again at No. 2 while revered American investor Warren Buffett took back the No. 3 spot from Spain’s Amancio Ortega (now No. 4); not even the largest IPO in history was enough to beat the Oracle of Omaha this year. Buffett was the list’s biggest gainer, up $14.5 billion to $72.7 billion, thanks to Berkshire Hathaway’s rising share price.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg moves up 5 spots to number 16, his first time ranked among the world’s 20 richest. Ma and three other Chinese are among the the biggest gainers and appear among the 50 richest on the list.
Zuckerberg is also the leader in a youth revolution that has minted 46 billionaires under the age of 40. The youngest billionaire on the planet is Evan Spiegel, 24, co-founder of photo- messaging app Snapchat. California, driven by Silicon Valley tech companies, has spawned 23 new billionaires, including cofounders of car-hailing service Uber cofounders Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp, and their first employee Ryan Graves. Elizabeth Holmes, who runs blood-testing firm Theranos, debuts on the global list as the youngest self-made woman at age 31.  The state now has 131 individuals with 10-figure net worths, more than any other country besides China and the U.S.


The year’s biggest loser in dollar terms is Aliko Dangote of Nigeria, whose fortune dropped to $14.7 billion from $25 billion last year, propelled downward by a weaker Nigerian currency and shrinking demand for cement, his largest asset. He still retains the title of Africa’s richest man. The country that was lost the most ground by far was Russia, which now has 88 billionaires down from 111, less than not just the U.S. and China but now also Germany and India.

One hundred thirty-eight people from the 2014 list dropped out of the ranks altogether including fashion designer Michael Kors, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Zulily’s Mark Vadon and many Russians. Guatemala has a billionaire for the first time, and Iceland returns to the ranks after a five-year absence, the result of a comeback by Thor Bjorgolfsson, who’s now the only billionaire in Iceland’s history.
There’s no doubt that entrepreneurship is thriving globally. Fully 1,191 members of the list are self-made billionaires, while just 230 inherited their wealth. Another 405 inherited at least a portion but are still working to increase their fortunes.

Our estimates show a snapshot of wealth on Feb. 13, when we locked in stock prices and exchange rates from around the world. If a stock market wasn’t open on that day, we used the stock price from the previous trading day.