As 2022 is slowly coming to a close, it’s worth noting the world’s richest people, whose tremendous wealth influenced the world throughout the year. According to Forbes, the prestigious American business magazine, apart from the multibillion dollar worth of tech entrepreneurs, business magnates, and investors, there are also four extremely wealthy Greeks in 2022.
Based on the business magazine, in 2022, there are 2,668 billionaires in the world with a cumulative wealth valued at $12.7 trillion.
Yet, the list of the world’s billionaires this year decreased by eighty-seven people, mainly due to the Russia – Ukraine war, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the global economic situation while the total wealth of the top ten richest people decreased by four hundred billion dollars.
The list also records 329 losses. The country counting the most losses is Russia. The country counts thirty-four resounding “absences” from the 2021 list, following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine earlier this year.
The US continues to dominate the list with 735 billionaires and a combined worth of 4.7 trillion dollars. Second to the USA, China follows with 607 billionaires and a cumulative value of 2.3 trillion dollars. The ten people who dominate the list are tech entrepreneurs, business men, and investors.
The Ten Richest People of 2022 according to Forbes
10. Carlos Slim Helú, $81.6 billion
Carlos Slim Helú is a Mexican business magnate, investor, and philanthropist.
Slim was ranked as the richest person in the world by Forbes for three four consecutive years between 2010 and 2013. He derived his fortune from his extensive holdings in a considerable number of Mexican companies through his conglomerate, Grupo Carso.
He accounts for forty percent of the listings on the Mexican Stock Exchange while his net worth is equivalent to about six percent of Mexico’s gross domestic product. As of 2016, he is the largest single shareholder of The New York Times.
9. Larry Page, $83.5 billion
Larry Page is an American business magnate, computer scientist, and internet entrepreneur. He is the co-founder of Google along with Sergey Brin.
Page was the CEO of Google from 1997 to August 2001 and then from April 2011 until July 2015 when he moved to become CEO of Alphabet Inc., a post he held until 2019. He remains an Alphabet board member, employee, and controlling shareholder.
He is also the inventor of PageRank, which became the foundation of Google’s search ranking algorithm.
8. Mukesh Ambani, $89.2 billion
Mukesh Ambani is an Indian billionaire businessman. He is the chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries Ltd., a Fortune Global 500 company and India’s most valuable company by market value.
He is the second richest man in Asia and eighth in the world as of 2022.
7. Larry Ellison, $102.5 billion
Larry Ellison is an American businessman and investor. He is the co-founder, executive chairman, chief technology officer (CTO), and former CEO of the American computer technology company Oracle Corporation. In 2020, Oracle was the third-largest software company in the world by revenue. The company sells database software and technology, cloud engineered systems, and enterprise software products.
Ellison is also known for his ninety-eight percent ownership stake in Lanai, the sixth-largest island in the Hawaiian Archipelago.
6. Bill Gates, $102.9 billion
The American business magnate, software developer, investor, author, and philanthropist ranked sixth on the Forbes list.
Gates is the co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, the world’s largest personal computer software company, Gates held the positions of chairman, CEO, president, and chief software architect while also remaining the largest individual shareholder until May 2014.
In 2000, Gates and his ex-wife Melinda Gates launched the private philanthropic organization, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He is also known for his philanthropic efforts on climate change, global health and development, and education.
From 1995 to 2017, he held the Forbes title of the richest person in the world each year excluding 2010 to 2013.
5. Warren Buffett, $104.5 billion
Known as the “Oracle of Omaha,” Buffett is an American businessman and philanthropist. He is widely considered the most successful investor of the 20th and early 21st centuries. He is the owner of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., an American multinational conglomerate holding company.
During the global financial crisis of 2007 to 2008, Buffett made a number of deals that, though questioned at the time, proved highly profitable. He invested five billion dollars in the U.S. bank holding company, the Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., as well as three billion dollars in General Electric Company (GE). Berkshire also bought the railroad company Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corporation for about twenty-six billion dollars.
As a result of defying prevailing investment trends, he made a personal fortune of more than sixty billion dollars by the late 2000s.
4. Jeff Bezos, $126.9 billion
Jeff Bezos, an American entrepreneur, media proprietor, investor, computer engineer, and commercial astronaut is the world’s fourth richest person. He is the founder, executive chairman, and former president and CEO of Amazon.
Bezos founded e-commerce giant Amazon in 1994 out of his garage in Seattle. He stepped down as CEO to become executive chairman in July 2021. He now owns a bit less than ten percent of the company.
Bezos has donated more than four hundred million dollars worth of stock to nonprofits in 2022, though it is unclear which organizations received those shares.
Furthermore, Bezos owns The Washington Post and Blue Origin, an aerospace company developing rockets. He made headlines when he briefly flew to space in one of the rockets in July 2021.
3. Gautam Adani, $131.3 billion
Gautam Adani is an Indian billionaire tycoon. He is considered the third richest person in the world as of 2022.
He is the chairman and founder of Adani Group, an Ahmedabad-based multinational conglomerate involved in port development and operations in India. Adani is also the president of Adani Foundation, a private philanthropic organization, which is primarily led by his wife, Priti Adani.
Adani controls Mundra Port, India’s largest port, in his home state of Gujarat. He acquired a seventy-four percent stake in Mumbai International Airport, India’s second-busiest airport, in September 2020. He is now the country’s biggest airport operator.
The Indian tycoon wants to be the world’s largest producer of green energy and has said he will invest up to seventy billion dollars on renewable energy projects.
2. Bernard Arnault & family, $156.5 billion
Bernard Arnault is a French business man, investor, and art collector. He is the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of LVMH Moët Hennessy—Louis Vuitton SE—the world’s largest luxury goods company.
LVMH is a global business empire. It includes seventy fashion and cosmetics brands, including Louis Vuitton and Sephora. In January 2021, LVMH acquired American jeweler Tiffany & Co for 15.8 billion dollars, believed to be the biggest luxury brand acquisition ever.
In addition, LVMH spent 3.2 billion dollars in 2019 for luxury hospitality group Belmond, which owns and/or manages forty-six hotels, trains, and river cruises.
Four of Arnault’s five children work in various areas of the LVMH empire: Frédéric, Delphine, Antoine, and Alexandre.
1. Elon Musk, $223.8 billion
Elon Musk is the world’s richest man for 2022.
He is a business magnate and investor. Elon Musk co-founded six companies, including electric car maker Tesla, rocket producer SpaceX, and tunneling startup Boring Company.
He owns about twenty-five percent of Tesla between stock and options but has pledged more than half his stock as collateral for loans.
SpaceX, founded in 2002, is worth 127 billion dollars. The Boring Company, which aims to defeat traffic, raised 675 million dollars in April 2022 at a 5.7 billion dollar valuation.
In addition, Twitter’s board agreed to sell the company to Musk for 44 billion dollars in April 2022 after he disclosed a 9.1 percent stake. In July 2022, Musk announced he was terminating the deal over spam concerns. Twitter sued, and the parties were supposed to appear in court in October.
Yet, on October 27th, Musk acquired Twitter. He also fired its CEO Parag Agrawal before firing other top executives.
Four Greeks on Forbes’ Richest People of 2022
Vardis Vardinogiannis & family, $1.4 billion
Vardis Vardinogiannis is a Greek billionaire oil and shipping businessman. He is the chairman and controlling shareholder of Motor Oil Hellas, Vegas Oil and Gas and is involved in numerous other shipping and business interests.
He appears in the 2,076th position on Forbes’ Richest People of 2022, having assets worth 1.4 billion dollars, coming mainly from Motor Oil but also from activities in Egypt and from shipping and finance.
Filippos Niarchos, $2.8 billion
Filippos Niarchos is the eldest son of the Greek shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos.
He comes in the 1,096th position of the list with a fortune of 2.8 billion US dollars.
Alongside his younger brother, Spyros, Niarchos is co-president and member of the board of directors at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF). The foundation is one of the world’s largest global private philanthropies founded over twenty-five years ago.
Aristotelis Mistakidis, $3.6 billion
Aristotelis Mistakidis is in 822nd place with a fortune of 3.6 billion dollars.
Telis, as he is widely known, was the head of Glencore for many years. Glencore is one of the largest copper industries in the world. In 2018, he resigned from his position, however, but continues to this day to hold three percent of the shares. In 2021, the Greek billionaire acquired a stake in Piraeus Bank.
Vicky Safra, world’s richest Greek
Vicky Safra is the widow of banker Joseph Safra. The Greek Jewish woman is the 321st richest person in the world according to Forbes. She inherited her husband’s fortune. Joseph Safra passed away in December 2020. She is currently worth 7.2 billion dollars.
Lebanese-born Joseph Safra was considered Brazil’s richest man with a wide network of banks on three different continents.
The sixty-year-old billionaire, who possesses Greek and Brazilian citizenship, was born in the early 1950s in Brazil. She married in 1969 at the age of seventeen, and she lives permanently in Switzerland.
Vicky heads the Vicky and Joseph Safra Philanthropic Foundation, which donates to hospitals, education, and the arts.
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