2022 has been a year like no other, hold on I am not referring here to the coronavirus pandemic that disrupted the operations of major companies across the globe. This year witnessed rapid-fire public offerings, a phenomenal rise in cryptocurrencies, and record-high stock prices. Due to these factors, the number of billionaires compiled by Forbes in its 35th annual list of the world’s wealthiest jumped to a record 2,668 which is approximately 30% more compared to last year. Jeff Bezos slipped to the third position this year after being the world’s richest for the fourth year running. Celebrity CEO Elon Musk is now the world’s richest person due to an unprecedented rise in the share price of Tesla.
We can upload the dataset from here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/11c2-tyWg2YOI7MmbCqWUAGreknzQ_vLe/view
Distribution of Billionaires around the World:
The World includes 2668 billionaires and is distributed as shown in the below tree. There is 1790 of the males that are self-made billionaires out of a total of 2341. For the females 90 of them are self-made in a total of 311. The combined net worth of all these billionaires is worth a whopping $12.70 trillion, up approximately 64% from 2021.Their average age is about 62-year-old and their average net worth by individual is approximately $4 billion.
Top-4 Categories with more numbers of Billionaires
We can notice that most billionaires work in finance and various investments, in second position the kings of tech take over and several names pass directly through our minds like Elon Musk or even Bill Gates. For the last position everything related to fashion takes place, we can mention Bernard Arnauld who built his empire with his LVMH company. LV for “Louis Vuitton” the luxury clothing brand and MH for “Moet Hennessey” an alcoholic drink of a great value.
Top-4 Categories with highest industry value or worth
Even though the number of billionaires is higher in the financial industry, one can very well notice that this is not proportional to the value of the industry in question. Technology has a market value of $2.2 trillion while the number of billionaires who work in this industry is 343 which is less than the finance billionaires who reach the number of 392 this year.
Top-10 Countries with more numbers of Billionaires
The United States is the country where there is the largest number of billionaires about 740, in second place we find China with 570 billionaires. We can very well justify the competition of these two giants just by their number of billionaires. The American dream is obviously a fact. It is often said that to make money and build an empire, the first thing to do is to have a foothold in the United-States. China, the number one competitor of the Americans is on his rise and this country that was once the emblem of the communism is creating colossal individual’s fortunes.
Top-3 Sources of Billionaires wealth
In this pie chart, when we talk about source of wealth, we mean that most billionaires started amassing their fortune in investments related to real estates. Several studies have highlighted the billions of dollars that the Big Pharma industry can amass and this has become much clearer with the Covid-19 pandemic and the sales of vaccines and all kinds of drugs.
Richest person on Earth
Elon Musk, the celebrity CEO of Tesla and SpaceX is the richest man on planet earth and the first individual to cross $300 billion net worth recently in November 2021. His current net worth is $219.6 billion. He is the mastermind behind the revolutionization of transportation not only on Earth but also in Space. Elon Musk holds a 23% stake in Tesla, an electric car company that he co-founded in the year 2003, that contributes more than 67% of his net worth according to Forbes. The rest of his net worth is linked to the fortunes of rocket company SpaceX which is valued at $100 billion. SpaceX, founded in 2002, is the world’s second most valuable private company.
Lebanese Billionaires
Najib Mikati is the cofounder, with his billionaire brother Taha, of Beirut-based investment firm M1 Group. Its investments include stakes in South African telecom firm MTN, fashion retailer Pepe Jeans, and real estate in New York, London and Monaco. Mikati and his brother Taha founded “Investcom” in 1982, selling satellite phones at the height of Lebanon’s civil war. They expanded into Africa where they built cellphone towers in Ghana, Liberia and Benin, among other countries. In 2005, “Investcom” went public on the London Stock Exchange, and in 2009, South Africa’s MTN bought the Makati’s’ stake for $3.6 billion.
Philanthropy and Lebanese Billionaires
Among the 748 billionaires in the United States 730 of them devote part of their fortune to charities.
For UK, with a total of 85 billionaires research shows that there are only two of them who spend a little money to help the less fortunate. In Lebanon a country with a big economic crisis and an immense poverty rate our two billionaires from Tripoli the poorest city in the country do not appear in our chart.
Conclusion
War, pandemic and plunging stock markets have dented the fortunes of many of the richest people on the planet this year. Forbes found 2668 billionaires around the globe for the 2022 World’s Billionaires list, down from a record 2755 last year.
Collectively, they’re worth $12.7 trillion, down from a record $13.1 trillion on the 2021 list.
In all, 329 people fell off the billionaires list this year, the most since the 2009 financial crisis. Still, 236 newcomers joined the ranks this year, including pop star Rihanna, “Lord of the Rings” director Peter Jackson and venture capitalist Josh Kushner.
No one got richer than Elon Musk, who tops the World’s Billionaires list for the first time ever. As of March 11, Musk was worth an estimated $219 billion, after adding $68 billion to his fortune over the past year on the back of a 33% jump in the share price of his electric vehicle maker Tesla. He surpassed Jeff Bezos, who fell to No.2 for the first time in four years due to a 3% drop in Amazon stock and increased charitable giving, which wiped $6 billion from his net worth. French luxury goods tycoon Bernard Arnault, who added $8 billion to his fortune over the past year, remains the world’s third-richest person. Rounding out the top 5 are Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.
