This month Forbes released their 2015 Billionaire list. This year’s list included 290 newcomers making the list the largest it’s ever been, 1,826 billionaires. With the largest freshman class ever this year’s list included a lot of new names like legendary basketball player Michael Jordan. The list also included 46 billionaires who were under the age of 40, which is another new record. This year’s Forbes list is definitely a long one so here is some of the highlights from the list.
At number one is the creator of Microsoft, Bill Gates. For the past 21 years Bill Gates has held the title as richest man in the world an astounding 16 times. Gates fortune grew $3.2 billion since last year putting him at $79.2 billion.
The top 10 included Carlos Slim Helu & family of Telecom at number 2 with $77.1 billion, at number 3 is Warren Buffett, who advanced the most since last year going up 14.5 billion to make his total $72.7 billion. Number 8 and 9 were Christy and Jim Walton at $41.7 and $40.6 billion. Two of the five in the Walton family to be on the list Christy and Jim were able to crack the top 10 while Alice and Robson were left out with $39 billion for both of them. The Walton Family inherited their wealth from Sam and Bud Walton, founders of the world’s biggest retailer Walmart.
Some of the biggest highlights from the list included Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg who broke into the top 20 at 16th place. At 19 and 20 were the masterminds from Google Larry Page and Sergey Brin with $29.7 and $29.2 billion. Owner of Nike, Phil Knight ranked 35 while the wife of Steve Jobs Laurene Powell Jobs ranked 45 with $19.5 billion.
In the 290 new billionaires 71 of them were Chinese. However the United States dominated the list. The youngest newcomers, Bobby Murphy and Evan Spiegel founders of Snapchat made the list at $1.5 billion apiece. Perhaps the most famous person on the list is Michael Jordan, with a billion dollars made the list for the first time at 1741. Altogether the billionaires on the list added up to $7.05 trillion making the Forbes 2015 list the richest list ever.