There are 1,426
billionaires in the world this year. They are the wealthiest of the wealthy.
But only 29 members of this elite list are under 40 years old, with that
exciting combination of money and youth.
Those 29 have a total of
$119 billion between them. 10 of them come from the technology sector,
including four from social networking giant Facebook.
11 come from the United
States, the rest from other parts of the world. Five are newcomers to the
billionaire ranks.
Read the list of the
first ten “under 40” billionaires:
Dustin Moskovitz
Age: 28
Net Worth: $3.8
billion
Country: United
States
Mark Zuckerberg’s
former roommate and Facebook co-founder, Dustin Moskovitz may no longer be with
the Menlo Park, Calif.-based social networking giant, but he still holds a
significant financial stake in the company. That stake got a little smaller
over the summer as he proceeded to sell 7.5 million Facebook shares. Still, as
of February, he still owns more than five per cent of the company’s outstanding
stock.
Facebook’s third
employee, he dropped out Harvard with Zuckerberg and moved to California to
work for the social-networking firm full-time. He left in 2008 to start Asana,
a software company that aims to improve how people work with project collaboration tools.
Engaged to former
journalist Cari Tuna, Moskovitz and his fiancee founded Good Ventures and plan
to publish their grants and conversations with charities with the goal of
rewarding results over crafty fundraising techniques.
He is also a signee of
Bill Gates’ and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge. Moskovitz bikes to work, flies
commercial, and pitches his own tent at Burning Man.
Mark Zuckerberg
Age: 28
Net Worth: $13.3
billion
Country: United
States
Few Chief Executive
Officers of any age are under more media scrutiny than 28-year-old Mark
Zuckerberg. Since taking Facebook public in May 2012, the hoodie-wearing
founder has seen his net worth rise and fall with every fluctuation of the
stock price, which fell under $20 in August 2012. The stock has since rebounded
more than 30 per cent as of February on confidence that Facebook may end up
figuring out how to make money on mobile ads.
Zuckerberg, a signatory
of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett’s Giving Pledge, showed his generosity during
the holiday season, gifting 18 million Facebook shares to the Silicon Valley
Community Foundation in December for education initiatives.
Based on share prices at
the time, that gift was worth nearly $500 million and was one of the largest gifts to education in 2012.
He has also expressed his
willingness to become more involved in the political sphere, hosting a
re-election fundraiser with his wife Priscilla Chan for New Jersey Governor
Chris Christie in February. His big early 2013 exploit was the launch of
Facebook’s Graph Search, which will allow users to comb their friend network
based on shared interests and experiences.
Albert von Thurn
und Taxis
Age: 29
Net Worth: $1.5
billion
Country: Germany
Albert von Thurn
und Taxis first appeared in Forbes’ billionaire rankings at age eight but
officially inherited his fortune in 2001 on his 18th birthday. In June 2008, he
received an M.A. in economics and theology from the University of Edinburgh in
Scotland. His assets include real estate, art and 36,000 hectares of woodland
in Germany, one of the largest forest holdings in Europe. His plan to build one
of the world’s largest solar energy installations in
Bavaria, southern Germany, was put on hold after government subsidies were
cancelled.
He lives in the family
castle, Schloss Emmeram. The eligible bachelor is also a race car driver and
tours with a German auto-racing league.
Scott Duncan
Age: 30
Net Worth: $5.1
billion
Country: United
States
Scott Duncan is the
youngest of the four children who inherited the massive fortune of late
energy-pipeline entrepreneur Dan Duncan, founder of Enterprise Products
Partners. Thanks to Enterprise’s impressive rise on the New York Stock
Exchange, Scott and his siblings each find themselves $900 million dollars
richer than a year ago thanks to the rising value of Enterprise shares and the
partnership’s large payout plan. Dan Duncan, formerly the richest man in
Houston, died in 2010 at age 77. He grew up poor and formed Enterprise Products
with two trucks in 1968, selling door to door. Today Enterprise owns more than
50,000 miles of natural gas, oil, and petrochemical pipelines.
Eduardo Saverin
Age: 30
Net Worth: $2.2
billion
Country: Brazil
Facebook co-founder
Eduardo Saverin renounced his United States citizenship in 2011, news of which
broke days before the company’s IPO and drew accusations of tax evasion.
His response: “My
decision to expatriate was based solely on my interest in working and living in
Singapore, where I have been since 2009.”
Saverin, immortalized in
The Social Network as Mark Zuckerberg’s onetime best friend, provided Facebook
with early seed money, earning him a one-third stake. This fell to 30 per cent
when Zuckerberg’s roommate, Dustin Moskovitz, joined. When the others dropped
out of Harvard to relocate to California, Saverin stayed behind.
Facebook later sued him
for allegedly interfering with business and insisting on keeping a 30 per cent
stake; Saverin countersued. The parties settled, with Saverin apparently
receiving a five per cent stake and a co-founder bio on Facebook’s site. He has
since sold more than half his stake in Facebook and has started to invest in
startups including Qwiki and Jumio, which created the online payment Netswipe.
Huiyan Yang
Age: 31
Net Worth: $5.7
billion
Country: China
Huiyan Yang, the
daughter of the co-founder of real estate developer Country Garden Holdings, is
once again China’s richest woman with shares of her company up by 46 per cent
since September. Yang Huiyan’s father Yeung Kwok Keung transferred his stake to
her before the company’s IPO in 2007. Revenue in the first nine months of 2012
was up by 22 per cent to $3.7 billion. Profit rose by 34 per cent to $617
million. The company in January sold $750 million of 10-year bonds to help fund
its vibrant portfolio of some 110 projects underway as of mid-2012, many in its
home base of Guangdong province. Country Garden is also adding 17 hotels to the
29 it already owns or operates, mostly under the Phoenix brand, and is buying
up land in Malaysia. The previous holder of the title of China’s richest woman,
Wu Yajun, had her fortune splintered in a divorce last year. Yang has a degree
from Ohio State University.
Fahd Hariri
Age: 32
Net Worth: $1.35
billion
Country: Lebanon
Fahd Hariri is the
youngest son of slain Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. He graduated from
the Ecole Spéciale d’Architecture de Paris in 2004. While still a student, he
ran an interior design studio on the outskirts of the city and sold furniture
to clients in Saudi Arabia. While he reportedly hasn’t set foot in Beirut since
his father’s assassination in 2005, he develops residential buildings in there,
and credits his father for his love of real estate development.
Marie Besnier
Beauvalot
Age: 32
Net Worth: $1.5
billion
Country: France
Marie, 32, along
with siblings Emmanuel, 42, and Jean-Michel, 45, inherited French dairy giant
Lactalis, producers of popular Président brie among hundreds of other cheese,
milk and yogurt brands. Between them, they own 100 per cent of the company
their grandfather founded in the 1930s. Lactalis’ once fairly opaque financials
were brought to light when the Besnier family, through another holding company,
acquired a majority stake in publicly traded Italian milk manufacturer Parmalat
in 2011, rescuing it from bankruptcy after the infamous 2003 collapse that
landed its founder in jail.
Sean Parker
Age: 33
Net Worth: $2
billion
Country: United
States
Sean Parker is
turning his big vision and huge Rolodex to fighting cancer–in December he
joined “Stand Up To Cancer” to help build an immunology dream team. Parker, 33,
is also revamping his much hyped start-up, Airtime, with the hopes that the
video chat site will have the impact of his other Web companies–Napster and Facebook.
Facebook’s stock comeback helped add $700 million to his fortune since last
August. At 19, Parker skipped college to disrupt the recording industry with
music swapping site Napster and later advanced viral marketing with his Web
address book Plaxo.
He served as Facebook’s
first president at age 24, helping streamline the product and organizing the
company to ensure his pal Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and CEO,
maintained control. He’s fixing the same music industry he helped dismantle a
decade ago as director and cheerleader for hot–and legal–music platform
Spotify.
Ayman Hariri
Age: 34
Net Worth: $1.35
billion
Country: Lebanon
Ayman Hariri is the
son of slain Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. He’s involved in running
Saudi Oger, one of Saudi Arabia’s biggest construction companies and the source
of the Hariri family fortune. Oger was part of a venture that won a $653
million contract in January 2013 to build a local branch of the Louvre museum
in Abu Dhabi, due to open in 2015. His other interests include
telecommunications; Oger has a major stake in Turk Telekom. It also owns shares
in Middle Eastern banks, such as Jordan’s Arab Bank, which hasn’t fared so
well. Saudi Oger had to take out a $1 billion loan in February 2013 to refinance
debt related to its investment in Arab Bank.
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