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(He didn't involve, he was a three)
Luisa Kroll and Alison Fass led a team of 30 Forbes reporters who ranked the world’s wealthiest for this week’s billionaire’s issue.
“A billion just isn’t what it used to be. There are now 793 billionaires. Three years ago there were only 476.”
For the twelfth straight year, Microsoft founder Bill Gates is the world’s richest man with 50 billion dollars. Investor Warren Buffet trails in second with a meagre 42 billion. (I think Forbes, a cover, we have...) Newcomers include cover boy Calvin Ayer, a Canadian, who's built a billion-dollar online gambling empire. And KP Singh, who owns the real estate under many Indian companies that are outsourcing centers. India now has 23 billionaires. Almost half of the world’s billionaires are right here in the US, 371 to be exact. And between them, locked in the bank vaults are assets worth well over a trillion dollars.
Martha Stewart fell off the list this year. But Donald Trump is still on it. He’s No. 278,
“Is it easier to make a billion dollars now? There are more billionaires.”
“I think it’s probably easier now than ever before. Yeah.”
“And why is that?”
“Because there are more ways to do it.”
“So I thought I am trying to design something better.”
British vacuum inventor James Dyson has literally sucked up his fortune.
India’s Tulsi Tanti made his out of thin air by building Asia’s largest wind farm.
“It’s good to be on the list.”
Billionaire Ronald Lauder, heir to his mother Estee Lauder's cosmetics fortune and founder of New York’s Neue Gallery says, even for him, looking at the list can get depressing.
“Why?”
“Cause some people in their 30s and are worth at least 10 billion dollars and hey…”
The world’s youngest billionaire is now Hind Hariri, daughter of slain Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. She is only 22.
Around the world, Luisa Kroll says, the biggest fortunes aren't growing as fast.
So we were not gonna have a trillionaire any time soon?
No, I don't think so. I mean we’re going to have a hundred-billionaire any time soon.
49 countries are now home to at least one billionaire. Membership in the club may be spreading. But it’s still not easy to get in the door.
Anthony Mason, CBS News, New York.
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