Forbes&nbsp;today released its annual ranking of the&nbsp;World’s 100 Highest-Paid&nbsp;athletes, who collectively earned $4 billion over the last 12 months, up 5% from last year’s earnings of $3.8 billion.&nbsp;



Lionel Messi&nbsp;was named the world’s highest-paid athlete for the first time, up from second place last year, with $127 million in total earnings. 



Messi unseats&nbsp;Floyd Mayweather,&nbsp;who held the crown last year, and was the leader four times in seven years. Behind Messi is longtime rival&nbsp;Cristiano Ronaldo&nbsp;(No. 2), who earned $109 million between his salary and endorsements.&nbsp;



READ MORE | <a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="How Rihanna Created A $600 Million Fortune—And Became The World’s Richest Female Musician (opens in a new tab)" href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2019/06/04/how-rihanna-created-a-600-million-fortune-and-became-the-worlds-richest-female-musician/" target="_blank">How Rihanna Created A $600 Million Fortune—And Became The World’s Richest Female Musician</a>



Serena Williams&nbsp;(No. 63) returned to the ranking, after no women appeared in 2018. Cost of admission to the 2019 list is the highest ever at $25 million, up $2.1 million from the previous year. Endorsement income experienced an increase of 12.5% to $987 million this year.



“The global impact of soccer is clearly reflected in earnings in 2019, with the top three athletes on the list being Messi, Ronaldo, and Neymar,” said&nbsp;Kurt Badenhausen, senior editor, Forbes Media. 



“But basketball players continue to dominate the top 100 overall with 35 athletes on the list earning a total of $1.29 billion, with 72% of that income coming from salaries rather than endorsement deals.”



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The list of elite athletes consists of players from ten different sports. NBA stars lead with 35 basketball players among the top 100, down from 40 in 2018, headed by&nbsp;LeBron James&nbsp;(No. 8 with $89 million). 



Football was the next most-represented sport with 19 players, followed by baseball with 15, and soccer with 12.



There are 25 different countries represented on this year’s World’s Highest-Paid Athletes list, up from 22 in 2018. Americans dominate the action with 62 athletes thanks to the sky-high salaries in the major sports leagues. 



The U.K. has five athletes, France and Spain have three, while Brazil, Canada, the Dominican Republic, Germany, Serbia and Venezuela all have two.



Methodology:&nbsp;



Our earnings include prize money, salaries and bonuses earned between June 1, 2018 and June 1, 2019. Endorsement incomes are an estimate of sponsorships, appearance fees and licensing incomes for the same 12-month period based on conversations with dozens of industry insiders. We do not deduct for taxes or agents’ fees, and we don’t include investment income.



The World’s Top 10 Highest-Paid Athletes in 2019:



<table class="wp-block-table"><tbody><tr><td>Rank</td><td>Athlete</td><td>Sport</td><td>Salary/Winnings ($mil)</td><td>Endorsements ($mil)</td><td>Total Earnings ($mil)</td></tr><tr><td>1</td><td>Lionel Messi</td><td>Soccer</td><td>92</td><td>35</td><td>127</td></tr><tr><td>2</td><td>Cristiano Ronaldo</td><td>Soccer</td><td>65</td><td>44</td><td>109</td></tr><tr><td>3</td><td>Neymar</td><td>Soccer</td><td>75</td><td>30</td><td>105</td></tr><tr><td>4</td><td>Canelo Alvarez</td><td>Boxing</td><td>92</td><td>2</td><td>94</td></tr><tr><td>5</td><td>Roger Federer</td><td>Tennis</td><td>7.4</td><td>86</td><td>93.4</td></tr><tr><td>6</td><td>Russell Wilson</td><td>Football</td><td>80.5</td><td>9</td><td>89.5</td></tr><tr><td>7</td><td>Aaron Rodgers</td><td>Football</td><td>80.3</td><td>9</td><td>89.3</td></tr><tr><td>8</td><td>LeBron James</td><td>Basketball</td><td>36</td><td>53</td><td>89</td></tr><tr><td>9</td><td>Stephen Curry</td><td>Basketball</td><td>37.8</td><td>42</td><td>79.8</td></tr><tr><td>10</td><td>Kevin Durant</td><td>Basketball</td><td>30.4</td><td>35</td><td>65.4</td></tr></tbody></table>



-Forbes Corporate Communications; Forbes Staff

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Lionel Messi Claims Top Spot on Forbes’ 2019 List Of The World’s 100 Highest-Paid Athletes

Each year, tens of thousands of people immigrate to the U.S., hoping for a better future. Robyn Rihanna Fenty’s story started the same way. Over a decade ago, Rihanna left her home country, Barbados, and her abusive addict father behind to launch her music career. 



Her journey kicked off with the help of fellow musician (and&nbsp;now billionaire) Jay-Z, who heard a demo of one of her songs. Since then, Rihanna has not only rocked the music industry, she’s also become a force in the beauty and fashion industries.



Building on her fame and her experiences as a woman of color, Rihanna launched makeup brand Fenty in partnership with luxury goods group LVMH in late 2017. &nbsp;



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The Fenty line, which includes shades of makeup for a wide range of skin colors and tones, pulled in an estimated $570 million in sales last year. In 2018, she started the Savage X Fenty lingerie line with Los Angeles-based online fashion firm TechStyle Fashion Group. 



That was just the first of her forays into clothing design. Last month Rihanna and LVMH announced a new luxury fashion house, Fenty, which will be based in Paris. She becomes the first black woman to lead a major fashion&nbsp;maison.



Primarily thanks to her ventures outside of music,&nbsp;Rihanna&nbsp;is worth an estimated $600 million, according to&nbsp;Forbes.&nbsp;She debuts as one of 19 immigrants on&nbsp;Forbes’ 2019 list of America’s Richest Self-Made Women, which altogether features 80 women.



 Two other newcomers to the list were born outside the U.S. as well: Ashley Chen of Taiwan and Neha Narkhede of India. The women immigrants hail from around the globe, from Canada to South Korea, from 14 different countries on four continents; nine moved here from an Asian country. Together this cohort of immigrants, which make up nearly one- fourth of the women in the self-made ranks, is worth an estimated $18.4 billion—23% of the total.



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This is the fifth year that&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;has celebrated the nation’s most successful women. The U.S. continues to serve as a beacon for ambitious women who want to transform industries, be it in retail, defense or other industries. In spite of the federal government’s crackdown on immigration, the nation’s most successful immigrant women continue to embody the power of the American Dream.



Thai Lee, who is the most successful woman immigrant in the country, has lived that dream, working very hard along the way. Lee, who was born in Bangkok, grew up in South Korea but moved to the U.S., where she and her older sister lived with a family friend and attended high school in Amherst, Massachusetts. Lee later attended Amherst College to study economics and biology, and received her M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1985. 



She went on to work at U.S. companies like Procter &amp; Gamble and American Express for four years, but in 1989 she and her then husband bought a software reseller for less than $1 million. They renamed it SHI International, which now works with customers like Boeing and Johnson &amp; Johnson and reported $10 billion in sales in 2018.



China native&nbsp;Weili Dai, Panda Express cofounder&nbsp;Peggy Cherng&nbsp;and Turkish-American billionaire&nbsp;Eren Ozmen, who grew up in Diyarbakir—a city in Turkey close to the Syrian border—all similarly moved to the U.S. in pursuit of a better education. Ozmen sold baklava and worked as a janitor at aerospace and defense company Sierra Nevada to support herself while attending business school at the University of Nevada, Reno. 



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Today she is the president and majority owner of Sierra Nevada, which racked up $1.9 billion in sales in 2018 and counts NASA as one of its clients. “Look at the United States and what women can do here, compared to the rest of the world. That is why we feel we have a legacy to leave behind,” Ozmen told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;in&nbsp;2018. &nbsp;&nbsp;



Other women moved here in search of a better life and more opportunities. Makeup mogul Anastasia Soare immigrated from Romania to Los Angeles in 1989 and took a job in a beauty salon. Three years later she quit to start her own business and in 2000 launched her eyebrow products line, Anastasia Beverly Hills, now valued at over $3 billion. 



Forever 21 cofounder&nbsp;Jin Sook Chang&nbsp;pursued a similar path: She and her husband came to the U.S. from South Korea in 1981. Chang worked as a hairdresser for three years, while her husband worked&nbsp;three jobs. The couple used $11,000 they had saved to open a 900-square-foot clothing store in Los Angeles. Now Forever 21 has over 815 stores and an estimated $3.4 billion in annual revenue.



Another industry where women immigrants make their mark is technology. Twenty women entrepreneurs on&nbsp;Forbes’ list built a fortune in tech, including seven immigrants. One of those is Oracle co-CEO Safra Catz. Originally from Israel, Catz joined the software giant Oracle in 1999. Although Catz is not a founder, she has overseen more than 130 acquisitions worth a total of $60 billion and has become one of the top-paid CEOs in the country. Just in 2017, Oracle paid her $135 million in cash and stock, which helped her join the billionaire ranks in 2019.



Here’s the complete list of immigrants on this year’s list of America’s Richest Self-Made Women:



Thai Lee



Net worth: $3 billion



Country of origin: South Korea



Source of wealth: IT provider



Peggy Cherng



Net worth: $1.7 billion



Country of origin: Burma (Myanmar)



Source of wealth: fast food



Jin Sook Chang



Net worth: $1.5 billion



Country of origin: South Korea



Source of wealth: fashion



Eren Ozmen



Net worth: $1.4 billion



Country of origin: Turkey



Source of wealth: aerospace



Jayshree Ullal



Net worth: $1.4 billion



Country of origin: United Kingdom



Source of wealth: computer networking



Anastasia Soare



Net worth: $1.2 billion



Country of origin: Romania



Source of wealth: cosmetics



Safra Catz



Net worth: $1.1 billion



Country of origin: Israel



Source of wealth: software



Neerja Sethi



Net worth: $1 billion



Country of origin: India



Source of wealth: IT consulting



Weili Dai



Net worth: $960 million



Country of origin: China



Source of wealth: semiconductors



Christel DeHaan



Net worth: $950 million



Country of origin: Germany



Source of wealth: timeshares



Kit Crawford



Net worth: $890 million



Country of origin: Canada



Source of wealth: Clif Bar



Rihanna



Net worth: $600 million



Country of origin: Barbados



Source of wealth: cosmetics, music



Theresia Gouw



Net worth: $580 million



Country of origin: Indonesia



Source of wealth: venture capital



Celine Dion



Net worth: $450 million



Country of origin: Canada



Source of wealth: music



Adi Tatarko



Net worth: $430 million



Country of origin: Israel



Source of wealth: home design



Neha Narkhede



Net worth: $360 million



Country of origin: India



Source of wealth: software



Sonia Gardner



Net worth: $310 million



Country of origin: Morocco



Source of wealth: finance



Ashley Chen



Net worth: $300 million



Country of origin: Taiwan



Source of wealth: IT provider



Toni Ko



Net worth: $270 million



Country of origin: South Korea



Source of wealth: cosmetics



-Deniz Cam; Forbes Staff

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Rihanna, Celine Dion, Safra Catz: Here Are The Most Successful Immigrant Women In The US

Taylor Swift was only 18 when she scored her first No. 1 album, the aptly named&nbsp;Fearless,&nbsp;in 2008. After a decade defined by bestselling albums and worldwide tours, the pop star is one of America’s Richest Self-Made Women, with a net worth that&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;estimates is $360 million.



When Swift first made&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/chloesorvino/2016/06/01/youngest-richest-self-made-women-under-40-taylor-swift-beyonce/#2f05ee7028ba" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">our list in 2016</a>&nbsp;with a fortune of $250 million, she was the youngest member by far, at 26, and one of only four women under 40. This year,&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;expanded the ranks of America’s Richest Self-Made Women to 80 members, four of whom are in their 20s, including Swift, now 29. Another seven are in their 30s.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/1146349906/960x0.jpg?cropX1=269&amp;cropX2=2424&amp;cropY1=158&amp;cropY2=1370" alt="2019 Billboard Music Awards - Show"/><figcaption>Pop star Taylor Swift is worth an estimated $360 million.&nbsp;GETTY IMAGES FOR DCP</figcaption></figure>



The youngest is 21-year-old Kylie Jenner, whose three-year-old beauty brand, Kylie Cosmetics, is worth at least $900 million by&nbsp;Forbes’&nbsp;estimate. The rest of her fortune comes from her earnings from the profitable business. “I didn’t expect anything,” said Jenner of becoming&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2019/03/05/at-21-kylie-jenner-becomes-the-youngest-self-made-billionaire-ever/#85047ff2794a" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the world’s youngest self-made billionaire</a>&nbsp;in March. “I did not foresee the future. But the recognition feels really good. That’s a nice pat on the back.”



Some internet readers didn’t think she deserved the accolades and questioned&nbsp;Forbes’&nbsp;decision to call her self-made, given her family’s fame and the help she received from her mom, Kris Jenner, in building her cosmetics firm. By&nbsp;Forbes’&nbsp;definition, the term self-made describes anyone who did not inherit his or her fortune; our methodology is explained further&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2018/07/13/heres-what-forbes-means-by-self-made-from-bootstrappers-to-silver-spooners/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">here</a>. The makeup mogul is America’s only female self-made billionaire under the age of 40.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5ceec533142c500008f42097/960x0.jpg?cropX1=127&amp;cropX2=1062&amp;cropY1=418&amp;cropY2=1041" alt="1106_bumble-whitney-wolfe_1280x1920"/><figcaption>Whitney Wolfe Herd is the Queen Bee of dating apps.JAMEL TOPPIN FOR FORBES</figcaption></figure>



Two other entrepreneurs in their twentiesare newcomers to the self-made women ranks but are well known for founding successful startups. Whitney Wolfe Herd, 29, is worth $290 million thanks to her stake in Bumble, the dating app that lets women make the first move. 



Bumble, which boasts 47 million users and topped $175 million in revenue last year, has expanded into friend-finding and networking. Wolfe has also launched a venture capital fund—with tennis champ Serena Williams as a coinvestor—that is focused on early-stage investments in businesses founded and led by women of color and underrepresented groups. “The power lunch is no longer just for men,” Herd&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2017/11/14/billion-dollar-bumble-how-whitney-wolfe-herd-built-americas-fastest-growing-dating-app" target="_blank">told&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;in 2017.</a>&nbsp;“We all deserve a seat at the table.”



Karissa Bodnar, also 29, started her vegan cosmetics line Thrive Causemetics in 2015 after a close friend passed away from cancer at age 24. Bodnar is worth an estimated $275 million thanks to the success of Thrive Causemetics, which sells one mascara every eight seconds, according to the company. “My advice for young women who want to start their own business is to know your ‘why’ from day one,” Bodnar&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tanyaklich/2018/09/12/how-karissa-bodnar-built-thrive-causemetics-a-luxury-and-mission-driven-makeup-company/" target="_blank">says</a>.



 “There’s nobody that&#8217;s going to work as hard as you, and if you don’t know your ‘why’—why you’re starting this business—it’s going to be really tough when you’re up at 4 a.m, printing labels and packing orders for customers.”



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/1033343016/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="US-ENTERTAINMENT-COSMETICS-RIHANNA"/><figcaption>Rihanna is the richest newcomer to the list of America&#8217;s Richest Self-Made Women.AFP/GETTY IMAGES</figcaption></figure>



America’s richest female musician, Rihanna, debuts at age 31, not because of the money she’s made from singing but mostly thanks to her lucrative partnership with LVMH.&nbsp;Fenty Beauty, the cosmetics brand she co-owns with the luxury goods giant, generated approximately $570 million in revenue last year. With LVMH’s announcement of luxury clothing label Fenty, Rihanna will become the first black woman to run a major fashion house in Paris.



Serena Williams, another newcomer, is famous for her athletic prowess, but off the court she too is venturing into diverse fields, from fashion to venture capital, amassing a fortune estimated at $225 million. Williams, 37, launched a self-funded, direct-to-consumer clothing line, S by Serena, last year, and also owns stakes in the Miami Dolphins and mixed martial arts promoter UFC. The 23-time Grand Slam winner has invested in 34 startups over the past five years through Serena Ventures, targeting companies founded by women and minorities. “I want to be the brand instead of being the face,” Williams told&nbsp;Forbes.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5ceec615142c500008f420df/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="MAKERS 2018"/><figcaption>Katrina Lake is the youngest female founder to ever take a company public.© 2018 BLOOMBERG FINANCE LP</figcaption></figure>



Some of these women are hesitant to identify as female leaders. “I didn’t want to just be a female CEO,”&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/moiraforbes/2018/08/09/katrina-lake-billion-dollar-business/#58260040727f" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">says</a>&nbsp;Katrina Lake, the 36-year-old founder of online personal styling firm Stitch Fix. “I wanted to be a successful CEO, regardless of gender.”



Still, Lake, worth an estimated $380 million, understands the example she is setting. When she took Stitch Fix public in November 2017, Lake made headlines for becoming the youngest female founder to take a company public—and for holding her young son while ringing the Nasdaq opening bell. She didn’t plan the moment, but she realizes why it was a significant statement. “There just aren’t enough great examples of different types of people that are at the top,” Lake says. “I feel a lot of responsibility in making sure that others can see themselves there, and not just a lot of men in suits.”



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">America&#8217;s Richest Self-Made Women Under 40</h3>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5ceecdd1142c500008f421d4/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="Kylie Jenner"/><figcaption>Kylie Jenner is America&#8217;s only self-made female billionaire under 30.JAMEL TOPPIN FOR FORBES</figcaption></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Kylie Jenner</h3>



Net Worth: $1 billion



Age: 21



Residence: Hidden Hills, California



Self-Made Score: 7



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Taylor Swift</h3>



Net Worth: $360 million



Age: 29



Residence: Nashville



Self-Made Score: 8



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5ceec6b99736330008aa63d1/960x0.jpg?cropX1=1365&amp;cropX2=2721&amp;cropY1=734&amp;cropY2=1700" alt="2018 Forbes Women's Summit"/><figcaption>Karissa Bodnar is a newcomer to the rankings of America&#8217;s Richest Self-Made Women.2018 GETTY IMAGES</figcaption></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Karissa Bodnar</h3>



Net Worth: $275 million



Age: 29



Residence: Los Angeles



Self-Made Score: 9



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Whitney Wolfe Herd</h3>



Net Worth: $290 million



Age: 29



Residence: Austin, Texas



Self-Made Score: 8



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Rihanna</h3>



Net Worth: $600 million



Age: 31



Residence: Los Angeles



Self-Made Score: 10



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5ceebdc6cd1f12000a2ac33d/960x0.jpg?cropX1=180&amp;cropX2=4034&amp;cropY1=365&amp;cropY2=4219" alt="Neha Narkhede"/><figcaption>Neha Narkhede is a cofounder of open-source software unicorn Confluent.COURTESY OF CONFLUENT</figcaption></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Neha Narkhede</h3>



Net Worth: $360 million



Age: 34



Residence: Palo Alto, California



Self-Made Score: 8



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/07a297ba01d343b589fa1fc62ac35a5e/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="Huda Kattan and Mona Kattan Portrait Session"/><figcaption>Huda Kattan built her billion-dollar makeup brand off the beauty blog she started in 2010.MATT LICARI/INVISION/AP</figcaption></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Huda Kattan</h3>



Net Worth: $610 million



Age: 35



Residence: Dubai



Self-Made Score: 9



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Katrina Lake</h3>



Net Worth: $380 million



Age: 36



Residence: San Francisco



Self-Made Score: 8



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/1067769250/960x0.jpg?cropX1=248&amp;cropX2=2020&amp;cropY1=194&amp;cropY2=1191" alt="Global Citizen Festival: Mandela 100 - Show"/><figcaption>Beyoncé first made America&#8217;s Richest Self-Made Women&#8217;s list in 2015.GETTY IMAGES FOR GLOBAL CITIZEN FESTIVAL: MANDELA 100</figcaption></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Beyoncé Knowles</h3>



Net Worth: $400 million



Age: 37



Residence: Los Angeles



Self-Made Score: 8



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5ceeca363dea4d000927118e/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="Serena Williams"/><figcaption>Serena Williams graces the cover of our June 2019 issue.COPYRIGHT LEVON BISS 2018</figcaption></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Serena Williams</h3>



Net Worth: $225 million



Age: 37



Residence: San Francisco Bay Area



Self-Made Score: 9



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5ceebe24142c500008f41e6e/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="Kim Kardashian West"/><figcaption>Kim Kardashian West has parlayed her fame into a nine-figure fortune.JAMEL TOPPIN FOR FORBES</figcaption></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Kim Kardashian West</h3>



Net Worth: $360 million



Age: 38



Residence: Hidden Hills, California



Self-Made Score: 7



&#8211;Hayley C. Cuccinello; Forbes Staff

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From Beyoncé Knowles-Carter to Kim Kardashian West, America’s Richest Self-Made Women Under 40

On Serena Williams’ calendar—which is to calendars what Jackson Pollock paintings are to art—Saturdays are designated family time. The Saturday I’m with her in Rome (she was in New York earlier in the week and will be in Paris the following one) carries extra significance. Exactly four years ago, in exactly that Eternal City, she met her husband, Alexis Ohanian, cofounder of online community Reddit. 



The two celebrate, in part, with the kind of outing anyone who’s not the most famous woman athlete in the world takes for granted: a stroll in a hotel garden with their joint venture, 22-month-old Olympia, in tow. It’s more romantic than it sounds: The Rome Cavalieri goes so far as to call its 15-acre garden a “private park,” littered with marble and bronze, lions and unicorns.



The regal surroundings befit a historic figure of American sport, who has 23 Grand Slam titles and has blown away any number of barriers and stereotypes. And the unicorns? Between Reddit and his <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2018/07/09/at-initialized-capital-odd-couple-alexis-ohanian-and-garry-tan-look-to-do-vc-differently/#538f46b63efe" target="_blank">$500 million fund, Initialized Capital</a>, Ohanian does his part. But it turns out that Williams has quietly been playing that game, too. 



She’s now the first athlete ever to hit Forbes’ annual list of the World’s Richest Self-Made Women, with an estimated fortune of $225 million, the vast majority of it having come via her brain and brand rather than her backhand. And over the past five years, she’s been quietly dropping money into 34 startups. In April, Williams formally announced that Serena Ventures is open for business, to fund others and launch companies herself.



Athletes are richer than ever, thanks to the explosion in TV rights fees for live sporting events, which trickle down to players. The&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2018/06/05/mayweather-messi-lead-the-worlds-highest-paid-athletes-2018/#8d0173f2e26b" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">50 highest-paid athletes</a>&nbsp;in the world made $2.6 billion last year, versus $1 billion 15 years ago. And Williams is hardly the first to put newfound disposable income to active work—in the NBA alone, LeBron James, Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant have&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kurtbadenhausen/2019/02/12/the-nbas-highest-paid-players-2019-lebron-james-leads-with-89-million/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">all launched media companies</a>, and Durant, Andre Iguodala and Carmelo Anthony are active venture capital investors. But she is one of the few specifically gearing investments around a single north star: herself.



“I want to be a part of it,” she says, sitting at the hotel. “I want to be in the infrastructure. I want to be the brand, instead of just being the face.” Given her longtime background in style and design, that means overweighting on fashion lines, jewelry and beauty products. Yes, she’ll keep competing at tennis—her resilient comeback last year after giving birth burnished her as a cultural icon who transcends sports. And sure, she’ll happily continue to rake in easy endorsement money from the likes of Nike and JPMorgan Chase—her $29 million total income over the past 12 months is the highest of her career.&nbsp;



But like a ground stroke with torque, Williams bets she can eventually dwarf those figures by leveraging some of her own cash with her name and fame.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5cf542ffcd1f12000a2b45f8/1920x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="Serena Williams"/><figcaption>Power Game: Williams invested in 34 startups over the past five years. The value of her portfolio has doubled to more than $10 million.ADAM PRETTY/GETTY IMAGES</figcaption></figure>



The story of how sisters Serena and Venus Williams reached the top of the tennis world is the stuff of Hollywood legend: A black father with limited tennis experience homeschools his two daughters and teaches them on the streets of Compton, California, to penetrate and then dominate a lily-white sport. “You’d see different people walking down the street with AK-47s and think, &#8216;Time to get in the house,&#8217;” she remembers of those early years. “When you hear gunshots, you get low.



Their father’s insistence that his precocious daughters avoid the private tennis academy machine and well-oiled junior tournament circuit left a mark on the younger one, especially after she won her first Grand Slam title at age 17. “It really shaped me for the rest of my career both on and off the court in terms of taking a chance and how to be different and how to stand out,” Williams says of his strategy. When everyone zigs, she zags.



So at&nbsp;<a href="https://www.serenaventures.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Serena Ventures</a>, she focuses on companies founded by women and minorities. Yes, there’s a social purpose to that decision. But as with her tennis upbringing, she’s also finding opportunity by avoiding the herd. Just&nbsp;<a href="https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/the-vc-female-founders-dashboard" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">2.3% of the total venture capital</a>invested last year in the U.S. went to women-led startups—and even when including firms with both a male and female founder, you’re just at 10%. The numbers are worse for black and Hispanic founders. Yet some 60% of Williams’ investments so far have gone to companies led by women or people of color. “What better way to preach that message?” asks Williams.



The only way to find enough of those companies right now is to nurture them early, something that Williams got hooked on after investing and losing (eventually) $250,000 in a startup in the years before Serena Ventures. “I learned you can’t overspend, but I also learned that I love seed investing,” she says. Of the 34 companies she’s backed through Serena Ventures, more than three quarters are early-stage.&nbsp;



“It’s fun to get in there. I don’t gamble. I don’t jump off buildings,” says Williams. “I’m the most non-taking-a-chance kind of a person, but I felt like seed was where we wanted to be.”&nbsp;



Given the exponential riskiness involved in pre- and early-revenue companies, Williams has built a team of Silicon Valley mentors around her, much as Patrick Mouratoglou has guided Williams on the court and WME’s Jill Smoller has handled her endorsements—almost a quarter-billion worth—for nearly two decades. There’s Chris Lyons, from Andreessen Horowitz, who is an informal advisor and friend. “She is more passionate than 99% of the people in this space,” says Lyons. “She’s reaching out to me regularly asking what we think of companies.”



There’s Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, a longtime friend, with whom she serves on the board of SurveyMonkey.&nbsp;“I always ask her advice in a lot of different areas,” Williams says. (The tennis star is also on the board of the social shopping platform Poshmark.)



But one mentor stands above the rest—the one she married. “I’ve been really leaning on Alexis,” she says. Williams had never heard of Reddit when the pair met in 2015 and Ohanian knew little about tennis. But they bonded over ambition. “She is determined to be great at everything she does,” says Ohanian, who&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;estimates is worth $70 million on his own.&nbsp;



His venture firm’s targets are traditionally more tech-focused—big scores include Instacart and Patreon. But in living through Ohanian’s deals, Williams has learned. Initialized and Serena Ventures have even co-invested on a few, including Gobble, which does weekly dinner-kit deliveries, and Wave, which offers no-fee transfers on money sent to Africa by phone. “I’d like to call us a more modern business family,” says Williams.



The rate of Williams’ investments has ramped up in lockstep with the onboarding of a portfolio manager. Alison Rapaport, 29, was fresh out of Harvard Business School with an M.B.A. after a five-year stint in JPMorgan’s asset-management group, when she got connected with Williams through Andreessen’s Lyons. Williams told Rapaport to come to the interview with three investment ideas, along with the numbers and rationale behind them. Rapaport did her homework on the investment ideas—and diligence on her potential new boss, who earlier in the week posted on Instagram how much she liked Taco Sunday. Rapaport arrived at Williams’ home outside San Francisco for a Sunday meeting at noon armed with investment ideas and two bags of takeout, make-your-own tacos, and she handled Ohanian’s rapid-fire follow-up emails with aplomb. “I knew this was our girl,” Williams says.&nbsp;



Serena Williams slides around the red clay of the Tennis Club Parioli in Rome a few days ahead of the Italian Open, practicing to an eclectic mix of musical genres whose only commonality is that they’re sung by powerful women, from Rihanna to Adele to Pink. As word spreads around the club that the world’s most famous tennis player is hitting balls in their midst, a crowd predictably gathers, the youngest among them squealing, “Serena!”, the oldest snapping and sharing pictures.



Williams is by far the most famous female athlete in the U.S.—and only Tom Brady and Tiger Woods finish a tick ahead among all athletes in terms of public awareness. And that fame carries almost no brand downside—her appeal rates above average across all demographics, from Millennials to blue collar to high income, says Henry Schafer, who tracks Q Scores, which measure the likeability of a celebrity.



After 20 years in the spotlight, Williams knows how to handle the star power. At the end of the two-hour session, she gracefully obliges several with autographs and selfies. But more important: She has figured out at Serena Ventures how to harness it.



The past decade has given rise to the celebrity VC investor, spurred by the success of people like the actor Ashton Kutcher and the musician Nas, who both have their own funds. The recent IPOs for Uber and Lyft included scores of musicians and Hollywood A-listers like Gwyneth Paltrow, Jay-Z and Olivia Munn, who got in early and cashed in big. Overall, Ohanian is skeptical of the trend.



 “The advice I generally give to founders is don’t take money from celebrities,” he says. “The only exception is when they are really going to add value. Because in most cases, they are not really familiar with this world and if you are doing it to feed your ego, it’s a bad idea.”



So Williams tries to put money in deals where her fame and brand and platform grow the pie. As one of the better product endorsers of this century, it’s something she’s honed in ways that most musicians and actors (who turn up their noses at most product deals) have not. She counts nearly 30 million followers across social media—her posts of herself wearing Nike’s swoosh generated more than $2 million in promotional value for the brand over the past 12 months, according to Hookit, which tracks celebrity influence on social media. “Serena is a once-in-a-generation voice, reaching a global audience that extends well beyond tennis,” says Hookit CEO Scott Tilton.



And that voice is amplified exponentially when dealing with an early-stage brand, rather than one like Nike. She shared a pair of videos in an Instagram story of her entourage eating Daily Harvest meals ahead of her hosting duties for the Met Gala. 



She collaborated with Neighborhood Goods, which brings a pop-up approach to retailing, for her clothing line. “Using her platform to talk about our mission was the biggest support we’ve had besides her capital,” says Georgina Gooley, cofounder of Billie, which makes razors priced to eliminate the “pink tax” that makes female-targeted products cost more than similar versions for men.



The dating and networking app Bumble added Williams as an endorser for 2019, including a Super Bowl ad. The pair also partnered in a pitch competition in which two winners with female founders were chosen for funding from Serena and Bumble. 



Three executives of companies in the Serena Ventures portfolio—Daily Harvest, the woman-centric co-working space The Wing, and Lola, a natural tampon brand—networked at the first-ever Bumble Fund Summit in April. “She is facilitating a place for people to connect with one another,” says Jordana Kier, Lola’s founder.



That kind of investor-as-rainmaker power translates into another benefit: deal flow. For more mature deals, traditional venture firms need to take large ownership stakes to hit return targets. Williams, though, is happy to ride along. “Firms know Serena is a hugely valuable strategic investor,” says Ohanian. “I think it is the best of all opportunities, and she can essentially cherry-pick from the top VC firms on deals that are interesting that come her way and at the same time she still has her own deal flow from folks who want her to invest.”



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5cf544339736330008aae5e7/1920x0.jpg?cropX1=0&amp;cropX2=2000&amp;cropY1=204&amp;cropY2=1088" alt="Serena Williams"/><figcaption>Change Agent: &#8220;A lot of people say what I do on the court is amazing, but I feel like that’s just the beginning,&#8221; says Serens Williams. &#8220;I want to be remembered for things I do off the court; lives I’ve been able to impact and voices that have been heard. Picture: LEVON BISS FOR FORBES</figcaption></figure>



Another benefit of early-stage investing: Even with 34 checks written, she has still sunk only an estimated $6 million into these companies. As venture investing goes, given her net worth, it’s still low-risk stuff. And the returns so far seem promising; Serena Ventures says they currently value the portfolio at more than $10 million and double the initial investment. Nearly half of the companies have had follow-up rounds of venture investment since Williams invested, and Serena Ventures even seems poised to score its first exit after Unilever announced plans to buy supplement firm Olly Nutrition in April. Five of her investments are up at least fivefold. Top performers include Billie, Daily Harvest, MasterClass and The Wing.



But Serena Williams wouldn’t be one of the all-time great competitors without also needing to invest more in herself. While she’s known as a fashion icon, she has cashed in only via others’ platforms, whether through endorsements or partnerships. Now that’s changing. Smoller, her longtime endorsement agent, recalls a recent meeting at Nike. “I was talking, and Serena interrupted me and started asking all these questions about their distribution channels, KPIs and growth strategies,” he says. “I looked around and saw their faces. . . . She’s at a level where she wants to understand the process and methods, which I think a lot of people don’t expect.”&nbsp;In May last year, Serena Ventures launched a self-funded, direct-to-consumer clothing line, S by Serena. She kept waiting for someone to fund a company for her to design clothing, she says, but “I was thinking of this the wrong way. I had to invest in myself.”&nbsp;



The line includes dresses, jackets, tops, denim and more, mostly priced under $200. She’s excited about an S by Serena show for New York Fashion Week in September. The line got a boost in October when Williams’ close friend Meghan Markle was spotted wearing the collection’s “Boss” blazer, which quickly sold out on the website. Williams returned the favor when she hosted a baby shower for the Duchess of Sussex in February. Williams plans to launch an S by Serena jewelry line this year and one of beauty products in 2020.&nbsp;



With all this commerce, Williams says she’ll continue to abbreviate her on-the-court schedule, prioritizing the Grand Slam events that burnish her brand. While a dinosaur in the tennis world at 37, she still figures she has two or maybe even three years left. “I am in no rush to get out of this sport,” she says. But in Serena Ventures, she’s laid the foundation to keep playing the game her entire life. “I want to create a brand that has longevity, kind of like my career,” she says. “It’s not fancy, it’s not here, it’s not out, it’s not trendy, it’s a staple, like my tennis game.”



&#8211;Kurt Badenhausen; Forbes Staff

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Inside Serena Williams’ Plan To Ace Venture Investing

“Work, work, work, work, work, work.” That’s the opening line of Rihanna’s 2016 dancehall anthem titled, appropriately, “Work.” It could also serve as her personal motto.



Famous first as a singer, Robyn Rihanna Fenty, age 31, has since evolved into a style icon and makeup entrepreneur—and soon she’ll be the first black woman in charge of a major luxury fashion house. All those efforts add up to a $600 million fortune, making her the wealthiest female musician in the world, ahead of the likes of Madonna ($570 million), Céline Dion ($450 million) and Beyoncé ($400 million).



Most of that comes not from music but from her partnership with LVMH, the French luxury goods giant run by billionaire Bernard Arnault. Rihanna (pronounced Ri-Ann-ah, not Ri-Ah-nah as she recently clarified) and LVMH co-own the makeup brand Fenty Beauty. 



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It launched in September 2017 at Sephora, another LVMH brand, and online at FentyBeauty.com, quickly becoming a viral success. Fenty Beauty racked up a reported $100 million in sales in its first few weeks, propelled by Rihanna’s fame and 71 million Instagram followers.



The entire personal care industry in America has grown huge in recent years. According to Grand View Research,&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/us-personal-care-products-market" target="_blank">it could swell to more than $200 billion in sales by 2025</a>, up from closer to $130 billion in 2016.&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="http://www.capstoneheadwaters.com/sites/default/files/Capstone%20Headwaters%20Personal%20Care%20Products%20%26%20Services%20M%26A%20Coverage%20Report%20-%20Q4%202018.pdf" target="_blank">The market saw a record&nbsp;</a>134 M&amp;A deals last year, including P&amp;G&#8217;s $250 million purchase of 10-year-old First Aid Beauty. 



Perhaps the most telling data point: 11 of the 80 women on&nbsp;Forbes&#8216; list of the Richest Self-Made Women made their money in beauty or skincare products. Many did what Rihanna did, turn to the low-cost marketing opportunity presented by social media. That works best for existing celebrities, as&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2019/03/05/at-21-kylie-jenner-becomes-the-youngest-self-made-billionaire-ever/" target="_blank">Kylie Jenner and her Kylie Cosmetics</a>&nbsp;proved out, who can push their new products at their existing followers.



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Fenty Beauty has differentiated itself in another way, releasing 40 shades of foundation, far more than the handful of hues sold by other brands. “It challenged the standard convention that you only needed a very defined set of shades to satisfy a market,” says Stephanie Wissink, a research analyst at Jefferies. “Not only did [Fenty Beauty] achieve meaningful sales, but it potentially changed the industry permanently.”&nbsp;



Sales continue to soar. Fenty Beauty generated an estimated $570 million in revenue last year, after only 15 months in business. The entire operation is worth, conservatively, more than $3 billion.&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;estimates thatLVMH owns an estimated 50% of it, while Rihanna has about 15%, a figure a spokesperson for the artist disputed but wouldn’t clarify further.



The Barbados native, who overcame hardships including an abusive addict father and a well-publicized assault by then-boyfriend Chris Brown in 2009, also co-owns the Savage X Fenty lingerie line with Los Angeles-based online fashion firm TechStyle Fashion Group and has millions in earnings from her career touring and releasing as a singer, which make up the rest of her fortune.



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Her empire continues to grow. In May, LVMH and Rihanna announced Fenty, a new clothing house that will make high-end clothes, shoes, accessories and jewelry.



“They extended the offer to me and it was a no-brainer because LVMH is a machine,” Rihanna told&nbsp;<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/20/t-magazine/rihanna-fenty-louis-vuitton.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The New York Times Style Magazine</a>. “Bernard Arnault was so enthusiastic; he trusted me and my vision.”



The fashion line, which launched online in May, includes sizes up to U.S. 14, embodying the same inclusive ideal of Fenty Beauty. It will exist under the same umbrella as famous brands such as Dior and Givenchy, marking LVMH’s first new house in more than 30 years.



“What Fenty Beauty did to beauty, Fenty lifestyle is going to do to fashion,” says Wissink. “It’s going to raise the bar for what it looks like to build a brand that’s inclusive, game changing, global and iconic.”



-Natalie Robehmed; Forbes Staff

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How Rihanna Created A $600 Million Fortune—And Became The World’s Richest Female Musician

banks

The Big Bank Theory: South Africa’s Banks Of The Future

MacKenzie Bezos is the latest billionaire to sign the Giving Pledge and commit at least half of her $35 billion fortune to charity. Bezos joins&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-zuckerberg/#36edfd833e06" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mark Zuckerberg</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/richard-branson/#36de51286ff5" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Richard Branson</a>, and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/robert-f-smith/#5e2f42da2236" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Robert F. Smith</a>&nbsp;on the list of donors to Bill Gates and Warren Buffett&#8217;s initiative.



In a letter published by&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://givingpledge.org/Pledger.aspx?id=393" target="_blank">Giving Pledge, Bezos</a>&nbsp;writes of having “a disproportionate amount of money to share” and credits “an infinite series of influences and lucky breaks we can never fully understand” for her wealth.



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Bezos’ signature, alongside hedge fund billionaires&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/david-harding/#128137bd574e" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">David Harding</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/paul-tudor-jones-ii/#cf738ae719c1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Paul Tudor Jones</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/brian-armstrong/#ba0a5735077c" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Brian Armstrong</a>&nbsp;chief executive of cryptocurrency company Coinbase, and WhatsApp’s co-founder&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/brian-acton/#4ff0f3645cfc" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Brian Acton</a>, brings the total signatories to more than 200 people.



The Giving Pledge began in August 2010 when 40 of America’s wealthiest individuals made a commitment to give more than half of their wealth away. The scheme is described as an “open invitation for billionaires &#8230; to publicly dedicate the majority of their wealth to philanthropy”.



Although MacKenzie Bezos doesn’t list any particular causes she writes, “My approach to philanthropy will continue to be thoughtful. It will take time and effort and care. But I won’t wait. And I will keep at it until the safe is empty.”



Who is MacKenzie Bezos?



MacKenzie Bezos will become the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelauyeung/2019/04/04/mackenzie-bezos-to-receive-more-than-35-billion-of-amazon-stock-will-be-worlds-third-richest-woman/#531bed4c1001" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">world’s third richest woman</a>&nbsp;later this year after announcing&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/luisakroll/2019/01/10/fortunes-and-farewells-from-bezos-to-disney-a-guide-to-the-biggest-nastiest-and-weirdest-billionaire-divorces/#53bc7cf0540a" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the terms of the divorce settlement</a>&nbsp;with her husband and Amazon founder&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/#681c86bc1b23" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jeff Bezos</a>.



Although amicable, the settlement is biggest of all time with MacKenzie receiving 4% of Amazon stock, worth more than $35 billion on April 4 2019.



With Amazon&#8217;s current market cap of $897.66 billion, MacKenzie&#8217;s 4% stake is now worth $35.9 billion.



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MacKenzie is also a successful novelist, described by author Toni Morrison as &#8220;one of the best students I&#8217;ve ever had.&#8221; She met Jeff Bezos while both were working at hedge fund D.E. Shaw in New York and they married in 1993. MacKenzie Bezos confirmed her divorce on twitter, stating she was, “Grateful to have finished the process of dissolving my marriage with Jeff.”



L&#8217;Oreal heiress&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/francoise-bettencourt-meyers/#2d000f042b06" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Francoise Bettencourt Meyers</a>&nbsp;is the world’s richest woman with a net worth of $53.6 billion, while&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/alice-walton/#52f0504b4eb2" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Alice Walton</a>&nbsp;of Walmart fame is the only other woman ahead of MacKenzie with a $47.1 billion fortune.



-David Dawkins;Forbes Staff

Axel Springer award ceremony

MacKenzie Bezos Will Donate Half Her Fortune To Charity

Apple’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48110709" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">iPhone sales have dropped</a>&nbsp;in recent quarters, particularly in China, where cheaper rivals Huawei Technologies and Xiaomi have gained traction. Smartphone revenue fell 17% for the latest three months to $31 billion, but the stock jumped 5% on the results. One big reason: record-high services revenue.



The company’s services division includes its App Store, Apple Pay, iTunes, cloud services and more. It is now the second biggest segment for Apple after the iPhone, with revenue of $37 billion in 2018, and Morgan Stanley expects it to&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/11/08/apples-services-will-grow-to-over-100-billion-per-year-in-2023-says-analyst" target="_blank">top $100 billion in 2023</a>. The projected growth speaks to the power of the Apple brand.



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/powerful-brands/list/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Click here for the full list of The World&#8217;s Most Valuable Brands</a>



Apple tops&nbsp;Forbes’ annual look at the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/powerful-brands/list/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">world’s most valuable brands</a>&nbsp;for the ninth straight time.&nbsp;The brand of the tech giant is worth $205.5 billion, up 12% over last year. It is the first time a brand crossed the $200 billion threshold.



Apple has made an art form of moving its customer base from one product category to another. Mac users adopted the iPod, followed by the iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. Customers trust the brand will work seamlessly across all categories in the Apple ecosystem, which has helped make the Cupertino, California-based company the most valuable in the world. Services is the next frontier for the company and brand.



While Apple maintains its spot at the top, Google is closing fast with a value of $167.7 billion, up 23%. The Apple brand was worth more than twice as much as the ubiquitous search brand just four years ago.



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Google has cornered the global search engine market with a 92% share over the past 12 months,&nbsp;<a href="http://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according to StatCounter</a>&nbsp;(Bing, 2.6%, and Yahoo, 1.9%, are miles behind). Like Apple, Google has used its brand to move into other categories of consumers’ everyday life from email to Web browsing to maps to cloud storage.



While many global consumer brands struggle with the changing habits of their customers, the biggest tech brands continue to be juggernauts. Microsoft ($123.5 billion) and Amazon ($97 billion) round out the top four and both jumped more than 20% in value.



One tech brand that was dinged over the past 12 months is Facebook, which ranks fifth overall. It was the only brand in the top ten to fall in value, to an estimated $88.9 billion, down 6% from last year. The number of active Facebook users reached 2.4 billion this year, but the social media brand has been hampered by concerns around data protection, privacy policies and fake news.



Coca-Cola is the top brand outside of tech, with a value of $59.2 billion, up 3%, and ranked sixth overall.



Brands: By The Numbers



The 100 most valuable brands are worth a cumulative $2.33 trillion, up 8% over last year. Tech brands were the top gainers, led by e-commerce giant Amazon, up 37% to $97 billion. Other big winners: Netflix (+34%), Google (+27%) and Adobe (+27%). H&amp;M had the biggest fall, down 12% to $11.5 billion. The Swedish retailer has struggled and cut prices last year on clothing to clear excess inventory. More than 20 brands declined in value, including ESPN (-10%), GE (-8%) and Hyundai (-8%).



U.S. companies landed 56 brands among the top 100, as well as 80% of the top 10. Germany (11 brands), France (7) and Japan (6) were the next most prolific countries of origin. Brands from 16 countries made the final cut.



In addition to the proliferation of tech brands (20 of the top 100), financial services (13), automotive (11), consumer packaged goods (10) and retail (8) were the most common industries.



Methodology



We began with a universe of more than 200 global brands, which include both corporate and product brands. We required brands to have more than a token presence in the U.S., which eliminated some large brands like multinational telecom firm&nbsp;Vodafone&nbsp;and Chinese e-commerce behemoth&nbsp;Alibaba.



Our first step in valuing the brands was to determine revenue and earnings before interest and taxes for each one. We gathered these from company reports, Wall Street research and industry experts.&nbsp;Forbes averaged earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) over the past three years and subtracted from earnings a charge of 8% of the brand’s capital employed, figuring a generic brand should be able to earn at least 8% on this capital.



Forbes&nbsp;applied the corporate tax rate in the parent company’s home country to that net earnings figure. Next, we allocated a percentage of those earnings to the brand based on the role brands play in each industry. Brands are crucial when it comes to beverages and luxury goods, but less so with airlines and fuel, when price and convenience are more important.



To this net brand earnings number, we applied the average price-to-earnings multiple over the past three years to arrive at the final brand value. For privately held outfits we applied earnings multiples for comparable public companies.



-Kurt Badenhausen; Forbes Staff

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The World’s Most Valuable Brands 2019: Apple On Top At $206 Billion

There was a time when it seemed Google could do no wrong—and then came “<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586-Googles-Ideological-Echo-Chamber.html" target="_blank">the memo</a>.” Penned by a former software engineer critical of the company’s diversity initiatives, the now infamous 2017 document tarnished the tech titan’s reputation. But CEO <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/vickyvalet/2018/05/17/the-worlds-most-reputable-ceos-2018/" target="_blank">Sundar Pichai emerged unscathed</a>, thanks in part to the transparent way he managed the crisis. 



Two years later, though, troubles ranging from <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kimelsesser/2018/10/31/googlers-walk-out-over-sexual-harassment-here-are-the-lessons-for-google/" target="_blank">employee protests</a> over the organization’s handling of sexual misconduct allegations to <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.blog.google/technology/safety-security/expediting-changes-google-plus/" target="_blank">data breaches</a> widespread enough to warrant the shuttering of Google Plus appear to have proved too much for even the Valley’s most trusted leader, and as the business has faltered, so, too, has its CEO. 



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“Sundar Pichai, celebrated as the most reputable CEO in the world last year, didn’t make the top ten at all this year,” says Stephen Hahn-Griffiths of the <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.reputationinstitute.com/" target="_blank">Reputation Institute</a>, a reputation measurement and management services firm. For the second year in a row, RI has published the Global CEO RepTrak, a study of chief executive reputation. 



This year’s ranking reveals an average two-point increase in the reputations of the world’s CEOs, a trend that mirrors the one-point increase in the <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/vickyvalet/2019/03/07/the-worlds-most-reputable-companies-2019/" target="_blank">reputations of the world’s companies</a>. The driving force behind both, Hahn-Griffiths says, is corporate responsibility.



“There was a time and a place when it was good enough for leaders to deliver on financial performance, new products and innovative agendas, but that paradigm has changed,” he explains. “Social responsibility, employee responsibility and environmental responsibility—that’s 32% of the weight of reputation of any given CEO.”



With that in mind, it’s no wonder that Pichai, whose identity as a leader is so inextricably linked to that of his company, fell from the top ten, and he’s far from alone: Eight of the CEOs who appeared in the upper echelon of <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/vickyvalet/2018/05/17/the-worlds-most-reputable-ceos-2018/" target="_blank">last year’s list</a>—including Kraft Heinz Company CEO Bernardo Hees, Mondelēz International CEO Dirk Van de Put and LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner—failed to return this time, their descents making room for the rise of some newcomers, among them Ben van Beurden.



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At first glance, the CEO of Royal Dutch Shell might seem an unlikely candidate to rank high on a list of this nature. After all, not only has the energy sector long been regarded by the general public as one without much of a moral compass, but the business Van Beurden leads isn’t counted among the <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/vickyvalet/2019/03/07/the-worlds-most-reputable-companies-2019/" target="_blank">world’s most reputable</a>. 



None of this is news to him, and since rising to the helm in 2014, he’s made rewriting the narrative a priority, and a public one at that. “Doing the right thing is the single biggest driver of reputation,” Hahn-Griffiths says. “His leadership style—lead from the front, not the back—says not only is he a highly ethical CEO, but he has empathy and the desire to make the world a better place to live.”



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/462456534/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="BRITAIN-NETHERLANDS-EARNINGS-OIL-BUSINESS"/><figcaption>Royal Dutch Shell CEO Ben van BeurdenAFP/GETTY IMAGES</figcaption></figure>



From spearheading a campaign to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.shell.com/media/speeches-and-articles/articles-by-date/shell-ben-van-beurden-2018.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reduce Shell’s net carbon footprint</a>50% by 2050 to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/the-energy-future/shell-energy-transition-report/_jcr_content/par/toptasks.stream/1524757699226/3f2ad7f01e2181c302cdc453c5642c77acb48ca3/web-shell-energy-transition-report.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">collaborating with organizations</a>&nbsp;including the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures and the World Resources Institute to ensure that his company’s plans become a reality, Van Beurden has acknowledged the elephant in the energy room—climate change—and has demonstrated his commitment to working to protect the planet against the threats his industry has helped create. “Energy is one of the least reputable industries,” Hahn-Griffiths says. “Shell really took a stand as a leader in climate change and alternative energy, and redefined what it means to be a good corporate citizen in the energy sector.”



The attention Van Beurden has paid to developing sustainable energy solutions is surely qualification enough to make him one of the world’s most reputable CEOs, but had he pursued these initiatives behind closed doors, would they have been enough to propel him into the top ten? It’s difficult to say, and the visibility of his leadership certainly didn’t hurt. 



In fact, the more familiar the general public is with a CEO, the more likely he or she is to have a strong reputation. “The difference between having a CEO with whom the general public isn’t familiar is 10.3 points,” Hahn-Griffiths says. “Not only is that significant, but it translates into billions of dollars in market capitalization, just because you have a CEO at the helm who is visible.” 



Worth noting, however, is that the association between familiarity and perception won’t exist if a CEO is known for all the wrong reasons. As in the case of Pichai, not all press is good press.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/979326534/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="The Battery Conservancy Presents John Demsey With The Battery Medal For Corporate Leadership"/><figcaption>The Estée Lauder Companies CEO Fabrizio FredaPATRICK MCMULLAN VIA GETTY IMAGE</figcaption></figure>



For Fabrizio Freda, whose familiarity ensured his spot in the top tenfor the second year in a row, influence has always been a business imperative. Upon becoming the first non-Lauder to serve as CEO of The Estée Lauder Cos., in 2009, Freda was faced with a big branding challenge: convincing the Millennial generation that a 63-year-old cosmetics company might be relevant to them. 



In order to successfully make the case, Freda just knew a brand makeover wouldn’t do, so he started on the inside, implementing a global <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.elcompanies.com/en/careers/why-work-here/learning-and-development" target="_blank">reverse-mentoring program</a> to promote perpetual learning and development for employees and prioritizing the hiring of more Millennials, who now <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.ft.com/content/d5d0819c-208b-11e8-9efc-0cd3483b8b80" target="_blank">reportedly make up 67%</a> of the Estée Lauder workforce. 



Such shifts have enabled the company to make attention-grabbing moves on the global stage, including the <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.elcompanies.com/en/our-brands" target="_blank">acquisitions</a> of Smashbox, Becca and Too Faced, all Millennial-centric beauty brands, the latter of which boasts <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.instagram.com/toofaced/" target="_blank">12.5 million Instagram</a> followers. “Part of his legacy is really making strides toward winning over the Millennial cohort,” Hahn-Griffiths says. “He’s taken a company that’s been around for generations and has made it relevant to emerging audiences around the world.”



And while not every initiative has gone according to plan—<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.thecut.com/2017/06/este-lauders-edit-coming-to-end.html" target="_blank">Estée Edit</a>, a Millennial-focused line fronted by Kendall Jenner, was discontinued after just 18 months on Sephora’s shelves—those don’t seem to have hurt Freda’s bottom line; Estée Lauder’s market cap has grown from about $5 billion back in 2009 to more than $60 billion today.



“Without losing our advantages of scale and scope, we are instilling a more entrepreneurial mindset to ensure we stay agile and act decisively,” wrote Freda in a statement to Forbes. “This gives us the best qualities of a well-financed, structured organization with the challenger spirit of a startup.”



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Notably absent from this year’s list are women. That’s unsettling. Last year, The Campbell Soup Co. CEO Denise Morrison, who has since stepped down, was the only woman to make the ranks. RI attributes the lack of representation among female leaders to the fact that, on average, their familiarity with the general public is 12%, whereas that of their male counterparts is 15%. 



But Hahn-Griffiths is confident that this trend will soon change, and he says GlaxoSmithKline CEO Emma Walmsley is the one to watch. “She’s the first woman to run a major pharmaceuticals company and has been really disruptive,” he says. “We anticipate the number of women CEOs to increase significantly, and we think Emma, who she is and what she represents, is a role model.”



-Vicky Valet;Forbes Staff

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The World’s Most Reputable CEOs 2019

hen&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/pictures/mkg45mjhl/rachel-haurwitz-28/#5a3a19963b10" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Rachel Haurwitz</a>&nbsp;started her biology Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, the award-winning biochemist Jennifer Doudna suggested Haurwitz investigate part of a bacterial immune system. She studied how microbes store genetic mementos of attacking viruses and recognize them to fight off future assaults. “It was an esoteric project,” Haurwitz says.&nbsp;



It’s esoteric no more. This system, called Crispr, has become one of the hottest technologies in biology, with the potential to give scientists control of the building blocks of life and give investors rich rewards. Crispr had no obvious relevance to human health when it was first described in 1987, but Doudna, who won the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences for her Crispr work, and other pioneers have discovered ways to turn it into a gene-editing tool. Haurwitz and Doudna helped found Caribou Bio­sciences in 2011 to get in on the action. Haurwitz, still in her 20s, became CEO the next year.&nbsp;



Haurwitz is not the only young entrepreneur who sees opportunity in gene editing. Doudna cofounded Mammoth Bio­sciences with some of her other doctoral students and two Stanford Ph.D.s.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/michelatindera/2018/11/13/meet-the-2019-30-under-30-in-healthcare/#15467cf173a9" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Trevor Martin, the company’s 30-year-old CEO</a>, has raised $23 million from such investors as Apple CEO Tim Cook. In 2015, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 29-year-old Luhan Yang founded eGenesis with her mentor,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0427/020-biofuels-biotech-genetics-ideas-opinions.html#32dea2e05083" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Harvard geneticist George Church</a>, to use Crispr to help transplant pig organs into people. Omar Abudayyeh and Jonathan Gootenberg, also in their 20s,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/elliekincaid/2019/03/21/with-launch-of-new-crispr-company-competition-extends-to-diagnostics/#6e643e4f501e" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">cofounded Sherlock Biosciences</a>&nbsp;with another Crispr pioneer, 37-year-old Feng Zhang of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.



“They may be young, but in both cases these are people at the top of their game scientifically,” Doudna says of her cofounders. “They’re fearless in all the right ways and very aware of the ethical challenges.” &nbsp;&nbsp;



Given that no one had built a Crispr company until a few years ago, “there’s maybe more of an opportunity for people with nontraditional backgrounds,” Haurwitz says.



Crispr is an acronym for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats.” It refers to the way bacteria store, in their genomes, snippets of viral DNA, like mug shots. Those markers&nbsp;are used to identify invaders that return, much as a human immune system uses telltale elements of a polio virus remembered from a vaccine.



If an invading virus matches a stored mug shot, enzymes associated with Crispr break the virus’ lethal DNA into harmless pieces. Doudna and others figured out how to use those enzymes to snip DNA at precise points in order to insert or modify genes. Thus does Crispr promise to make the expensive and buggy process of rewriting DNA easier, opening up new ways to treat dis­eases caused by genetic mutations, create cheaper diagnostic tests and engineer cells that kill cancer.



Eight years after its start in Berkeley, Caribou has raised $41 million and cut licensing deals—potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars—with DuPont Pioneer, Novartis and others. It’s starting to develop medical therapies.



Haurwitz grew up in Austin, Texas, and earned a bachelor’s degree in biology at Harvard. She didn’t have a clear plan when she went on to UC Berkeley, but she thought she might later become a patent attorney.&nbsp;



That thinking changed as her Ph.D. work got more exciting. Haurwitz and Doudna spent a lot of time talking about how they could repurpose Crispr for modifying genomes to cure disease. Program the naturally occurring Crispr system to cut the gene you want to modify, and it’s theoretically possible to use it to change the genetic code to either fix “misspellings” that cause illness or disrupt the production of an unwanted protein.



Caribou started out with the notion of making Crispr technology available for DNA editing in applications such as drug development, agriculture and basic biological research. Haurwitz’s cofounders didn’t want to leave academia and were “crazy enough to let a 26-year-old who had never worked for a company in her life take on the role of president and CEO,” she says.&nbsp;



Haurwitz took a few business classes before getting her Ph.D., then pitched venture capitalists on funding a technology they didn’t really understand. Caribou was securing an exclusive license to some Crispr patents held by the University of California system and the University of Vienna. Still, “pretty much every VC we ­talked to kind of said, ‘Meh,’ ” Haurwitz remembers. This was 2012, and they thought she was overestimating Crispr’s potential.&nbsp;



The papers that propelled Crispr into the limelight came the next year, and investor dollars and a wave of new companies quickly followed. Editas Medicine, cofounded by Sherlock’s Feng Zhang, raised $43 million to apply the technology to medical therapies. Next was Intellia Therapeutics, cofounded by Caribou, which raised $15 million in its 2014 launch. And Crispr Therapeutics, founded by Crispr pioneer Emmanuelle Charpentier, raised $89 million. The three went public in 2016 and now have a combined market capitalization of $3.8 billion.



Meanwhile, Haurwitz was being cold-called by plant-breeding and drug companies. DuPont led an $11 million investment in 2015. Caribou raised another $30 million the next year and has been able to sustain itself on that funding and payments from licensing and partnership deals.



Caribou licensed to Integrated DNA Technologies the right to sell biology researchers what they’d need for gene-editing experiments. Genus, an animal genetics firm, paid Caribou an undisclosed amount for the exclusive right to use its proprietary Crispr technology to engineer the genes of pigs and other livestock. Similarly, the Jackson Laboratory is paying Caribou to use Crispr to engineer new populations of research mice that model human diseases.&nbsp;



Haurwitz will soon have to seek venture capital again, as Caribou has pivoted to drug development, which is expensive but potentially more lucrative. Her first focus: improve on existing cancer therapies that take patients’ immune cells and train them to attack cancer. Crispr, she says, could be used to edit the DNA of immune cells from healthy donors so that these cells could be given to any cancer patient. The company plans to start trials in humans next year. There’s competition, from Allogene Therapeutics and its partner Cellectis, which have a combined market cap of $3.9 billion.



Caribou is also developing a program in another buzzy area: the microbiome, or the many bacteria that inhabit all parts of the human body, particularly the gut. This time, investors know what Crispr is, and Haurwitz has already won some over. “She’s one of the few people that I’ve met in my life that is able to toggle between business talk and scientific talk in a heartbeat,” says Ambar Bhattacharyya, a Caribou investor at Maverick Ventures.



Beyond the competition, there is an intellectual property conflict. Overlapping patent claims from the University of California and the Broad Institute emerged for the foundational technology, which involves an enzyme called Cas9, used to cut DNA. A lawsuit between the institutions was decided in favor of the Broad, but the U.S. Patent Office has granted patents to both. UC’s patents claim broader rights than were demonstrated in its application, says Lisa Ouellette, a Stanford Law School professor, and could make them vulnerable to a legal challenge. (UC disagrees.)



Whoever owns the technology will command fat fees. Caribou might run trials related to a particular gene, but if other companies want to run trials related to other genes, they may have to approach Caribou, says Jacob Sherkow, a professor at New York Law School. “They’re going to have to pay handsomely.”



Legal battles aside, the new field risks public backlash. In November, Chinese scientist He Jiankui announced he’d used Crispr to tinker with the genomes of human embryos born as twin girls, thereby heightening pressure on ­Crispr scientists to consider the ethics of how they’re using the life-altering tech. Caribou’s license agreements include language to prevent its use on human embryos, Haurwitz says. 



Doudna says researchers need to vet the science of editing the genes of embryos, and then people need to discuss how to use it responsibly. “Are there real unmet medical needs that would require this kind of editing or not? I think that’s one question.”



Debate over the answer will shape Crispr’s path to commercialization, one that holds immense potential for its youthful founders—and the likelihood of yet more controversy and conflict.



-Michela Tindera;Forbes Staff



-Ellie Kincaid;Forbes Staff

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Gene Hackers: The Young Biotech Entrepreneurs Looking To Make Billions By Editing Life Itself

It was bound to happen sooner than later: Amazon has surpassed Walmart as the biggest retailer on the planet.



The e-commerce juggernaut&nbsp;jumped&nbsp;25 spots to #28 on&nbsp;Forbes&#8216; Global 2000 list&nbsp;of the world’s biggest public companies, as measured by a composite score of revenues, profits, assets and market value. That was sufficient enough for it to steal the&nbsp;title of the world&#8217;s largest retailer away from Walmart, which slipped five spots to #29 on this year&#8217;s overall list.



Amazon has continued to chart a path to retail domination, with the number of Americans who subscribe to&nbsp;Amazon Prime topping 100 million in 2019. The company has beefed up the benefits attached to its annual membership in an effort to make it a must-have in every household, such as offering special discounts at Whole Foods, investing heavily in&nbsp;television and movies and expanding free shipping. In April, Amazon said it would invest $800 million to&nbsp;make&nbsp;free one-day shipping the new normal,&nbsp;up from&nbsp;the&nbsp;standard two-day shipping the company offers now.



Thanks to investor enthusiasm in its breakneck growth, Amazon has a high-flying stock that has made its founder Jeff Bezos the world&#8217;s richest man and given it a market capitalization of over $900 billion, which is rivaled only by Apple. On this yardstick, it has long trounced Walmart, which lags behind with a market cap of less than $300 billion.



Amazon has been catching up on other measures, too. Its cloud computing business has practically been printing money and last year&nbsp;the company&nbsp;made a record-breaking $10 billion in profits. That is up sharply from $3 billion the year before and easily tops the $6.7 billion that fell to Walmart&#8217;s bottom line.



Nevertheless, Walmart remains larger on&nbsp;some counts: It still&nbsp;pulls in more than double the revenue and has more assets on its balance sheet due to the&nbsp;significant real estate that&nbsp;it owns. It also has 2.2 million workers, which is nearly four times the number of employees that Amazon has on payroll.



Behind Amazon and Walmart, the third-largest retailer on the planet is Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. Its core business is selling goods via the internet, but it has also invested heavily in areas like entertainment, logistics and payments. Sales grew 51% to $56 billion in fiscal 2019, driven by the spending of its 654&nbsp;million active retail customers. While Alibaba is still seeing immense growth, its growth rate has ticked down amid&nbsp;an economic slowdown in China and an escalating trade war with the United States.



Home improvement stores like Home Depot (#126) and Lowe&#8217;s (#234) continue to do well, as do discount stores like TJ Maxx (#394) and Ross (#671).



Meanwhile, CVS fell out of the top three largest retailers. The drugstore chain lost $600 million in 2018, as its $69 billion takeover of Aetna and goodwill impairment charges in its long-term care business, Omnicare, ate into its bottom line.&nbsp;The company is now ranked #410 on the overall list, down sharply from #69 in 2017.



Other retailers are facing more existential problems. Victoria&#8217;s Secret parent company L Brands fell 230 spots to #1311 on the overall list as it faces mounting competition from upstarts like ThirdLove and&nbsp;True&amp;Co&nbsp;and traditional players like Target and Chico&#8217;s.&nbsp;Bed Bath &amp; Beyond, which is trying to ward off a group of activist investors intent on shaking up management, slipped 348 spots to #1997. The embattled Sears, recently out of bankruptcy, fell 166 spots to #1913.



-Lauren Debter;Forbes Staff

Amazon Surpasses Walmart As The World’s Largest Retailer

What kind of silver spoon was little&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ceciliarodriguez/2019/05/08/meghan-harry-and-baby-the-first-photos-the-name-and-their-new-record" target="_blank">Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor</a>born with in his mouth? Probably a gold one. After all, his great-grandmother lives like a queen.



Only Elizabeth II can call several palaces home, don Cartier tiaras, own rare paintings, collect Thoroughbreds, and match endless colorful hats with a rainbow of outfits without being a billionaire. Her Majesty, who has worn the crown since 1953, lives the life of the ultrarich but is nowhere close to being one of the wealthiest in the world—or even her United Kingdom. The Queen’s nine-figure net worth—estimated at $500 million—lands her way below the&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/" target="_blank">2,153 billionaires on&nbsp;Forbes’list</a>&nbsp;this year. And yet she enjoys a lifestyle any of them would surely envy.



 The 93-year-old directly owns some assets like Balmoral Castle in Scotland and Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, but many of her most valuable assets like Buckingham Palace are owned by a body called the Crown Estate.&nbsp; 



 If she were to possess the Crown Estate—which includes a myriad of properties in the U.K. and is owned by neither the government nor the royal family—as well as the Duchy of Lancaster (a private trust governed by the same ownership rules),&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;estimates that the Queen would be the richest person in the U.K. (and the third-wealthiest woman in the world) with a net worth of more than $25 billion. And even that number doesn’t take into account the value of the Royal Collection Trust, which, with its Fabergé eggsand Rembrandt paintings, could be worth in excess of a billion dollars. 



 And she does earn a living. The Queen derives an annual income from the properties held by the $18 billion Crown Estate and the Duchy of Lancaster, a real estate trust dating back to 1265, that paid her $27 million (pretax) in fiscal year 2018 for personal expenses. The Sovereign Grant, which equals 25% of the income from the Crown Estate, goes toward the Queen’s official expenses, which include payroll, travel, housekeeping, maintenance costs and even IT expenses. (<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.instagram.com/theroyalfamily" target="_blank">She is on Instagram</a>, after all.) And none of that includes any winnings she earns betting on her beloved racehorses. 



Naturally, Queen Elizabeth’s eldest son, Prince Charles, is not as wealthy as his mother—yet. The 70-year-old Prince of Wales derives his annual income from the Duchy of Cornwall, which manages a real estate trust that largely consists of 131,000 acres and more than<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://duchyofcornwall.org/assets/pdf/DuchyOfCornwallIAR2018.pdf" target="_blank">&nbsp;$450 million in commercial assets</a>&nbsp;within the U.K. The proceeds from Cornwall cover not only the annual expenses of Prince Charles but also of his two sons and their families: Prince William, the Duchess of Cambridge and their three children; and Prince Harry, his wife, Meghan Markle, and baby Archie. Though considerably more modern and down-to-earth than their grandmother, the young Windsors live like, well, royalty. In 2018, the families of William and Harry had $6.1 million in personal expenses, although the royals&#8217; official financial statements do not detail what those expenses were.&nbsp;



Despite the endless fascination with the royals around the world, there is a faction in the U.K. who believe the family is a burden on taxpayers. That’s not necessarily the case, however, according to Richard Haigh, the managing director of Brand Finance, a U.K.-based valuation company. “Last year, we valued the boost to the U.K. economy from Harry and Meghan’s royal wedding in Windsor at almost $1.5 billion,” Haigh told&nbsp;Forbes. And in its latest report on the monarchy from 2017, Brand Finance estimated that the family is responsible for more than $700 million in annual tourism.



In other words—everyone is royally flush.



With additional reporting by&nbsp;Hayley C. Cuccinello,&nbsp;Ariel Shapiro&nbsp;and&nbsp;Kristin Tablang.



<hr class="wp-block-separator"/>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">The Royal Family by the Numbers</h3>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">REAL ESTATE</blockquote>



<figure><iframe src="https://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fe.infogram.com%2F_%2FNuMbnpee37CcyT2gsWZf%3Fsrc%3Dembed&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Finfogram.com%2F1pe2xjqd0vegdnum9mp562393ksld0k2zl1&amp;image=https%3A%2F%2Finfogram-thumbs-1024.s3.amazonaws.com%2F5d2824f5-3b2f-45b8-869d-b98153546ac7.jpg&amp;key=3ce26dc7e3454db5820ba084d28b4935&amp;type=text%2Fhtml&amp;schema=infogram"></iframe></figure>



$18.7 billion:&nbsp;The real estate owned in Great Britain by the Crown Estate and its Scottish counterpart. The Queen technically owns this portfolio of commercial and industrial properties, but she cannot sell any of it.



$4.7 billion:&nbsp;According to Lenka Duskova of the Czech real estate agency Luxent, the value of Buckingham Palace, the 775-room residence of the United Kingdom’s sovereigns since 1837, would be worth a little bit more than Richard Branson. (Not that the royal family is looking to move.)



$1.3 billion: The net assets of the Duchy of Cornwall, which spans 131,000 acres. Its portfolio&nbsp;include the Isles of Scilly, residential and commercial properties in London and Llwynywermod, the Welsh home of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles, the Duchess of Cornwall.



$740 million:&nbsp;The net assets of the Duchy of Lancaster, which includes some 46,000 acres of land in England and Wales acquired by the Duchy over seven centuries, London’s Savoy Chapel (built in 1512), as well as limestone and sandstone quarries and a gypsum mine.



$600 million:&nbsp;The value of Kensington Palace, the childhood home of Queen Victoria and the residence of young royals for more than three centuries, according to Luxent. The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and their three children live in Kensington Palace 1A, a 20-room, four-story “apartment.”



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">GIVING BACK</blockquote>



$428.2 million: The profit turned by the Crown Estate in 2018, which was deposited into Britain’s Treasury rather than the Queen’s many purses.



$145.6 million:&nbsp;The combined assets held by Prince Charles’ charities, which support economic, environmental and social causes in Britain and around the globe.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/79732254/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="Diana, Princess of Wales with her sons, Prince William and Harry"/><figcaption>High Notes: Princes William and Harry received millions from Princess Diana&#8217;s estate when they turned 25.TIM GRAHAM/GETTY IMAGES</figcaption></figure>



$46.7 million:&nbsp;The amount spent on charitable activities in 2018 by Prince Charles’ philanthropic organizations.



$31.5 million:&nbsp;The value of Princess Diana’s estate at the time of her death, according to her will. The bulk of that sum went to her sons, Princes William and Harry, each of whom inherited a share on his 25th birthday. The remainder was split between her 17 godchildren and her former butler Paul Burrell, who received£50,000 (about $81,000).



1,762: The number of offshore wind turbines that are part of the Crown Estate.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">LIFESTYLE</blockquote>



200 billion:&nbsp;The number of times the image of the Queen on U.K. postage stamps has been reproduced. The design has not changed since 1967 and is believed to be the most reproduced work of art in history.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/831924096/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="Poltimore Tiara"/><figcaption>High Tiara: The Poltimore Tiara from the collection of the late Princess Margaret was auctioned in 2006.DANNY LAWSON/PA IMAGES VIA GETTY IMAGES</figcaption></figure>



$17,627,021:&nbsp;Amount that the jewelry and Fabergé items from the collection of Princess Margaret brought in at Christie’s in 2006. The exquisite pieces included the Poltimore Tiara—made in 1870 by Garrard for Lady Poltimore, the wife of the second Baron Poltimore and Queen Victoria’s treasurer—which sold for $1.7 million.



$2,423,050:&nbsp;The amount an unused Mauritius “Post Office” twopence from 1847 (No. 13)—which mirrors the piece widely regarded as&nbsp;<a href="https://postalmuseum.si.edu/queen's/rarities-list1.html" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the most valuable stamp</a>&nbsp;in the Royal Philatelic Collection (No. 14)—sold for in 1993. The prized collection—which has never been appraised—also boasts one of two 1854 Bermuda “Perot” stamps still in existence, the other having last sold for $340,000 in 1996.



$2.2 million:&nbsp;Meghan Markle’s net worth based on her salary from&nbsp;Suits. The Duchess of Sussex starred as Rachel Zane on the legal drama for seven seasons and earned an estimated average of $57,500 per episode.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/960676594/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="Prince Harry Marries Ms. Meghan Markle - Windsor Castle"/><figcaption>Here Comes the Bride: Meghan Markle heads to her wedding in the queen&#8217;s 1955 Rolls-Royce Phantom IV.MAX MUMBY/INDIGO/GETTY IMAGES</figcaption></figure>



$1,039,758:&nbsp;The auction price of the 1955 Rolls-Royce Phantom IV belonging to Queen Elizabeth sold at Bonhams’ Goodwood Revival Sale in September 2018. The previous year, a bespoke 2001 Daimler Super V-8 commissioned by the Queen fetched $55,575—and in November 2016, Princess Diana’s beloved 1994 Audi Cabriolet sold for $59,500 at Silverstone Auctions’ NEC Classic Motor Show sale.



$583,000:&nbsp;The total earnings of Queen Elizabeth’s champion horses in the past year, according to the British Horseracing Authority. The Queen’s most valuable horse of all time, Estimate—an Irish-bred, British-trained Thoroughbred that won the Queen’s Vase at Royal Ascot in 2012 and the Ascot Gold Cup the following year—collected more than $487,000 in prize money before retiring to the Royal Stud at Sandringham in 2014.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/618251740/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="Princess Diana Dancing with John Travolta"/><figcaption>White House Fever: John Travolta twirls Princess Diana around the dance floor with Nancy and Ronald Reagan in the background.&nbsp;CORBIS VIA GETTY IMAGES</figcaption></figure>



$222,500:&nbsp;The amount a midnight-blue velvet Victor Edelstein evening gown Princess Diana wore to a 1985 state dinner at the White House hosted by President Reagan—where she famously danced with John Travolta—sold&nbsp;for at auction in 1997.



$25,277:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thomas-s.co.uk/uploaded/Policies/Fees_Charges_from_1_September_2019.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The cost of Prince George’s tuition</a>&nbsp;at Thomas’ Battersea for the 2019—2020 school year, inclusive of books and registration fees.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/106751835/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="The British Crown Jewels In 1969"/><figcaption>Gem Dandy: The British Crown Jewels include the Sceptre (which belonged to Louis XVI), The Cup, Bracelets, Globe, Tiara and Royal Crown.GAMMA-KEYSTONE VIA GETTY IMAGES</figcaption></figure>



23,578:&nbsp;The number of gemstones showcased in the Crown Jewels, which are housed in the Tower of London. The Sovereign’s Sceptre with Cross has been used at every coronation since Charles II’s in 1661 and boasts the Cullinan I diamond, the largest top-quality cut white diamond in the world, weighing 530.2 carats.



$7,500:&nbsp;How much a slice of cake from the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton sold for at Julien’s Auctions in December 2014—four months after a slice of the five-tier fruitcake from Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer’s wedding sold for $1,375. The year before, a piece of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip’s 9-foot-tall, 500-pound cake sold for a relatively low $896.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



$3,900:&nbsp;The final price of a felt-and-velvet doll from 1935 once belonging to Princess Elizabeth, which sold in December 2018. The year prior, a pair of Deans Rag Book Co. Mickey and Minnie Mouse toys—given to Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret by their nanny Clara Allah Knight—fetched $1,164.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/576747043/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="Princess Elizabeth And Corgi"/><figcaption>Dog Days: Princess Elizabeth with her pet corgi in 1944.&nbsp;LISA SHERIDAN/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES</figcaption></figure>



1,306:&nbsp;The number of corgis registered in the U.K. in 1944, when Princess Elizabeth received one for her 18th birthday. Corgi registration jumped 56% that year and would continue to increase until 1960. The Queen’s influence over the corgi market is so great that when her last pup died in 2018, the Kennel Club temporarily placed the short-legged breed on its “At Risk” list.



800:&nbsp;The number of royal warrant holders, which range from luxury brands such as Burberry to family-run saddle maker Abbey England. The royal warrants recognize those who supply goods or services to the royal family. Brand Finance estimates a royal warrant can contribute as much as 5% of a company’s revenue.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5cd46c1c5218470008b042ac/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="The Duke &amp; Duchess Of Sussex Pose With Their Newborn Son"/><figcaption>Set for Life: The Duke and Duchess of Sussex introduce Archie to the world.&nbsp;DOMINIC LIPINSKI/WPA POOL/GETTY IMAGES</figcaption></figure>



7:&nbsp;The place in line Prince Harry’s newborn son, Archie, holds in the royal succession.



&#8211;Deniz Cam; Forbes Staff

gettyimages-995394744-594×594

Baby Archie’s Great-Granny Is Royally Loaded: Inside Queen Elizabeth’s $500 Million Fortune

Nigeria’s business mogul and third richest man, who cemented his return to Forbes’ African Billionaires List this year since dropping off it in 2015, says he owes his $1.6 billion net worth to being a disruptor – and to being stubborn.



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The inside of Abdulsamad Rabiu’s office, on the corner of
Churchgate Street, in Victoria Island’s commercial district in the heart of
Lagos that is notorious for chaotic, rambunctious traffic, is marked by a
serious lack of clutter. 



The expansive room is tastefully decorated in cream and
black hues. Rabiu’s desk is organized in a manner that seems as though
everything is exactly where it should be; completely spotless and devoid of any
distractions that will hinder the 58-year-old founder of BUA Group from
managing his vast empire, a conglomerate spread across southern and northern
Nigeria. 



A firm believer in strategy, the cement and sugar tycoon
boosted his fortunes by a whopping $650 million this year when he merged
Kalambaina Cement, a subsidiary company of his BUA Cement, with the publicly
traded Cement Company of Northern Nigeria (CCNN), where he was a controlling
shareholder. 



That calculated move has made him the third richest man in
Africa’s largest economy, with a staggering net worth of $1.6 billion,
according to the latest Forbes African Billionaires List, which he dropped out
of.



“Nigerian cement mogul Abdulsamad Rabiu, who runs and owns the BUA Group, returns to the list for the first time since 2015. He merged his Kalambaina Cement firm into publicly-traded Cement Company of Northern Nigeria, which he controlled, in late 2018. Rabiu now owns 97% of the list entity,” Forbes reported.



READ MORE | <a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Businesses Of The Future: 20 New Wealth Creators On The African Continent (opens in a new tab)" href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2019/03/11/the-businesses-of-the-future-20-new-wealth-creators-on-the-african-continent/" target="_blank">Businesses Of The Future: 20 New Wealth Creators On The African Continent</a>



He says his fall from the coveted list was due to the
devaluation of the Naira, which meant that the exchange rate went from N190
against the&nbsp; dollar, to N300.



“That was the main reason I dropped off the rich list. Also,
most of our other assets were not being considered because once you are not
listed, it becomes more challenging to get an accurate valuation. 



“Our assets, in the cement industry alone, are worth more
than $2 billion, but that is because Obu Cement [Plant], which is our biggest
cement plant, is not listed,” Rabiu says.



&nbsp;His return to the
billionaire boys’ club is due to five years of strategic expansion and a much
more stable Nigerian economy. However, it is about more than just numbers for
Rabiu. 



“It is a good feeling to be on the rich list, the most
important thing is not about how much money you make, but the impact you make.
Touching people’s lives is more important because money is a number. What you
need in terms of your day-to-day is not that much.”



One of the secret ingredients to his tremendous success is
that Rabiu is a firm believer in delegation. 



His phone purrs only occasionally, but this is also because
his plants run with clockwork precision in an environment that is chaotic at
the best of times. 



He has a calm and soft-spoken demeanour, a trait which is,
quite frankly, unconventional for someone who has fought his way through hell
and high water in business. 



“I am quiet but I am very stubborn. If I want something I go
for it and if I don’t want it, no matter how much I’m pushed, I don’t do it. If
somebody is stubborn, sometimes it’s seen as arrogant but I don’t think I am an
arrogant person,” Rabiu says.



&nbsp;It is also
immediately clear that he is not a man who rushes into things. He would rather
move methodically, with clarity and precision, a skill he picked up in the
early days learning the ropes from his industrialist father. Case in point is
how he built his empire brick-by-brick from the early days as an importer.



“In 1988, I started my own business and founded BUA
International Ltd. At the time, the in-thing was importation of rice, sugar,
fertilizer, agriculture etc. So the challenge was that, if there was scarcity
of any product, everybody would now go and import the same thing. This pushes
the price up and everybody will say the price of fertilizer has doubled, so
everyone would now go and import fertilizer and within a short time, the
product would now come down to half price and everyone would lose money,” Rabiu
says. 



He decided to break the mould and instead adopted a
value-added approach. He focused on bringing in raw materials to process it
locally. 



“We started with oil in Kano. We were processing crude palm
oil to refine it. We were also getting peanuts from Kano and then crushing and
processing, and that was a good business at the time because it was adding
value and people were not used to adding value to anything at all. They were
importing everything.”



In 2000, BUA acquired Nigeria Oil Mills, which was a peanut
processing company in Kano. In 2005, he set up the BUA Flour Mills factory in
Lagos. Rabiu saw very early on that he had to be distinctive in a sea of
importers who simply followed the trend. 



It is this measured philosophy of value that has allowed BUA
Group to innovate and expand capacity to about 2 million tons of cement per
annum with its new merger. Rabiu says with the consolidation, BUA Group has a
market valuation of about $800 million. A far cry from the company’s humble
beginnings.



Returning to Kano as a newly-minted graduate with a degree
in economics from Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, in the United States, a
lot had changed while Rabiu was away.



&nbsp;The country was being
run by a military leader and there were severe shortages in foreign exchange
which made the business of importation extremely difficult. Following his new
ethos of adding value to the production line, Rabiu set his eyes on the sugar
business by establishing the 2,000 metric ton (MT) per day capacity plant in
Lagos which is the second largest refinery in West Africa, after the Dangote
Sugar Refinery. 



But the BUA story isn’t without its share of trials and
tribulations. The fight began in the early years of business, when the Nigerian
government introduced the backward integration policy in the sugar business. 



“This is where you were allowed to import raw sugar and
process into refined sugar and you must have a sugar refinery facility. So, if
you have the facility for a sugar refinery, you were able to import sugar and
pay a duty of 5% to 10%, while everybody else was importing refined sugar and
paying 50% duty,” Rabiu says.



&nbsp;At the time, it was
only the Dangote Group that had the refinery facility, so Rabiu decided the
lack of saturation made sugar a viable business to go into. 



The government’s backward integration policy is a well-known
competitive strategy which allows an organization to control more of its supply
chain in order to bring down the costs.



&nbsp;It means that a
company is allowed to purchase or internally produce segments of its supply
chain. This is done to ensure the supply, along with securing bargaining,
leverage on vendors. 



To take advantage of backward integration, a company needed
to have its sugar refinery at the ports in order to import raw materials in
bulk, which made having a terminal at the port a prerequisite.



“At that time, everything was owned by [the] Nigerian Ports
Authority (NPA), so you had to go and lease land from them, together with the
storage. This was a huge capital investment, and to make matters worse, there
was no land at the time because everything was taken.”



&nbsp;Luckily, Rabiu was
able to find a company that had a facility that was not being utilized. 



“We paid a lot of money to that company, got all the
designs, bought all the equipment, we were about to start the company, then the
lease was revoked and we could not go there. This was during the [Olusegun]
Obasanjo regime. Most of our money had been spent on getting the land and
equipment and they revoked the lease and gave it to somebody else. It took us a
year and almost $50 million in cost before we were able to start all over
again,” he says. 



Incidentally, that site was given to Rabiu by his father.
Once they took off, the business worked out so well that they were able to
recoup their money within a very short period of time. The sugar venture was a
cash cow. 



The company was able to reap huge margins due to the
difference in duties for imports of raw sugar, and, yet again, Rabiu found
validation in his strategic approach to business.



&nbsp;Even in those early
days, his penchant for success was apparent. The sugar refinery is still
operating at capacity and Rabiu is in the process of commissioning another
refinery at Port Harcourt in Nigeria. They say the apple does not fall far from
the tree, and this is true for Rabiu. 



His father, Isyaku Rabiu, was a renowned businessman, who
also made his fortune in trade decades after Nigeria’s independence. 



His wealth grew significantly until the 1983 coup which
toppled the government and led to the arrests of President Shehu Shagari and
his close allies, including Isyaku, leaving his business empire in a precarious
state.



But where his father lost his footing in trade, Rabiu was
destined to find his in cement. Opportunity came knocking in 2007 when the
price of cement was so high that the Nigerian government decided to introduce
yet another backward integration in the cement industry.



&nbsp;The idea was simple.
You could only import cement into Nigeria, if you had a cement factory. At the
time, there were only two multinational organizations in the country with the
capacity to build their own cement plant. 



Local companies like the Dangote Group and Flour Mills of
Nigeria were the only two other companies that had signed contracts to build
cement factories in Nigeria.



“Nobody else was allowed. So President [Umaru Musa] Yar’Adua
was alarmed that the prices of cement was going up every day and he called for
a meeting when the price was $300 per ton. He said it was too much, so what do
we do? He was briefed on the reason nobody else could bring cement into Nigeria
and told that there was a policy in place that only those building factories
could import cement into Nigeria, and we did not have enough capacity in terms
of manufacturing to meet Nigerian demand.” 



There were only three or four cement plants in Nigeria at
the time producing about 4 million MT per annum against what the country needed
– almost 10 million MT.



The president ruled that the existing backward integration
policy could not be continued and established a committee who came up with the
idea that the policy should allow companies outside manufacturers who were
building plants, in order to bring prices down. 



“So they selected six companies to be able to import cement
and we were chosen as one of the six companies,” Rabiu says. 



But there was a big challenge. 



“How do you import a million tons in a year or even 100,000
tons a month in bags? That will be like five or six cargos a month, to be able
to take the bags out and transport them all over the country, so nobody could
actually do it.



&nbsp;“The other guys had
terminals, which means they were discharging the cement in bulk and taking it
to their warehouses and bagging them in the warehouses and they had been in the
business for a long time,” Rabiu says.



In order to reap the rewards in the lucrative cement
industry, all the new six companies who had been granted licenses needed to
secure terminals at the port. But the barriers to entry were significantly
high. 



Rabiu decided on a disruptive approach. “So I now came up
with the idea of the floating terminal. It is like a factory on a vessel, so it
moves. It is a big ship with a terminal in the ship. It was an idea I read
about a long time ago and I decided to be innovative.” 



He approached the only terminal at the time that was free in
Greece and agreed on a price.



&nbsp;Fearing the size of
the competition, Rabiu knew he needed to get protection for his business, if he
stood a chance of competing favorably in the new venture.



“I knew that we had tough competition from the people who
had factories and they were not happy with the government giving us the license
because they were making so much money they did not want anyone to come into
the business. 



“So they were doing everything to frustrate it [the
process]. I knew that there would be a problem. So before I bought my vessel, I
came to Nigeria and sought an appointment to meet the president who granted me
an audience and I explained everything to him.”



Rabiu made an impassioned plea to President Yar’Adua —&nbsp; he knew he could drive down the price of
cement from $300 per bag to $150 if he had his own terminal. 



However, building the terminal would take more than a year
to complete, during which time cement prices would continue to rise, which
would be detrimental to the Nigerian economy. 



A floating terminal meant that the timeline of going to
market was significantly reduced but more importantly, without the blessing
from the president, the other giants in the industry would muscle him out of
the game.



Once approval from the president was secured, Rabiu
purchased his floating terminal and was ready to reap in the millions of
dollars awaiting him in bags of cement.



&nbsp;It was logistically
impossible for Rabiu to set up shop in Lagos. These circumstances pushed him to
explore other means through which he could realize his goal. He approached Port
Harcourt and this move proved to be fortuitous for him because all the eastern
markets were coming to the port as there was nothing in the east. 



However, not everything was ideal as he was allowed only one
week in a month after which point he had to leave the port, making it difficult
to offload his cement. 



Rabiu was faced with more hurdles but eventually, was forced
to consult the highest authority in the country to explain the barriers he
encountered.&nbsp; 



It was only after an order from the president that the
impediments to Rabiu’s business stopped and, with that, came the growth of the
BUA Group, to become one of the leading conglomerates in West Africa. As the
monopolists gradually loosened their grips on the cement industry, Rabiu used
the opportunity to build capacity. The company has five plants now.



“That experience strengthened my resolve because it was not
easy. I never thought I was going to quit. If you don’t fight back or if you
are weak, you will never survive. You have to understand that this is not
personal but business and you have to keep fighting. When they see that you are
fighting and not giving up then they let go because most of these things are
illegal anyway,” says Rabiu.



BUA Group steadily expanded to cover new ground. With the
new merger, Rabiu has seen an opportunity outside Nigeria’s borders. The demand
between Sokoto and Niger through to Burkina Faso is estimated to be about 4
million MT of cement per annum. 



Coupled with the fact that these countries are landlocked,
there is a need to import all their clinker, the raw material needed for making
cement. 



His new merger with CCNN will create the second largest
cement company on the Nigerian bourse after African mammoth, Dangote Cement.



Rabiu believes in Nigeria’s ability to produce its own
products without relying on imports from other countries and in so doing,
create tens of thousands of jobs for the Nigerian economy.



&nbsp;As the avenues to
expand in Nigeria get limited, BUA Group has consistently sought to broaden its
reach to new territories. 



The fighting days are long gone and BUA under the aegis of
its bold leader is ready to conquer new turf in Africa.

BUA-GROUP-3-27

How mogul Abdulsamad Rabiu has become a billionaire again

The Tanzanian tycoon who started life barefoot and bedding down with the farm animals in a tiny hut has died aged 75. Reginald Mengi who once appeared on the cover of Forbes Africa – with $550 million to his name – never made a secret of his humble roots and in later life poured millions into helping the less fortunate.



Mengi made his way out of poverty in Tanzania, where his family had a smallholding, by winning a scholarship to an accounting &nbsp;college in Glasgow, Scotland. He dropped out of his first course, took night classes, and worked as a bus conductor and cleaner to pay his way. He end up as an accountant with PwC and was posted back to Africa, to Nairobi, before securing another job with the company back home in Dar es Salaam.



It was the want of a pen that sparked Mengi’s mind on the way to a fortune. The socialist days of Julius Nyerere’s Tanzania there were often shortages of mundane items like pens and pencils.



Mengi had been searching the streets of Dar es Salaam for one for an entire day when he ran into a friend who knew someone, who knew someone else, who could export pen parts to Tanzania. 



He assembled them on his bedroom floor.“That little business gave me my first million dollars,” Mengi told Forbes Africa in 2014. Mengi went on to trade in everything from shoe polish and toilet paper to soap, detergent and natural skin exfoliator – he said the latter was merely bottled mud from the sea bed. 



He once boasted that no one could spend a day in Tanzania without touching one of his products. Mengi used this money to buy up a string of radio stations, TV channels and newspapers that put him on the way to his fortune.

mengi

What You Need To Know About Mogul Reginald Mengi Who Has Died At 75

<a href="https://www.coursera.org/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Coursera</a>, one of the companies featured on&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/next-billion-dollar-startups/#18334e234441" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Forbes’ 2018 list of Next Billion-Dollar Startups</a>, is worth well over $1 billion, says its CEO, Jeff Maggioncalda. The seven-year-old online education provider, based in Mountain View, California, announced this morning that it had raised an additional $103 million in funding. “This gives us the resources to more aggressively push on our mission of greater access to quality education and greater opportunity for people who are being left behind in this economy,” he says.



Since our&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2018/10/16/this-company-could-be-your-next-teacher-coursera-plots-a-massive-future-for-online-education/#5d048672a39b" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">feature story on Coursera</a>&nbsp;last October, the number of registered learners on the site has climbed from 36 million to 40 million. When we published, the company had been valued at $800 million. Its revenue, which Forbes pegged at $140 million in 2018, is fueled in part by partnerships with 1,800 enterprise customers. They include Adobe, which paid Coursera an estimated $150,000 last year to provide machine-learning courses to Adobe employees.



Three months ago, Coursera signed a deal with the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.adsgabudhabi.ae/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Abu Dhabi School of Government</a>, an entity set up to train 60,000 government employees in digital skills like data science and artificial intelligence. Maggioncalda says that partnership is Coursera’s most extensive to date.



Coursera also offers&nbsp;<a href="https://www.coursera.org/degrees" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">14 online masters degrees</a>, in computer science, business and public health, from schools like the University of Michigan and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. And it just launched its first online bachelor of science degree with the highly regarded University of London.



Coursera’s news comes at a time when critics like Kevin Carey, director of education policy at the liberal-leaning New America foundation, have raised concerns about the high cost of online degrees. In a widely-read&nbsp;<a href="https://www.huffpost.com/highline/article/capitalist-takeover-college/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">April article published in the&nbsp;Huffington Post</a>, headlined “The Creeping Capitalist Takeover of Higher Education,” he wrote that online education should slash the price of a good degree. But instead, many schools use online program managers, known as OPMs, to produce and market their online courses. OPMs charge as much as 60% of tuition for the service. Students who earn online degrees offered through OPMs pay the same high tuition as they would if they studied on campus. “What this means is that an innovation that should have been used to address inequality is serving to fuel it,” he wrote. (Read Forbes’ story on 2U, a leading OPM&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoinegara/2018/09/25/mbas-in-pjs-inside-2u-the-47-billion-startup-that-brings-top-schools-to-your-laptop/#259292ba3796" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">here</a>.)



By contrast, Coursera does no course production and takes only 40% of tuition. Its marketing costs are low, says Maggioncalda, because it already reaches a huge number of learners. One example of a low-cost Coursera degree: its online&nbsp;<a href="https://www.coursera.org/degrees/imba" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">iMBA from the University of Illinois</a>’ highly-ranked Gies College of Business, which costs $22,000. Out-of-state students&nbsp;<a href="https://giesbusiness.illinois.edu/mba/tuition-scholarships" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">pay $75,000 in tuition for an on-campus degree</a>.



Though its partnerships with companies and its degree programs are growing, he says the $49 fee (or subscription fee of $49-$99 per month) learners pay to earn completion certificates for its wide selection of courses that are open to the public still account for the largest share of Coursera’s revenue.



Stanford computers science professors Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng founded Coursera in 2012 as a platform to offer massive open online courses, known as MOOCs. Their vision was to give students around the world free access to college courses taught by professors from top universities. At first, Coursera charged nothing to students, who earned no academic credit. Princeton, Penn and Michigan signed on. Tremendous hype followed, with thought leaders like the&nbsp;New York Times’ Thomas Friedman writing about Coursera and its fellow MOOC providers Udacity and edEx, “Nothing has more potential to unlock a billion more brains to solve the world’s problems.”



The narrative soon switched to “the death of the MOOC,” after data from two University of Pennsylvania studies showed that 80% of people who registered for free MOOCs already had degrees and only half of them bothered to look at a single lecture. A minuscule 4% completed their courses.



In 2014 Coursera hired former Yale president Rick Levin and started charging $30-$70 for course completion certificates. In 2017 Maggioncalda took over the top job. He had a track record running a successful company started by Stanford professors. In 2010 he took retirement planning website Financial Engines, founded by Nobel prize winner William F. Sharpe and former SEC commissioner Joseph Grundfest, public. By the time he left, its market cap was close to $2 billion and his net worth was north of $50 million.



At Coursera, he’s put the company on a growth trajectory that includes expansion around the world. After the U.S., Coursera’s greatest growth has come from India, China, Mexico and Brazil, in that order.



The latest investment in Coursera was led by&nbsp;<a href="https://www.seek.com.au/about/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">SEEK Group</a>, an Australian company with stakes in online employment and education firms. SEEK was joined by previous Coursera investors Future Fund and NEA. It brings Coursera’s total funding to $313 million.



-Susan Adams; Forbes Staff

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