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Jeff Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, will divorce after 25 years of marriage, the couple announced on Wednesday morning. They did not provide a reason for their separation.&nbsp;



“We have decided to divorce and continue our shared lives as friends,” they said in the statement, which was posted to Jeff Bezos’ Twitter&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/JeffBezos/status/1083004911380393985" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">page</a>. “If we had known we would separate after 25 years, we would do it all again.”



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/#39a93201b238" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Bezos</a>, worth an estimated $136.2 billion, is the richest person in the world. It is not yet clear how the divorce will impact his net worth, or whether it will affect his stake in Amazon, the e-commerce giant he founded in 1994. Bezos, 54, owns roughly 16% of the business, which comprises more than 95% of his fortune. He also owns the&nbsp;Washington Post&nbsp;and rocket company Blue Origin.



The couple lives primarily in Washington State, which requires divorcing spouses to equitably divide “community property,” including all income generated during a marriage. “It seems very likely, if not 100% a certainty, that whatever Jeff Bezos has earned at Amazon has been community income,” says David Starks, a partner at the Seattle-based law firm McKinley Irvin. He added, however, that through a prenuptial or postnuptial agreement, “You can elect to have your assets treated differently, and that’s not uncommon.”



Moreover, &#8220;Awarding a spouse their share of a community asset doesn’t necessarily mean actually transferring the asset to them,&#8221; notes Virginia Onu, an attorney based in Washington. In other words,&nbsp;instead of selling or transferring Amazon shares, Jeff Bezos could offer monetary compensation equivalent to the shares&#8217; fair market value.



If MacKenzie Bezos, 48, does indeed receive half of her husband’s assets, she would be worth more than $68 billion, making her the fifth-richest person in the world. Even a 1% payout would constitute one of the largest divorce settlements in history.



The Bezoses, who have four children, both attended Princeton but met after graduation while working at investment firm D.E. Shaw; she was an associate on his team. They married in 1993 and moved to Seattle in 1994, the same year Amazon was founded.



MacKenzie Bezos boasts a successful career in her own right. A creative writing major at Princeton (she served as a research assistant to Toni Morrison), she won the American Book Award for her first novel,&nbsp;The Testing of Luther Albright, published in 2005. She also founded the anti-bullying organization Bystander Revolution.



A representative for Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.



Noah Kirsch 
Forbes Staff 
I mainly cover global wealth and entrepreneurs.



Angel Au-Yeung contributed reporting.&nbsp;

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George Gordon is on a quest to revolutionize the financial system. The director of Africa Master Blockchain Company talks digital currencies, blind risks and board games.



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What is this new African cryptocurrency you are offering? 



Where the majority of current digital currencies are based on speculative models, AfriUnion Coin (AUC) and the AfriNational Tokens (ANT)are designed for a transactional purpose allowing international payments, remittances, foreign direct investment as well as day-to-day transactions at local retail stores and other outlets. While the option for speculative trade is available with AUC, the focus is not around that. 



Each African country will have a specially-designed ANT which will allow users to pay for goods and services and bills easily through completely digital means without requiring any bank account. AUC and ANT will be fully interchangeable to one another and there will be no fees for the user.



It’s the natural next step for digital finance from mobile banking which most Africans are accustomed to. The ability to freely have the power to send and receive money locally and internationally will allow the freedom of choice and spending power many Africans don’t have currently. 



What is your own investment philosophy? 



I am a gambler! I believe in taking risks and putting things on the line. That being said, blind risk or whimsical guesses don’t get you very far. Always acquire enough information to understand to a reasonable level what the thing you are planning on investing is or how it works and then trust your instinct and gut feel.



What advice would you give entrepreneurs wanting to invest in blockchain?



First, do some research in terms of what the blockchain technology is being applied for or created in terms of its application to an industry or project. Thereafter, check the white paper for the design of the platform as well as its functionality and applicability to what it is trying to achieve. If it aligns with your personal investment rules, then go for it,however, remember that blockchain is continuously evolving and thus you need to explore outside the usual and standard. 



First cash-less, now card-less. What is the future of online banking? 



If we are looking into what is currently science fiction, I would say the future is digital contact lenses that will be able to connect you to all your social media accounts, internet, news as well as make payments by just looking at QR codes or specialized barcodes to approve and accept payments. 



Now, realistically we are not far off from such innovation and technology, but for the time being, I think the next step is scanning of QR codes at retailers and having the transaction automated from your wallet to the retailers digitally.



What is your most prized investment and why? 



My mind. I believe that the work I have put into developing my mind, and continue to do so every day, is the number one investment that I have ever done. It allows me to look at things in a unique perspective as well as provides me with the tools to push boundaries and create new opportunities.



Money, success, fame? Which is most important to you? 



I would have to say success… because it is most likely going to bring the other two as well, right? But success in the form of starting something and letting it grow and succeed and knowing that something new exists because of your efforts.



What do you spend your money on mostly? 



Board games. I love board games and believe it’s a fantastic way to expand your mind as well as have fun with friends.

George

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Shonda Rhimes may have defined Thursday night television, but she&#8217;s now dictating the medium&#8217;s future. When the&nbsp;Grey&#8217;s Anatomy&nbsp;creator signed a nine figure, four-year deal with Netflix last year, she cemented her place&nbsp;at the forefront of entertainment&#8217;s digital future-and pioneered Netflix&#8217;s handsome producer paydays.
Rhimes, who created and executive produced ABC hits including&nbsp;Scandaland&nbsp;How To Get Away with Murder, is now developing eight shows for the streaming service through her production outfit ShondaLand.
&#8220;We are powerful women and when we say we have power, what we are really saying is that we deserve to have power. We deserve whatever good thing it is that we are getting,&#8221; said&nbsp;Rhimes at&nbsp;Elle&nbsp;magazine’s 25th annual Women in Hollywood celebration.
<blockquote>Demanding what you deserve can feel like a radical act.</blockquote>
Worth an estimated $135 million, Rhimes is the wealthiest female showrunner&#8211;the person who oversees writing and production of each TV episode-in&nbsp;Hollywood. She has said that her deal, which&nbsp;reportedly&nbsp;includes a base salary of $150 million with incentives that could bump it much higher, is bigger than the $300 million secured by Ryan Murphy.
Rhimes is just one of the world&#8217;s most powerful women in media and entertainment effecting change and impacting her industry with groundbreaking deals and inclusive storytelling. Take Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, who has&nbsp;helped pioneer&nbsp;Star Wars&#8216; most inclusive casting yet.&nbsp;Under Kennedy&#8217;s stewardship, Kelly Marie Tran became the first woman of color to have a lead role in the multi-billion dollar franchise, playing Rose Tico in 2017&#8217;s&nbsp;The Last Jedi.
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Across the lot, Dana Walden has seen her power grow in the studio landscape. Following Disney&#8217;s $71.3 billion acquisition of the majority of&nbsp;21st Century Fox, the former chair and CEO of Fox Television Group will also head up 20th Century Fox TV, ABC Studios, the Freeform network, ABC-owned TV stations, ABC Entertainment and several other divisions.
Walden believes more women need to be in decision-making roles at every level. &#8220;There must be women in the highest ranks of every organization, and meaningful female representation on every corporate board,&#8221; Walden&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinehoward/2017/11/01/15-most-powerful-women-in-entertainment-and-media-2017-effecting-change-tackling-sexual-harassment/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="InternalLink:https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinehoward/2017/11/01/15-most-powerful-women-in-entertainment-and-media-2017-effecting-change-tackling-sexual-harassment/">told Forbes last year</a>.
<blockquote>Our recruiting and our training has to be oriented to ensure that we’re identifying and nurturing future generations of female leaders.</blockquote>
Entertainment&#8217;s most powerful&nbsp;span Hollywood, music and publishing. As each segment continues to deal with the fallout of the #MeToo movement, women have taken action. Anna Wintour, who continues to control&nbsp;Vogue,&nbsp;suspended photographers Bruce Weber and Mario Testino amid sexual misconduct charges and set a code of conduct for models and photographers.
Wintour teamed up with music power woman Beyoncé for the September issue of&nbsp;Vogue; she was given creative control over her cover photo and leveraged that power to hire the first African American photographer to shoot the cover in the magazine&#8217;s&nbsp; 126-year history. Another first for Beyoncé: In 2018, she became the first black woman to headline Coachella.
Here&#8217;s the full list of Media and Entertainment power women:
1. Oprah Winfrey, Media mogul
2. Shari Redstone, Vice Chair, CBS &amp; Viacom
3. Bonnie Hammer, Chair, NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment
4. Donna Langley,&nbsp; Chair, Universal Pictures
5. Anna Wintour, Artistic Director, Conde Nast
6. Beyoncé, Singer
7. Dana Walden, Chairman, Disney TV Studios and ABC Entertainment
8. Katharine Viner, Editor-in-Chief, Guardian
9. Taylor Swift, Singer
10. Zanny Minton Beddoes, Editor-in-Chief, The Economist
11. Kathleen Kennedy, President, Lucasfilm
12. Shonda Rhimes, Showrunner
13. Arianna Huffington, Founder &amp; CEO, Thrive Global
14. Serena Williams, Tennis player
15. Shobhana Bhartia, Chair, HT&nbsp;Media
16. Priyanka Chopra,&nbsp;Actress
&#8211;&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Natalie Robehmed</a><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">:</a>&nbsp;I&#8217;m an associate editor at Forbes covering media and entertainment, with a focus on the movie business. For the magazine, I&#8217;ve written cover stories on&nbsp;
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Paul Cook, co-Managing Director of Silvertree Internet Holdings, the investment growth partner behind some of South Africa’s internet brands, on what startup companies must do to survive.

<h3>Resilience</h3>
There are many reasons why a business could fail within the first year. In some cases, the plan itself does not make sense and in some cases, it is the execution of it that fails. Whenever someone starts a business, they are often doing it out of a sense of personal passion or a sense of excitement and that can lead to overly optimistic projections, and we see this all the time.
There is always going to be a tough period during the first year or two when reality bites. It will happen in some way and it will happen in some form – there will be some piece of bad luck or a difficult time. It is at this time a real make-or-break situation happens.
If you have the right people around you, if you have the right personal resilience; that is what gets companies through.
If you don’t get past that point, the business fails. It is about resilience when you start a new company.
By definition, you don’t know what is going to happen…no matter how hard you plan for a new business, you will face unexpected events.
&nbsp;
<h3>Planning</h3>
Make sure that you are good for the good and bad times during your entrepreneurial journey.
Your family too should be ready for the good and bad times&#8230; Try and build the right partnerships earlier on. Make sure that your relationships with whoever might be funding you – if there is an external funder – is right.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter wp-image-37233 size-large" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Paul-Cook-553-1024x682.jpg" alt="" width="740" height="493" srcset="https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Paul-Cook-553-1024x682.jpg 1024w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Paul-Cook-553-300x200.jpg 300w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Paul-Cook-553-600x400.jpg 600w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Paul-Cook-553-768x512.jpg 768w, https://cms.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Paul-Cook-553.jpg 1241w" sizes="(max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px" />
<blockquote>&#8220;No matter how hard you plan for a new business, you will face unexpected events.&#8221;</blockquote>
<h3>Finances</h3>
You should not be seeking funding for its own sake. It is very seductive to suddenly have a lot of money in the bank. You can also fail if you don’t have money, but if you have too much money, then you are tempted to focus on the wrong Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Your objective in a startup is not to raise money; it is not to build revenue for its own sake, it is to build a business.
A business requires cost-control and it requires good unit economics. The more money you have in the bank, the harder it is to focus on cost-control. What you will end up doing is build a business that keeps growing but could never make any money&#8230; Also, if you raise too much money as an entrepreneur, you will end up not taking as many good terms [in deals] as you can.
Have a clear mind about what you want to get out of an investment&#8230;If you have proven as much as you can with a certain amount of money, you will be able to invest in marketing, stocks etc., then that makes sense.
<h3>Communication</h3>
When you are at an early stage of your business and are less than 10 employees, typically, everybody is in, not because of the salary but because of their passion for the business. You need to be a team and everybody needs to be on the same page.The period when you grow, from 10 to 50 employees, then all of a sudden, that is no longer the case. That is an extremely dangerous time for many companies.
We have seen several companies not succeeding, and that is a very sad part of the journey. It is then that you need to think who your core management is, [and] who are staff who don’t necessarily need to know everything. But you can also go too far the other way. Everyone needs to know the broad outlines of your thinking; keep the message simple for your team.
<h3>Transparency</h3>
Be honest about where you need help and make sure your partners are able to help you on those topics. You should look at all the different [aspects] of your business.
<h3>Marketing and sales</h3>
Marketing and sales are absolutely vital, it is non-negotiable. But how you do it depends on your business. In some cases, it is going to be marketing and in some cases, it is going to be sales. So you need to work out the strategy and how it will be different as well.
<h3>Tips ForStartup Success</h3>
<ol>
<li>Build a business that can make money: We are very tempted to copy Silicon Valley’s approach where you come up with an idea and you work out how to make money at a later stage. That makes sense in Silicon Valley but it doesn’t make sense here [in Africa], because there isn’t that tonne of money that is going to postpone your day of reckoning…You need to have a revenue model and whatever you are selling needs to be a lot more than your cost price.</li>
<li>Find the right business partner: If you look for investment, make sure that you find the right partner whose incentives and offerings match your own, for now, and in the future.</li>
<li>Build resilience: Make sure you are ready for tough times because there will be tough times.</li>
</ol>

Work colleagues brainstorming in creative office

Why Most Startups Fail In The First Year

The acquisitive plans of South African retail king Christo Wiese took a hit Wednesday when Steinhoff, the retail conglomerate he chairs, said its chief executive Markus Jooste had resigned amid accounting irregularities. It’s a major reversal of fortune for Wiese, 76, and Steinhoff, which has recently expanded its business across Europe and America.
Steinhoff shares have fallen more than 60% in a day, erasing $2.3 billion from Wiese’s fortune. He&#8217;s now worth an estimated $1.49 billion, according to <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/christoffel-wiese/?list=rtb" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Forbes Real Time Rankings</a>. That&#8217;s down more than $4 billion from March 2017, when he was worth $5.6 billion.
Going forward, Steinhoff has tapped PwC to investigate the accounting irregularities, and with Steinhoff CEO Markus Jooste out, Wiese will temporarily become Steinhoff’s executive chairman.
Since 2016, furniture and home good retailer Steinhoff has done more than half a dozen deals, including the acquisition of US-based Mattress Firm. Steinhoff is a part of Wiese’s discount retail empire, <a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2016/05/01/africas-sam-walton/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">which the South African has been building since the 1970s, as a 2016 profile of Wiese in Forbes magazine details</a>.
Wiese first joined the ranks of the Forbes Billionaires in 2011, with a net worth of $1.6 billion. His fortune rose as high as $6.3 billion in March 2015. In December 2015, Wiese moved Steinhoff&#8217;s listing from the Johannesburg Stock Exchange to the Frankfurt Stock Exchange to concentrate more on the European market.
The retail king made headlines in 2009  after U.K. customs officials detained him at London City Airport with two suitcases filled with nearly $1 million in cash. <a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2013/03/01/the-king-of-retail/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">They seized it, suspecting illicit origins</a>. The British and South African press picked up on the incident &#8211; apparently suspecting Wiese had been nabbed for money laundering &#8211; and were further emboldened by Wiese&#8217;s stubbornness in fighting for the funds&#8217; return and his insistence that the amount was &#8220;insignificant.&#8221; (The Daily Mail&#8217;s gleeful headline: &#8220;It&#8217;s Just Peanuts to Me.&#8221;) The government ended up returning the money to Wiese &#8211; interest attached. Wiese wouldn&#8217;t talk publicly about it.
&#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/abrambrown/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Abram Brown</a>, FORBES STAFF

Christo-Wiese_JC-6

South African Billionaire’s Fortune Plunges More Than $2 Billion In A Day Amid Accounting Scandal

Warren Buffett may not know the way to Midland Road, Worcester, yet be sure he has looked very closely at the cost of making the ocean of spicy, black liquid that emerges from it to add millions to his balance sheet every year.
You can’t help thinking of Buffett’s long-term investment homilies as you walk through the Victorian red-brick portals of the Lea &amp; Perrins building. It is as steeped in history as it is in the pungent odour of churning vinegar and spices.
For this is a factory that is 120 years old; it grew from a family business that took root in this city 180 years ago. It survived two world wars and heaven knows how many recessions. Even a fire, in 1964, merely disrupted production for a few days. It also survived corporate takeovers; it sold out to HP Sauce in 1930 and became part of the Heinz stable, in 2005, through an $885 million acquisition from the French food outfit Groupe Danone. It is now owned by the world’s fifth largest food company Kraft Heinz, following a merger in 2015 – creating a food giant that made $26.5 billion in sales in 2016, according to company figures.
The Oracle of Omaha, through his holding company Berkshire Hathaway, owns 19.5% of Kraft Heinz – that is 325,634,818 shares, worth around $31 billion, his single largest holding.
Midland Road also makes Amoy Chinese sauce, another Kraft Heinz product in the competitive and crowded sauce market.
For Lea &amp; Perrins, that market is that bit tougher because, despite the fact the sauce is made from a secret recipe, there are plenty of imposters. At least one, made far from Worcestershire, carries the name, but tastes like spiced caramel with bits in it.
“It is not a protected name. We are not like Champagne. We just have to hope people recognize our quality,” says Nigel Dickie, the London-based spokesman for Kraft Heinz, in Worcester.
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Lea &amp; Perrins enjoys a bit of snob value with its royal warrant, granted by Edward VII in 1904, to supply the regal household.
<div id="attachment_34583" style="width: 260px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34583" class=" wp-image-34583" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Lea-Perrins-Nigel-Dickie-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="250" height="375" />Nigel Dickie at the factory gates. (Photo by John Bray)</div>
It was a foothold in the market created by two entrepreneur chemists, who saw an opportunity, thanks to a stroke of luck, and made a fortune from it.
The two, John Lea and William Perrins, owned a chemist’s shop in Broad Street – the street where I bought my first beer – in the heart of Worcester. They were trying to make a sauce with onions, garlic, tamarinds, vinegar, anchovies and spices in a barrel; concluded that it tasted foul and cast it into a dark corner of their cellar. Nearly two years later, during a clear out, Lea and Perrins came across the barrel and tasted the contents. They found that maturation, unbeknown to either of them, had woven magic. The sauce was spicy and beautiful.
The two didn’t waste any time. They set up a makeshift operation at the back of the chemist shop and by 1837 it was selling fast; by 1843, it was selling 14,500 bottles a year.
It didn’t let its humble origins, in a humble county, hold it back: its spicy richness splashed across the food of the rich in New York steakhouses; into the cocktails of Manhattan and on the battlefields of Africa.
There is evidence that the handful of defenders of Rorke’s Drift, in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, splashed the sauce on their food as they steeled for the fight of their lives against 4,000 equally brave Zulu warriors.
“While here we lived like fighting cocks as we managed to get potatoes now and then and occasionally a bottle of Worcestershire Sauce, without which you could not distinguish the ration beef from leather,” wrote one red-coated soldier at Rorke’s Drift before the famous battle in the heat of January 1879.
Nearly 140 years later, around 40 employees in Worcester make the dark sauce that tastes much the same as it did on the eve of battle against the Zulus.
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They turn out a staggering 26 million bottles every year. That’s almost enough to give the entire population of Mozambique one each. A mere eight million are sold in the United Kingdom and the rest are exported to 130 countries.
Of these, 100,000 bottles are sent to South Africa; another 400,000 to the Middle East from where, the manufacturers believe, many of these are re-exported to Africa.
It’s a massive job that belies the low key, yet industrious, operation in Worcester. Everyone in the factory has work clothes on; you expect to see suites of offices, filled with suits, until you remember the head office is in Chicago.
Most of the noise comes from huge plastic barrels full of onions and garlic. They swirl for weeks as part of the nearly two-year maturation process – about 30,000 liters of the stuff is on the go on this day. These days, huge paddles do the stirring; in the old days, there were workers called barrel rockers, whose job it was to turn wooden barrels every few hours.
Workers mix in anchovies, tamarind, molasses, salt and sugar. Then it is pasteurized to make sure the sauce never goes off whatever steamy clime it ends up in.
One of the men in charge of the process is Joe Neary, a racing man from Liverpool, who married a Worcester woman and runs a few livestock on his smallholding near the city. He came to work at Lea &amp; Perrins, 25 years ago, from the Guinness factory in Runcorn and believes the sauce ages like wine.
“The taste improves with age over about seven years. What I do is buy a six pack and every time I take one out I buy a new one to put at the back,” he says.
<div id="attachment_34584" style="width: 510px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-34584" class="wp-image-34584" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Lea-Perrins-Joe-Neary-e1512031326158-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="333" />Joe Neary inside the Lea &amp; Perrins factory. (Photo by John Bray)</div>
There is something worse that has longevity too – the unholy odour. Now, I love the smell of malt vinegar, but even I was knocked back at the door. I can shut my eyes and suffer it now. It is a pungent, sickly, sweet stench, that is hard to describe and even harder to get rid of.
“I used to go out at lunchtime to put a bet on the horses. The bookie used to tell me that until late afternoon the punters would come in, sniff the air, and say: ‘I see Joe has been in!’” chuckles Neary.
As for Worcester itself – population around 100,000 – the sweet sound of industry, of which Lea &amp; Perrins is a vestige, has long gone. When Worcester City played its last ever football game at its doomed St George’s Lane ground in April 2013 – before developers covered it with houses – the club put a bottle of Lea &amp; Perrins on the center spot before the game. It was a sad, unconscious nod to industrial decline; the sauce is one of the last manufactured products of the city.
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I grew up around Worcester; my family has lived in Worcestershire for nearly 400 years. It was where I kicked my first ball, earned my first penny, had my first kiss and wrote my first story. In the 21st century, my city looks down-at-heel.
Journalist Mike Grundy, Worcester-born-and-bred, has chronicled the county for 60 years and believes the hi-tech industries that have come in place of heavy industry have not yet caught up when it comes to employment.
Grundy also believes the city missed a trick in the destructive years between the 1930s and 1960s when town planners pulled down scores of picturesque black-and-white Tudor houses around the cathedral. They had become slums, but foresight could have saved them.
“We could have been a real medieval tourist town like York,” laments Grundy.
“Maybe we need a Donald Trump character to make us great again,” he chuckles.
Trump probably doesn’t know the way to Worcester either, but at least Buffett is keeping his millions in Lea &amp; Perrins alive and, like the sauce itself, he is in it for the long run.

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Dressed in a blue suit and red tie, Donald Trump’s 79-year-old pick for Secretary of Commerce sat before a panel of senators for nearly four hours in January, deflecting dozens of questions with relative ease. When one legislator at the confirmation hearing asked <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/wilbur-ross-jr/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wilbur Ross</a> how he would ensure that his official actions did not create conflicts of interest, given his vast personal holdings, Ross left little room for criticism. “I intend to be quite scrupulous about recusal and any topic where there is the slightest scintilla of doubt,” he said.
What he left unsaid, however, was that between the November election and January inauguration, he had quietly moved a chunk of assets into trusts for his family members, leaving more than $2 billion off of his financial disclosure report &#8211; and therefore out of the public eye. Ross revealed the existence of those assets, and the timing of the transfer, when Forbes asked why his financial disclosure form listed fewer assets than he had previously told the magazine he owned.
The hidden assets raise questions about whether the Secretary of Commerce violated federal rules and whether his family owns billions in holdings that could create the appearance of conflicts of interest.
Federal law requires incoming cabinet members to disclose assets they currently own, as well as any that produced income during the current and previous calendar years, even if they no longer own the assets. Ross says he followed all rules. But how someone could apparently hold $2 billion in assets, without producing big income that would show up on a financial disclosure report, raises more questions than answers.
Three months before the 2016 election, Ross’ assistant described his portfolio to Forbes as a mix that would theoretically throw off plenty of cash: $1.3 billion of municipal bonds, $1.3 billion worth of interests in general and limited partnerships, $550 million of equities, $225 million of art, $180 million in cash and $120 million worth of real estate.
That adds up to $3.7 billion. Last year, Forbes asked for documentation to prove the existence of those assets, received nothing in return, and ultimately estimated Ross’ fortune at a more conservative $2.9 billion for its annual Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans, published in October. This year, the Secretary of Commerce said he would dig up a breakdown of the assets he transferred into trusts, but he never sent anything. It is unclear whether he cited accurate figures either year.
Ross gave some clues about the structure of the trusts. “I’m not the beneficiary of them,” he said. “That’s the point. This is set up for children and things like that.” Are his children the only beneficiaries? “Yes, well, and some third parties.” What are the third parties? “It’s a complicated story, but there are children from former marriages, things like that, that are not actually my children but who are beneficiaries.” His wife’s two children? “No, others. We’ve both had a couple of marriages, as you probably know.” He said no one outside of his family is a beneficiary of the trusts.
But he did not answer more than a dozen follow-up questions, including how many trusts there are, whether he can reclaim the assets after he leaves government, and whether the trusts could pay him income in the future.
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Walter Shaub, who resigned as the director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics in July 2017, said the rules governing a particular trust are key to understanding whether an official has to disclose the entire trust, or just the assets that produced income shortly before they were transferred out of the filer’s hands. “If someone were to divest an asset by giving it away, it’s important that that asset never wind up back in the donors’ hands again,” Shaub said. “If at some point in the future that person ends up with the asset again, it’s going to look like it was a sham divestiture.”
Two trust attorneys expressed doubt that Ross suddenly made a clean transfer of more than $2 billion to his family, a move that could trigger gift taxes of $800 million or more. Such a move would be especially perplexing, they said, since the Trump administration has proposed easing the tax burden on transfers between generations. “If the estate tax goes away,” said Donald Hamburg, a New York City-based trusts and estates attorney, “then why would you pay a lot of money to get property out of your estate to save estate taxes?”
Ross said he followed all tax rules. It is possible that he transferred some of the assets to his family members years ago. He initially told Forbes that he transferred assets into the trusts shortly after the Nov. 8, 2016 election. But in a later email, he hinted that some of the assets may have belonged to his family members previously. “My personal financial affairs have been complex for a number of years, not just one,” he wrote. “The rough estimates used by Forbes for many years were based on a broad definition of family assets.”
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Ross would not have been required to disclose assets that earned income in 2016 if he had transferred those assets to children in prior years. He did not answer a follow-up question directly asking if he had transferred some of the assets to his family members before the election.
In any case, the fact that the Secretary of Commerce says his family members are beneficiaries to trusts with more than $2 billion worth of undisclosed assets raised concerns among ethics experts. “That’s an enormous amount,” said Richard Painter, who served as the chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush. “It technically avoids the conflict of interest statutes, but don’t you think that the Senate ought to know that he basically avoided it by handing the conflict-producing asset over to your kids?”
Not including the undisclosed assets, Ross retains an estimated $700 million, still enough to make him one of the richest members of Donald Trump’s cabinet but not enough to qualify for The Forbes 400 list of America’s richest people. “I don’t care if I’m on the list or not,” he said. “That frankly doesn’t matter. But what I don’t want is for people to suddenly think that I’ve lost a lot of money when it’s not true.” &#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Dan Alexander</a>, FORBES STAFF

The Mystery Of Wilbur Ross’ Missing Billions

Shortly before Nigeria’s independence in 1960, Louis Odumegwu Ojukwu, reportedly Nigeria’s first black billionaire, and founding president of the Nigerian Stock Exchange, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. The royal honor came after he helped the British during World War II with his fleet of trucks. He was so wealthy that during the Queen’s visit in 1956, she was chauffeured around in his Rolls-Royce – apparently the only one in the country at the time – on the request of the colonial administration.
Profiled in September 1965 by TIME magazine, Ojukwu made his money by importing dried fish for resale, and diversifying into textiles, cement and transport. When he died a year later, his wealth was an estimated $4 billion in today’s economic value.
His son, Chukwuemeka, who also ended up a billionaire, returned from Oxford University at 22 with a master’s degree in history and led his fellow Igbos into the Nigerian civil war as head of the secessionist state of Biafra in 1967.
Their hometown Nnewi, in the southeastern state of Anambra, either by good fortune or hard work, has bred more naira billionaires than any other town in Nigeria, and possibly Africa. The Igbos, who sometimes refer to themselves as the ‘Jews of Africa’, have entrepreneurship in their blood. They have built themselves from the ground up, with little help from the government, after a controversial policy left them all with 20 pounds each, regardless of their bank balance, at the end of the Nigerian civil war in 1970.
Nicknamed the Japan of Africa, Nnewi is famous as a hub for automobile spare part dealers, and most recently, Innoson, Nigeria’s first indigenous car assembly plant. The town is also known for its factories that manufacture household goods and is home to the biggest road transport companies in the country. Nnewi, with a little over two million residents, is a 30-minute drive from the Onitsha – the biggest outdoor market in West Africa – on the banks of the Niger River.
These are 10 of the most prominent naira billionaires from Nnewi, in no particular order:
<ul>
<li>Cletus Ibeto: The Ibeto Group has been described as the largest industrial enterprise in southeast Nigeria. Starting out as an apprentice to an already established auto spare parts dealer, Ibeto eventually branched out on his own and effectively ended importation of lead acid car batteries in Nigeria in the late 80s. The result is a conglomerate dealing in hospitality, motor products, real estate, petrochemicals, agriculture and cement.</li>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li>Cosmas Maduka: One of the country’s foremost car dealerships, Coscharis Group, is the brainchild of a man who lost his father at four and had to drop out of school to sell bean cakes, a popular food staple. His company, one of the largest car dealerships in Nigeria that deals with BMW, Jaguar, Range Rover and Rolls-Royce, has diversified into agriculture.</li>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li>Innocent Chukwuma: Another school dropout, he is the founder of Innoson Nigeria Limited which produces sport utility vehicles, commercial buses and passenger cars at the first indigenous assembly plant in Nigeria. The company has factories in Nnewi and Enugu and has the governments of Anambra and Enugu states, as well as a few federal agencies, among its customers.</li>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li>Gabriel Chukwuma: The elder brother of Innoson, Gabriel is invested in sports, real estate and hospitality. As chairman of Gabros International Football Club, he oversaw its rise into the Nigerian Premier League and partnership with English side, West Ham FC before selling to fellow Nnewi entrepreneur, Ifeanyi Ubah. He began business as a patent medicine dealer.</li>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li>Alexander Chika Okafor: Chicason Industries, and one of its products – A-Z Petroleum, are household names in Nigeria. The conglomerate has made significant inroads in the mining, manufacturing, and real estate in Nigeria and Sierra Leone. Okafor is its founder and chairman.</li>
</ul>
 
<ul>
<li>Augustine Ilodibe: An orphan and mass server in the Catholic church, young Ilodibe was gifted £35 by one of the priests and he initially invested in motor spare parts trading. By the sixties, he pioneered the interstate luxury bus transport service; for years, he was the sole importer of these buses. After helping organize vehicles for the Biafran side during the civil war, he established the hugely popular Ekene Dili Chukwu Transport, his main cash cow and later diversified into brewery and agriculture.</li>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li>Ifeanyi Ubah: The flamboyant businessman funded parts of the Goodluck Jonathan campaign ahead of the 2015 presidential polls and unsuccessfully ran for the governorship of his home state, Anambra, in 2014. His wealth comes from investments in oil and gas, as well as exportation of motor spare parts and, recently, from sales of football players. In June 2015, Ubah – described by one Nigerian newspaper as ‘the new sugar daddy of Nigerian football’ – completed the purchase of Gabros FC for N500 million and renamed it Ifeanyi Ubah FC.</li>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li>Louis Onwugbenu: The head honcho of Louis Carter Industries dropped out of school in 1967 when the Nigerian civil war broke out. He got his nickname from weekly trips to Lagos to sell motor spare parts under the popular Carter Bridge in the city. His reinvested profits allowed him to diversify into manufacturing car batteries and pipe fittings, agriculture, food processing, real estate and, by the age of 30, he was already a naira multimillionaire. The headquarters of his conglomerate sits in the Carter Industrial Estate, spanning many acres in Nnewi.</li>
</ul>
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<ul>
<li>Obiajulu Uzodike: Nigeria is one of the foremost cable producers in the world due to many indigenous manufacturers across the southeast. One of the top cable companies is Cutix Nigeria, whose founder, Obiajulu Uzodike, cut his teeth in the business as a staff at a US-based aircraft and military wires and accessories company. By 1982, the Harvard Business School alumna and civil war veteran set up Cutix with N400,000 ($1,200), nurturing it to eventually become the first indigenous firm in the southeast to be listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange.</li>
</ul>
-Written by Eromo Egbejule

Category: Wealth

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