Aliko Dangote

Africa’s Richest 2020: Steady State With Some Volatility On The Margins

Isabel dos Santos amassed an empire worth more than $2 billion as the daughter of Angola’s former long-time president. Now it looks like that empire is beginning to crumble.



On Wednesday—as the Attorney
General of Angola held a press conference to provisionally charge Isabel dos
Santos with embezzlement and money laundering, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-51218501" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">according
to the BBC</a>—a bank in
Portugal where she has been a significant shareholder issued a statement saying
that Dos Santos’ stake is being sold.



EuroBic, a small privately
held bank in Lisbon in which Dos Santos has owned a 42.5% stake, issued a <a href="https://www.eurobic.pt/eurobic/noticias-eurobic/Comunicado-de-Imprensa" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">statement on Monday</a> that it was severing its business relationship
with Dos Santos and the entities related to her. On Wednesday <a href="https://www.eurobic.pt/eurobic/noticias-eurobic/Comunicado-de-Imprensa---Estrutura-Acionista" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">EuroBic announced</a> that Dos Santos had decided to sell her stake in
the bank, which has about $8 billion in assets. Forbes recently valued Dos Santos’
42.5% stake at around $200 million.



Dos Santos has come under
intense scrutiny this past week after a number of media outlets, including the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/19/world/africa/isabel-dos-santos-angola.html?action=click&amp;module=Intentional&amp;pgtype=Article" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">New York Times</a>, the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-51128950" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">BBC</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/19/angola-state-oil-company-sonangol-isabel-dos-santos-investigation" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Guardian</a>, published articles based on
the “Luanda Leaks”—a cache of some 700,000 documents related to Dos Santos’
allegedly corrupt business dealings that were released to the International
Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ).



Dos Santos was appointed to
head Angola’s state oil company, Sonangol, in 2016, when her father was still
president of the country. (He retired in 2017 after ruling Angola for 38
years.)



According to an article in<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/19/angola-state-oil-company-sonangol-isabel-dos-santos-investigation?utm_term=Autofeed&amp;CMP=twt_b-gdnnews&amp;utm_medium=Social&amp;utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1579458161" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"> The
Guardian</a>, while Dos Santos
was heading up Sonangol, she allegedly arranged for a transfer of $57 million
on one day in November 2017 from Sonangol’s bank account to a Dubai company,
Matter Business Solutions, run by Paula Oliveira, a woman who The Guardian says is
apparently a close friend of Dos Santos’.



It turns out that the Sonangol
bank account from which the funds were transferred was a EuroBic account. In
its statement severing ties with Dos Santos, EuroBic also said that the
payments ordered by Sonangol to Matter Business Solutions “respected the legal
and regulatory procedures formally applicable . . . between this bank and
Sonangol, namely those related to the prevention of money laundering.”



The <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-51224655" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">BBC is
reporting</a> that an employee of EuroBic who managed the
Sonangol account, Nuno Ribeiro da Cunha, 45, was found dead in Lisbon on
Wednesday. A police source told the BBC that “everything points to
suicide.”&nbsp;&nbsp;



Dos Santos issued a statement on Thursday saying, “The
allegations which have been made against me over the last few days are
extremely misleading and untrue,” and adding that “I am a private businesswoman
who has spent 20 years building successful companies from the ground up,” and
that “I have always operated within the law and all my transactions have been
approved by lawyers, bankers, auditors and regulators.” 



Forbes first dug into the murky origins of Isabel
dos Santos’ fortune, with help from Angolan investigative journalist Rafael
Marques de Morais, in <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2013/08/14/how-isabel-dos-santos-took-the-short-route-to-become-africas-richest-woman/#52e2d7c345f5" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">an in-depth investigation in 2013</a>. In late
December 2019, an Angolan court issued a freeze of Dos Santos’ assets in
Angola—assets that Forbes estimates are <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2020/01/03/angolan-billionaires-assets-frozen-by-countrys-court-worth-hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars/#278178507acb" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">worth hundreds of millions of dollars</a>. Most
of Dos Santos’ fortune—which <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/isabel-dos-santos/#4ec97300523f" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Forbes estimates at $2.1 billion</a>—lies in assets held outside of Angola, primarily in Portugal. 



The natural question: Will other Portuguese companies in which Dos Santos is a shareholder follow in EuroBic’s footsteps? 



&#8211;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/">Kerry A. Dolan, </a>Forbes Staff 



Isabel dos Santos features in the 2020 Africa Billionaire’s list in the February issue of FORBES AFRICA. The news of the provisional charges against her for embezzlement and money laundering was unavailable at the time of going to press.

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As Angola Accuses Billionaire Isabel Dos Santos Of Fraud, Her Empire Begins To Unravel

This has been a year of record-setting in billionaire philanthropy. In September, Stewart and Lynda Resnick, owners of POM Wonderful and Fiji Water, pledged $750 million to the California Institute of Technology for environmental sustainability research. 



In June, Blackstone cofounder Stephen Schwarzman donated $189 million to the University of Oxford—the largest single gift to the school since the Renaissance—to fund its work on humanities. The same month, Broadcom billionaire Henry Samueli pledged $100 million to UCLA’s engineering school, the largest gift ever to the department. 



Forbes tracks gifts and pledges like these as part of our ongoing coverage of charitable giving by the country’s richest people.



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For the second year in a row, Forbes tracked the philanthropic giving of the richest 400 individuals in the U.S. and gave each member of The Forbes 400 list a philanthropy score. The score ranged from 1 to 5,  with 5 being the most philanthropic. List members for whom we could find no charitable giving information received an N.A. (not available).



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5da485de6763cb000608aa94/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="Philanthropy Forbes 400"/><figcaption>FORBES</figcaption></figure>



Though the number of the biggest givers—those who scored a 5—stayed flat in 2019, those who received scores of 4 and 3 increased compared with a year ago. 



The changes reflect two things: The country’s richest have gotten somewhat more generous, and Forbes had more information to work with this year. Some billionaires were willing to share information on charitable giving for the 2019 list who didn’t in 2018. As a result, four dozen people got higher scores this year than a year ago. 



This year, Warren Buffett led the list of top givers with $38.8 billion in lifetime giving, which is 32% of his net worth, and earned the top score of 5. 



He was followed by last year’s biggest giver, Bill Gates, who has donated $38.5 billion so far. Two people who scored a 5 last year—Paul Allen and David Koch—passed away. 



READ MORE: <a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Forbes Africa | 8 Years And Growing (opens in a new tab)" href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2019/10/14/forbes-africa-8-years-and-growing/" target="_blank">Forbes Africa | 8 Years And Growing</a>



Billionaires like DreamWorks Pictures founder David Geffen and WhatsApp cofounder Brian Acton moved up to the top score after each scored a 4 last year. According to the latest tax filings, Geffen gave $38 million to his foundation in 2017, which brought his lifetime giving to about $1 billion. 



Acton and his wife Tegan, on the other hand, have been expanding their philanthropic network, Wildcard Giving, which they founded in 2014 after Acton sold WhatsApp to Facebook. The couple has given away more than $1 billion to charitable causes.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5da48621cd594c000620fe51/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="2019 Forbes 400 Giving"/><figcaption>FORBES</figcaption></figure>



Forty-one billionaires, including Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings and software billionaire Philip “Terry” Ragon, got higher scores this year than last year. Some, like Stephen Schwarzman, earned a higher score thanks to giving in the past year. 



Others scored higher because we were able to find more information about their lifetime giving, through new public documents or details provided to us by Forbes 400 members or their spokespeople. In September, a Los Angeles Times report revealed that B. 



Wayne Hughes, cofounder of self-storage behemoth Public Storage, had anonymously donated about $400 million to the University of Southern California in his lifetime. Hughes, who scored a 2 last year, jumped up to a 4.



Private equity tycoon Robert F. Smith’s pledge in May to wipe out the student debt of the entire 2019 graduating class of Morehouse College generated lots of headlines but did not end up changing his score because the gift wasn’t big enough to move him up a notch. In many cases, fortunes grew faster than lifetime philanthropic giving. 



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To come up with the information on which we based our score,&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;reporters looked at tax filings for charitable foundations, annual statements, SEC filings and news about new gifts.&nbsp;When possible, we interviewed Forbes 400 members and executives from their foundations. Some Forbes 400 members said they have chosen to donate anonymously, citing religious or privacy concerns.&nbsp;



Our score is based on total lifetime giving and what percent of their fortune members had given away. We weighted these two factors equally. Some individuals were then bumped up or down based on several other factors, including whether they had signed the Giving Pledge, whether they had pledged significant donations, how personally involved they were in their charitable giving, and how quickly and effectively their private foundations distributed dollars. We didn’t count pledges or announced gifts that have yet to be paid out, but we took commitment to philanthropy—or lack thereof—into account.



Forbes has been tracking the wealth of the richest Americans since 1982. “Some of [the members] told us to drop dead,” James Michaels, veteran editor of Forbes, told the New York Times in a 1982 story about the list’s debut. “They said they wanted no part of it, that they’d sue us. 



This happens in reporting.” At times, our reporting on philanthropic giving received a similar response. “The new philanthropy ranking is fundamentally flawed, in that it is biased in favor of those who make their gifts widely known, and against donors who choose to make their charitable contributions anonymously,” one current Forbes 400 member (who did not wish to be named) wrote to us last year.



-Deniz Çam; Forbes

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These Are The Biggest Givers On The Forbes 400

Nine years ago, two unlikely lunch partners sat down at the Hollywood Diner in Omaha, Nebraska. One, Warren Buffett, was a regular there. The other, Jay-Z, was not. The billionaire and the rapper ordered strawberry malts and chatted amiably, continuing the conversation back at Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway offices.



Buffett, then 80, walked away impressed with the artist 40 years his junior: “Jay is teaching in a lot bigger classroom than I’ll ever teach in. For a young person growing up, he’s the guy to learn from.” This moment, which was originally captured in our&nbsp;<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2010/1011/rich-list-10-omaha-warren-buffett-jay-z-steve-forbes-summit-interview.html#5c2e29d66480" target="_blank">2010 Forbes 400 package</a>, made it clear that Jay-Z already had a blueprint for his own ten-figure fortune. “Hip-hop from the beginning has always been aspirational,” he said.



READ MORE | <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/arts/2019/04/01/inside-nipsey-hussles-blueprint-to-become-a-real-estate-mogul/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Inside Nipsey Hussle’s Blueprint To Become A Real Estate Mogul (opens in a new tab)">Inside Nipsey Hussle’s Blueprint To Become A Real Estate Mogul</a>



Less than a decade later, it’s clear that Jay-Z has accumulated a fortune that conservatively totals $1 billion, making him one of only a handful of entertainers to become a billionaire—and the first hip-hop artist to do so. Jay-Z&#8217;s steadily growing kingdom is expansive, encompassing liquor, art, real estate (homes in Los Angeles, the Hamptons, Tribeca) and stakes in companies like Uber.



His journey is all the more impressive given its start: Brooklyn’s notorious Marcy housing projects. He was a drug dealer before becoming a musician, starting his own label, Roc-A-Fella Records, to release his 1996 debut,&nbsp;Reasonable Doubt. Since then he’s amassed 14 No. 1 albums,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.grammy.com/grammys/artists/jay-z" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">22 Grammy awards</a>&nbsp;and over $500 million in pretax earnings in a decade.



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5cf144d6142c500008f463fb/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="Forbescover-jay-z-buffett"/></figure>



Crucially, he realized that he should build his own brands rather than promote someone else’s: the clothing line Rocawear, started in 1999 (<a href="https://content.edgar-online.com/ExternalLink/EDGAR/0001144204-07-058548.html?hash=c289c7e04f5c956d46d401084fa3cfcaf2c0db9bcd375e90576f2e974a8a6105&amp;dest=V092473_EX3I_HTM#V092473_EX3I_HTM" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">sold</a>for $204 million to Iconix in 2007); D’Ussé, a cognac he co-owns with Bacardi; and Tidal, a music-streaming service.



Kasseem “Swizz Beatz” Dean, the superproducer behind some of Jay-Z’s biggest hits (“<a href="https://tidal.com/browse/video/44153680" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">On To The Next One</a>,” Beyoncé’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nr8hPnZfMU" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Upgrade U</a>”), looks at Jay-Z as something others can model: “It’s bigger than hip-hop … it’s the blueprint for our culture. A guy that looks like us, sounds like us, loves us, made it to something that we always felt that was above us.”



“If he’s a billionaire now, imagine what he’s about to be,” Swizz Beatz says. “Because he’s only just starting.”



READ MORE | <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/life/2018/03/02/forbes-five-hip-hops-wealthiest-artists-2018/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="The Forbes Five: Hip-Hop’s Wealthiest Artists 2018 (opens in a new tab)">The Forbes Five: Hip-Hop’s Wealthiest Artists 2018</a>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">What’s Jay-Z Worth?</h2>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">To calculate his net worth, we looked at the artist’s stakes in companies like Armand de Brignac champagne—applying our customary discount to private firms—then added up his income, subtracting a healthy amount to account for a superstar lifestyle. We checked our numbers with a roster of outside experts to ensure these estimates were fair and conservative. Turns out, Jay-Z really is a business, man.</h3>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5cf199a2cd1f12000a2b1a80/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="Jay-z-rule"/></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Armand de Brignac</h2>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">$310 million</h3>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5cf19739cd1f12000a2b1a37/960x0.jpg?cropX1=1&amp;cropX2=2635&amp;cropY1=53&amp;cropY2=2195" alt="Armand-de-Brignac-bottles"/></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Jay-Z has used his music to shill the $300 gold bottles of the &#8220;Ace of Spades&#8221; champagne since launching the brand with the 2006 video “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FS4U-HAHwps" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Show Me What You Got</a>.&#8221; More recently, his verse on Meek Mill’s “<a href="https://genius.com/Meek-mill-whats-free-lyrics" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">What’s Free</a>&#8221; put a half-billion-dollar value on the wine, which seems like a bit too bubbly a number.</h3>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5cf19a06cd1f12000a2b1a86/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="Jay-z-rule"/></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Cash &amp; investments</h2>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">$220 million</h3>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">A vast investing portfolio includes a stake in Uber worth an estimated $70 million. He&nbsp;<a href="https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/07/the-inside-story-of-the-rise-and-rise-of-uber/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reportedly</a>&nbsp;purchased his piece for $2 million back in 2013—and then wired founder Travis Kalanick another $5 million in an attempt to increase his holdings, but was rebuffed.</h3>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5cf19a269736330008aab875/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="Jay-z-rule"/></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">D’Ussé</h2>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">$100 million</h3>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Jay-Z’s cognac, a joint venture with beverage giant Bacardi, moves almost 200,000 cases and has grown nearly 80% annually. “Jay-Z resonates with consumers who are attracted to the ultra-premium lifestyle,&#8221; says Eric Schmidt, Beverage Marketing Corp.’s Director of Alcohol Research.</h3>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Tidal</h2>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">$100 million</h3>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">In 2015, Jay-Z&nbsp;<a href="http://mb.cision.com/Main/1052/9718782/340280.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">submitted</a>&nbsp;a bid to purchase the Scandinavian streaming service’s parent company for just shy of $60 million. He relaunched Tidal later that year with a roster of celebrity investors including his wife, Beyoncé, and other music luminaries, from Kanye West to Calvin Harris.</h3>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5cf19a3c9736330008aab87b/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="Jay-z-rule"/></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Roc Nation</h2>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">$75 million</h3>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">This wide-ranging entertainment company started over a decade ago as part of a joint venture with concert giant Live Nation. Roc Nation represents some of the top stars in the entertainment through its sports agency (Kevin Durant, Todd Gurley) as well as its record label and artist-management arms (Rihanna, J. Cole).</h3>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5cf19a539736330008aab87e/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="Jay-z-rule"/></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Music catalog</h2>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">$75 million</h3>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5cf19aaccd1f12000a2b1a9d/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="Jay-z-albums"/></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Before the beginning of his stint as Def Jam’s chief in 2004, Jay-Z&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2010/09/22/jay-zs-50-million-music-box/#1ff867a750de" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">negotiated</a>the eventual return of his master recordings from the aforementioned label that helped launch his career; in a separate deal with EMI, he clawed back his publishing rights. Wise move: his hits now clock close to 1 billion streams annually.</h3>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5cf19ad0cd1f12000a2b1aa0/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="Jay-z-rule"/></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Art collection</h2>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">$70 million</h3>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">In the song &#8220;<a href="https://genius.com/Jay-z-picasso-baby-lyrics" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Picasso Baby,</a>&#8221; Jay-Z boasted about a “Basquiat in my kitchen corner.&#8221; He probably wasn&#8217;t kidding. For over a decade, he’s been scooping up masterpieces like Basquiat&#8217;s “Mecca,” purchased in 2013 for a&nbsp;<a href="https://nypost.com/2013/11/20/jay-z-buys-basquiat-painting-for-4-5m/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">reported</a>&nbsp;$4.5 million. &#8220;He&#8217;s rapped about it all in detail,&#8221; says Fab 5 Freddy, a contemporary and friend of the late painter. &#8220;Jay-Z helped educate millions of hip-hop fans mentioning Jean-Michel.&#8221;</h3>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5cf19ae8cd1f12000a2b1aa3/960x0.jpg?fit=scale" alt="Jay-z-rule"/></figure>



<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Real estate</h2>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">$50 million</h3>



<figure class="wp-block-image"><img decoding="async" src="https://specials-images.forbesimg.com/imageserve/5cf15020142c500008f46713/960x0.jpg?cropX1=392&amp;cropX2=2524&amp;cropY1=40&amp;cropY2=1848" alt="This is the incredible $88 million mansion Jay Z and Beyonce purchased in August 2017, the home has 8 bed, 11 bath and is 30,000 square feet"/><figcaption>CJT/ MEGA/ NEWSCOM</figcaption></figure>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">After welcoming twins in 2017, Jay-Z and Beyoncé bought a pair of homes to match: a $26 million East Hampton mansion and a $88 million Bel Air estate. Jay-Z also owns a Tribeca penthouse, snagged for $6.85 million in 2004.</h3>



&#8211;Zack O&#8217;Malley Greenburg;Forbes Staff

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Artist, Icon, Billionaire: How Jay-Z Created His $1 Billion Fortune

Last month, after Forbes named Kylie Jenner <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">the world’s youngest self-made billionaire</a>, we unintentionally set off a heated debate on social media about the meaning of the word “self-made.” 



The idea that a 21-year-old who grew up on a reality TV show (Keeping Up With the Kardashians), whose sister is Kim Kardashian, and whose rich and famous parents are Kris and Caitlyn Jenner could be considered self-made, sparked a very public backlash.



The debate was renewed once again on March 31 after the New York Times published a story in which Kylie admitted to having some help building her business. “I can&#8217;t say I&#8217;ve done it by myself,&#8221; the beauty mogul told the Times. “If they&#8217;re just talking finances, technically, yes, I don&#8217;t have any inherited money. But I have had a lot of help and a huge platform.&#8221;



READ MORE | <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2019/03/08/at-21-kylie-jenner-becomes-the-youngest-self-made-billionaire-ever/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="At 21, Kylie Jenner Becomes The Youngest Self-Made Billionaire Ever (opens in a new tab)">At 21, Kylie Jenner Becomes The Youngest Self-Made Billionaire Ever</a>



Well, yes, that’s exactly what we mean at Forbes when we say that Kylie—and 1,449 other billionaires—are “self-made.” And that’s perhaps the nub of the disagreement. At Forbes we’ve been using the term to describe the origin of someone’s fortune, rather than whether a billionaire got help to build a hugely successful company or not.



 Forbeshas been tracking the fortunes of America’s richest for more than 35 years and we’ve used three classifications for how people made their fortunes: self-made, inherited and inherited and growing; the latter category was reserved for people like Donald Trump, who built on his father’s real estate empire.



 Forbeshas been tracking the fortunes of America’s richest for more than 35 years and we’ve used three classifications for how people made their fortunes: self-made, inherited and inherited and growing; the latter category was reserved for people like Donald Trump, who built on his father’s real estate empire.



What many object to when&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;calls Kylie self-made is that (1) she had lots of help (from people like her mom, Kris Jenner) building the company that turned her into a billionaire, and (2) she started out rich and famous. Both of those assertions are true. But Mark Zuckerberg, whom&nbsp;Forbes&nbsp;also classifies as self-made, didn’t build Facebook by himself and he started out well-off, though not as rich and not nearly as famous as Kylie. (Zuckerberg’s father is a dentist, his mother a psychologist).



READ MORE | <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/lists/2019/04/05/the-10-most-notable-new-billionaires-of-2019/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="The 10 Most Notable New Billionaires Of 2019 (opens in a new tab)">The 10 Most Notable New Billionaires Of 2019</a>



Plus there are seven other Facebook billionaires who, one could argue, rode alongside Zuckerberg in building the massive social network, including cofounder Dustin Moskovitz, Zuckeberg&#8217;s former roommate; cofounder Eduardo Saverin, Zuckerberg&#8217;s former classmate; Sean Parker, the social network’s first president; Jim Breyer and Peter Thiel, its early investors; and Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer since 2008, four years after the company was founded.&nbsp;Forbesclassifies all of these billionaires as self-made—none of them inherited their fortunes. None of them built Facebook alone.



Five years ago, Forbes dug deeper into one defining characteristic of billionaires: How far did they climb to make their way to the top? That year, for the first time, we gave each member of The Forbes 400 list of richest Americans a<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2014/10/02/the-new-forbes-400-self-made-score-from-silver-spooners-to-boostrappers/" target="_blank"> self-made score </a>on a scale from 1 to 10: A 1 means the fortune was completely inherited; a 10 is for a Horatio Alger-esque journey from the depths of poverty. At the most basic level, the scores denote who inherited some or all of their fortune (scores 1 through 5) and those who truly made it on their own (6 through 10).



We have continued to apply this self-made score to all American billionaires (and also now to self-made women). In Kylie’s case, we gave her a 7 out of 10, acknowledging that she had plenty of advantages from the start. 



Donald Trump scores a 4 because he inherited a fortune from his father and then expanded it significantly, while the widow of Steve Jobs, Laurene Powell Jobs, gets a 2 because she inherited a fortune and has a role in managing it, having made investments in media (The Atlantic and Ozy Media) and professional sports (she owns a 20% stake the group behind the NBA’s Washington Wizards and NHL’s Washington Capitals).



READ MORE | <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2019/04/02/more-than-a-dozen-of-europes-wealthiest-billionaires-and-their-families-had-nazi-ties/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="More Than A Dozen European Billionaires—Linked To BMW, L’Oréal, Bosch—Have Families With Past Nazi Ties (opens in a new tab)">More Than A Dozen European Billionaires—Linked To BMW, L’Oréal, Bosch—Have Families With Past Nazi Ties</a>



While few billionaires have had the type of social media platform that Kylie Jenner had when she launched her business—with 120 million Instagram followers—(which we actually think further underscores her entrepreneurial savvy, not the help she got), every single self-made billionaire on Forbes’ list has had help building their fortune, be it from other employees at the company they founded, venture capitalists, mentors, friends or parents. 



Steve Ballmer, for instance, had the good fortune to be one of Bill Gates’ classmates at Harvard, which led to a job at Microsoft. He eventually replaced Gates as chief executive, a job he held for 15 years. He is now the 19th-richest person in the world.   



Leon Black, whose father was the CEO of United Brands, got a $75,000 life insurance payout after his father died when he was in business school. He later cofounded private equity giant Apollo Global Management, which made him a billionaire. Hedge fund tycoon Chase Coleman is a descendant of Peter Stuyvesant, the last Dutch governor of New York. Another hedge fund titan, Ken Griffin, started trading in his Harvard dorm room using $265,000, part of which came from his family. 



And the nation’s richest real estate developer, Donald Bren, is the son of a real estate investor and Hollywood film producer. Phil Knight, in his autobiography Shoe Dog, spells out how the early days of Nike were a team effort by a core group of incredibly dedicated early employees. Even Oprah Winfrey, who grew up dirt poor and earns a number 10 rank on our self-made score, got help from smart producers and other employees to turn her daytime talk show from an also-ran into a huge hit, as the podcast Making Oprah details.



READ MORE | <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/billionaires/2019/03/28/the-worlds-most-generous-billionaires-outside-of-the-us/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="The World’s Most Generous Billionaires Outside Of The US (opens in a new tab)">The World’s Most Generous Billionaires Outside Of The US</a>



So why have people reacted so vehemently to Kylie? Is it that the Kardashians are people everyone loves to hate? Is it that Americans are fed up with the reality TV, social media culture that not only helped make a 21-year-old who posted on Instagram a billionaire but also helped get a president elected? Several people with whom we spoke wondered if it was because she was a woman. Would we have had the same discussions if it was her half-brother Robert who became a billionaire instead of Kylie?



No one will really ever know. But one thing is certain: Kylie Jenner figured out a simple, easy way to turn her family&#8217;s fame, her huge Instagram following and her passion for makeup into big, big bucks.



&#8211;Luisa Kroll; Forbes Staff



&#8211;Kerry A. Dolan; Forbes Staff

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In Defense Of Kylie Jenner: Are Any Of The World’s Billionaires Entirely Self-Made?

Jeff Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon, announced on Thursday that he will transfer roughly 4% of the company’s stock to his wife, MacKenzie, most likely by early July. The couple are in the process of finalizing their divorce.



Those shares are worth more than $35 billion as of 1:30 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday. That would make MacKenzie the third-richest woman in the world, behind L’Oréal’s Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, who is worth an estimated $52.9 billion, and Walmart’s Alice Walton, who is worth $45 billion. She would rank as the planet’s 26th-richest person, ahead of Nike’s Phil Knight.



Jeff Bezos will remain the world’s richest person, with a net worth above $110 billion, per early Thursday afternoon stock prices. Bill Gates is the world’s second-wealthiest individual, boasting an estimated $99.5 billion fortune.



While still pending, the Bezos divorce settlement will likely be&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/#24ad167e540a" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the largest in world history</a>. Other divorces of the ultrarich include Steve and Elaine Wynn (she received an estimated $850 million settlement), as well as Bill and Susan Gross (she received a $1.3 billion settlement).



In a&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/JeffBezos/status/1113851402965487616" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">statement</a>&nbsp;posted to his Twitter account, Jeff Bezos said, “In all our work together, MacKenzie’s abilities have been on full display. She has been an extraordinary partner, ally, and mother.”



MacKenzie posted a&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/mackenziebezos/status/1113851260040503296" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">tweet</a>&nbsp;of her own, saying, “Grateful to have finished the process of dissolving my marriage with Jeff from each other. … Happy to be giving him all my interests in the Washington Post and Blue Origin, and 75% of our Amazon stock plus voting control of my shares to support his continued contributions with the teams of these incredible companies.”



The couple filed a petition for divorce on April 4, and they expect an official decree to be issued in early July, they said in an SEC filing that outlined the transfer of shares. The filing noted that Jeff Bezos will continue to exercise voting control over MacKenzie’s shares, unless she sells them on the open market or gives them to qualifying nonprofits.



If MacKenzie transfers shares, the recipient of the stock must sign a similar agreement granting Jeff Bezos voting control.



The couple&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/noahkirsch/2019/01/09/jeff-bezos-worlds-richest-person-announces-divorce-after-25-years-of-marriage/#6b8f3f17db7d" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announced</a>&nbsp;their divorce in January, following 25 years of marriage. Their separation stirred a tabloid frenzy, as intimate text messages between Bezos and his romantic partner, Lauren Sanchez, a TV anchor, were leaked by the&nbsp;National Enquirer.



Bezos subsequently&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelauyeung/2019/02/07/jeff-bezos-details-blackmail-attempt-by-publisher-of-national-enquirer/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">published</a>&nbsp;an open letter accusing American Media Inc., which owns the&nbsp;National Inquirer, of extortion and blackmail. AMI has denied wrongdoing.



Bezos also hired a team of investigators to determine who accessed his private messages. His consultant Gavin De Becker ultimately&nbsp;accused&nbsp;the Saudi Arabian government of illicitly gaining access to Bezos’ cellphone. Saudi officials have denied that allegation.



-Angel Au-Yeung; Forbes Staff



-Noah Kirsch; Forbes Staff

Amazon Studios Oscar After-Party

Jeff Bezos To Give MacKenzie 25% Of His Amazon Stake, Worth Tens Of Billions, In Divorce

They come from every corner of the world—Austria and Slovakia to Australia and Vietnam—having made their fortunes in every venture imaginable: music and makeup, software and sweaters. In all, 195 fresh faces joined the world’s billionaire ranks this year. Here are 10 of the most exceptional.



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one of eight children, Steward milked cows and slopped hogs on the family farm before school every day while his dad worked as a mechanic, trash collector and janitor to make ends meet. After graduating from Central Missouri State University, he sent out 400 resumes over three years before landing his “dream” job as a salesman at Missouri Pacific Railroad Company. 



He cofounded IT provider World Wide Technology in 1990, which counts companies like Citi, Verizon and the federal government among its customers. His 59% stake in the $11.2 billion (sales) company, making him one of the richest African-Americans in the country. “I hope what this represents is that all things are possible,” Steward says, a lifelong jazz lover who donated $1.3 million to the University of Missouri-St. Louis in 2018 to create a jazz studies program. “We still live in the greatest country in the world, and God blesses persons of color too.”



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After making his fortune in retail, Hang is now focusing on politics, too. In the run-up to Brazil’s October 2018 presidential election, he urged his 2 million Facebook followers to back far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro, who ultimately won by a ten-point margin. (Hang went as far as threatening to leave the country if Bolsonaro’s leftist opponent, Fernando Haddad, won the race.)



Even after the election, he has continued to post live videos of himself on social media almost daily. One recent posting showed him celebrating former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s corruption conviction by dancing poolside to fireworks.



Outside of politics, Hang’s stores are thriving. Havan, the department store chain he cofounded at 24, generated a record $1.2 billion in 2017 sales, up 40% over the prior year. One ingredient in that success: “Always hire happy people; leave the unhappy ones to the competition,&#8221; Hang says.



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The dermatologists have tapped into the lucrative skin care market with their multilevel marketing firm Rodan + Fields, which boasts $1.5 billion in sales and 300,000 independent “consultants” selling anti-aging creams and more. In February, they launched a new teen acne line, a throwback to their first claim to fame, acne product Proactiv. 



The brand took off when the doctors created a licensing deal with infomercial company Guthy-Renker in 1995 to sell their regimen through television advertisements featuring celebrities like Jessica Simpson. The doctors sold their royalty rights in 2016, and now their full attention is on Rodan + Fields. Their goal, Rodan says, is help as many people as possible have “life-changing skin.”



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An English major who reluctantly took over his grandfather’s small outerwear company in 2001, Reiss has created the “it” coat of the decade. The Canada Goose CEO marketed his down-filled jackets by giving freebies to people who spent a lot of time in the cold: Bouncers outside of nightclubs, polar explorers and attendees of cold-weather film festivals like the ones in Sundance and Toronto.



His $1,000-plus parkas are now fashion statements, staples on the streets of London, New York and Tokyo and have a strong celebrity following, including Jennifer Lopez, Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig. The stock has climbed threefold since its public debut two years ago; sales rose 46% to $450 million in 2018. Reiss, 45, has kept manufacturing at home as other companies moved offshore: “Making a Canada Goose parka in Canada is like making a Swiss watch in Switzerland.”



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She’s just the second woman in Russian to become a billionaire and joins the ranks of the world&#8217;s wealthiest thanks to the success of her e-commerce company, Wildberries, which had $1.9 billion in revenue last year. She started the business in 2004 at age 28 in her Moscow apartment while on maternity leave from teaching. She realized how difficult it was for her and other young mothers to shop for clothes for themselves with a newborn at home. Her husband, Vladislav, an IT technician, soon joined her to help grow the business. Today Wildberries sells 15,000 brands of clothing, household products and other items and processes roughly 400,000 orders a day from 2 million daily visitors in Russia, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan.



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In twenty years at Oracle, Catz, a former investment banker and now the company’s co-CEO, is often credited with leading Oracle’s aggressive acquisition strategy, including two hostile takeovers. In January 2005, Oracle acquired competitor PeopleSoft after an 18-month pursuit for $11 billion, more than double its original unsolicited bid.Three years later in April 2008, it acquired BEA Systems for $8.5 billion, a deal that also involved Carl Icahn, the billionaire corporate raider who was a BEA shareholder and pushed BEA to do the deal with Oracle. “I can’t really speak about [working with Icahn] in open session,” Catz said at a May 2019 commencement speech at the Wharton School. “It would be unladylike.”



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Born to two Iraqi parents who came to Israel as refugees, Fattal began working in hotels at age 23 as a receptionist. He toiled in other jobs—bellhop, security guard, salesman—before founding his own hotel company in 1999. “From the day I went into the hotel industry, I fell in love with it,” he says. “There is a glamour to it.” 



Starting a business just then in Israel would prove exceptionally tough, especially for a tourism-based one like Fattal&#8217;s. The Second Intifada conflict with the Palenstinains began in 2000 and lasted for several years. Fattal, however, thrived by targeting local, rather than international, tourists and by persuading hotel owners to switch from global brands to his more affordable one.



Today, Fattal Hotels, which went public in February 2019, owns and operates 40 locations in Israel and the Leonardo Hotels in Europe. “When you’re approaching the guests, it’s like you are on a stage. You have to be courteous, and I just always felt it was my job to maintain the atmosphere for happy people.”



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At 21, Jenner is the youngest-ever self-made billionaire, earning a ten-figure fortune even earlier than Mark Zuckerberg (who joined the billionaires list at 23 in 2008). “I didn’t expect anything—I did not foresee the future,” Jenner says. “But [the recognition] feels really good. That’s a nice pat on the back.” She owns 100% of Kylie Cosmetics, the three-year-old beauty business that did an estimated $360 million in sales last year. Most of the company’s revenue comes from e-commerce. But Kylie Cosmetics also has a new deal with Ulta that put its goods in all the makeup retailer’s 1,163 U.S. stores, “so people that would never buy my products—or that aren’t my fans—can see them in person.”



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A successful IPO last year was music to Ek’s ears. Spotify, the music-streaming service he founded 13 years ago, now has a $24 billion market cap. It still hasn’t had a profitable year, though; its focus is squarely on funneling cash into acquisitions. In February it announced a $340 million purchase of podcast companies Gimlet Media and Anchor FM. Ek founded Spotify in 2006 but before that, he found himself adrift as a self-made millionaire in his 20s—clubbing, driving a cherry-red Ferrari Modena—after an early stint at another Swedish tech company. “I was deeply uncertain of who I was and who I wanted to be,” Ek said in 2012. “I really thought I wanted to be a much cooler guy than what I was.” 



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I never intended to get this far,” said Kenny Park, whose father owned a fishing company. But he has stitched together a fortune making handbags and accessories for U.S. brands such as Michael Kors, Coach, Mark Jacobs and Alexander Wang. His Simone Accessories, named after his wife and 62% owned by Park and his family, makes some 30 million handbags, purses and wallets a year in its factories in Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and China. 



His big break came in 1987 after he flew from Seoul to New York City with a sample bag. He pitched Donna Karan executives an offer to supply bags for almost 30% less than what they were paying their European suppliers, but with one caveat: a “Made in Korea” label. Reluctant at first, Donna Karan agreed to a trial order and by the next year was a key customer, one he still supplies today.



-Luisa Kroll; Forbes Staff



READ MORE | <a rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="More Than A Dozen European Billionaires—Linked To BMW, L’Oréal, Bosch—Have Families With Past Nazi Ties (opens in a new tab)" href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2019/04/02/more-than-a-dozen-of-europes-wealthiest-billionaires-and-their-families-had-nazi-ties/" target="_blank">More Than A Dozen European Billionaires—Linked To BMW, L’Oréal, Bosch—Have Families With Past Nazi Ties</a>



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<a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/lists/2019/02/01/fewer-billionaires-poorer-billionaires-on-african-continent-in-2019/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Fewer Billionaires, Poorer Billionaires On African Continent In 2019 (opens in a new tab)">Fewer Billionaires, Poorer Billionaires On African Continent In 2019</a>

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The 10 Most Notable New Billionaires Of 2019

People with ten-digit fortunes can live pretty much anywhere they want. As it turns out, many like the same spots.



Of the 2,153 members of the 2019 Forbes World’s Billionaires List, 551 live in just 10 of the world’s 1,860 cities. Billionaires living in this relative handful of locations possess a collective $2.3 trillion of wealth, exceeding the GDP of all but seven nations on earth.



New York City again tops the list with 84 billionaires, whose combined net worth of $469.7 billion is greater than the GDP of Austria. The biggest city in the U.S. and home of the world’s two biggest stock exchanges, New York has housed the most billionaires for five years running. 



The streak started in 2015 when it beat out Moscow, which has ranked as No. 3 since 2016. The Russian capital had 85 billionaires in 2014, 14 more than today.



China has the most cities in the top 10, with 145 of the nation’s billionaires living in just three places: No. 4 Beijing, No. 6 Shanghai and No. 8 Shenzhen. While all three Chinese cities have fewer billionaires than last year, they still account for 45% of the country’s list members. 



That percentage may stand to grow even larger as China sprints toward further urbanization; the nation’s city-dwelling population has increased from 48% to 59% since 2009, per Chinese census data.



The same 10 sites were also the most popular on last year’s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/luisakroll/2018/03/06/forbes-billionaires-2018-meet-the-richest-people-on-the-planet/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">World’s Billionaires list</a>, albeit with slightly shuffled rankings. San Francisco saw the biggest year-over-year jump, moving up from No. 10 to No. 7 and adding eight billionaires, including Coinbase cofounder&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/brian-armstrong/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Brian Armstrong</a>&nbsp;and Levi Strauss heiress&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/mimi-haas/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mimi Haas</a>.



Mumbai is the biggest loser, dropping from No. 7 to No. 10 with a net loss of eight billionaires. Nine fell off the list, including pharma bigwigs Samprada Singh and Basudeo Singh of Alkem Laboratories, whose stock price fell some 20%. Only one new billionaire emerged in India’s most populous city: paint company heir&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/mahendra-choksi/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mahendra Choksi</a>.



Here are 10 cities with the most billionaires from No. 10 to No. 1:



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">10. Mumbai, 37 billionaires (-8 since 2018)</h4>



Total net worth:&nbsp;$184.4 billion



Richest resident:&nbsp;Oil and gas heir&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/mukesh-ambani/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mukesh Ambani</a>, $50 billion



Mumbai is home to what is likely the most expensive residence on earth: Ambani’s $1 billion&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/naazneenkarmali/2018/03/07/mukesh-ambanis-33-billion-bet-on-indias-digital-revolution/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">27-story palace</a>. It was also the site of one of the biggest, costliest weddings ever, again courtesy of Ambani. He hosted the week-long&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/naazneenkarmali/2018/12/11/the-big-fat-ambani-wedding-celebrates-a-match-among-indias-billionaire-elite/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">blockbuster celebration</a>&nbsp;for his daughter Isha and the son of fellow billionaire&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/ajay-piramal/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ajay Piramal</a>&nbsp;in December 2018. &nbsp;



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">9. Seoul, 38 billionaires (-3)</h4>



Total net worth: $99.9 billion



Richest resident: Samsung chairman&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/lee-kun-hee/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lee Kun-hee</a>, $16.9 billion



All but one of South Korea’s billionaires reside in its biggest city, and all are South Korean citizens. Seoul’s richest people control the nation’s biggest businesses, including global powerhouses <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/lee-kun-hee/" target="_blank">Samsung</a> and <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/chung-mong-koo/" target="_blank">Hyundai</a>. South Korea is also the world’s fourth-largest online gaming market (over $5.7 billion in revenue, per Newzoo), and the sector has produced five Seoul billionaires, including Maple Story-maker <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/kim-jung-ju/" target="_blank">Kim Jung-ju</a>.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">8. Shenzhen, 39 billionaires (-5)</h4>



Total net worth: $190.5 billion



Richest resident: Tencent CEO&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/ma-huateng/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ma Huateng</a>, $38.8 billion



Designated as a “special economic zone” during Chinese economic reforms of the 1980’s, the Hong Kong-bordering city has become an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbestravelguide.com/destinations/shenzhen-china/travel-guide" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">economic and tourist hub</a>. Every listmaker from Shenzhen is a self-made billionaire, with its second-richest resident&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/hui-ka-yan/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Hui Ka Yan</a>&nbsp;working as a factory technician for ten years before founding one of China’s foremost real estate developers. Dorm room founder&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/frank-wang/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Frank Wang</a>became the world’s first drone billionaire in 2016, along with an early investor and his marketing chief, both Shenzhen residents.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">7. San Francisco, 42 billionaires (+8) &nbsp;&nbsp;</h4>



Total net worth: $109.2 billion



Richest resident: Facebook cofounder&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/dustin-moskovitz/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Dustin Moskowitz</a>, $11.1 billion



The heart of America’s tech revolution, San Francisco is homebase for founders of Uber, Airbnb and Pinterest. The region’s influx of digital-age companies has made it the most expensive city in the U.S. (The entire Bay Area, including San Francisco and nearby cities, has 82 billionaires, still fewer than New York). One escapee: PayPal cofounder and Trump backer <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/peter-thiel/" target="_blank">Peter Thiel</a>, who moved to Los Angeles in 2018, reportedly for its greater political diversity.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">6. Shanghai, 45 billionaires (-5)</h4>



Total net worth: $110.7 billion



Richest resident: Ecommerce entrepreneur&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/colin-huang-1/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Colin Huang</a>, $13.5 billion



As ecommerce surges worldwide, so do fortunes like Huang’s, which is tied to internet retailer Pinduoduo. All those online-purchased items have created a massive package delivery market. Shanghai, also the world’s biggest port, is home to four major package delivery companies, each with a pair each of billionaires. The city’s richest logistics duo is tied to Yunda Express; its cofounding spouses <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/nie-tengyun/" target="_blank">Nie Tengyun</a> and <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/chen-liying/" target="_blank">Chen Liying</a> are worth a combined $5.1 billion.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">5. London, 55 billionaires (+0)</h4>



Total net worth: $226 billion



Richest resident: Russian bank founder&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/mikhail-fridman/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mikhail Fridman</a>, $15 billion



London, with <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://stories.forbestravelguide.com/london-earns-more-five-star-hotels-than-any-city" target="_blank">more five star hotels</a> than any other city, is a mecca for the uber rich. While 20 Brits call the cosmopolitan city home, 35 expatriate billionaires from 23 countries including India, Iceland and Russia have relocated to London. Five, including two Ikea heirs, come from high-taxed Sweden, more than any other nation. Four are Russians, including Russia’s richest woman <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elena-baturina/" target="_blank">Elena Baturina</a>, whose husband was removed as mayor of Moscow in 2010. And though he’s not a resident, Chicago hedge fund head <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/ken-griffin/" target="_blank">Ken Griffin</a> bought <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverwilliams1/2019/01/21/american-billionaire-defies-brexit-by-buying-londons-most-expensive-house/" target="_blank">a $122 million property</a> just a ten minute walk from Buckingham Palace this January.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">4. Beijing, 61 billionaires (-3)</h4>



Total net worth: $193.3 billion



Richest resident: Commercial real estate titan&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/wang-jianlin/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Wang Jianlin</a>, $22.6 billion



Beijing is home to China’s two youngest billionaires, both products of the internet era: 33-year-old cryptocurrency miner&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/jihan-wu/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jihan Wu</a>&nbsp;and 35-year-old ByteDance chair&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/zhang-yiming/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Zhang Yiming</a>. The success of his $75 billion&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/ywang/2018/10/25/chinas-bytedance-becomes-worlds-largest-internet-startup-after-mega-funding-round/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">internet-era content creation hub</a>&nbsp;has launched Zhang from the city’s No. 13 to No. 2 richest in just a year. He’s only topped by Wang, whose fortune comes from real estate. Tech (17) and real estate (12) are the most popular industries for billionaires in the Chinese capital.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">3. Moscow, 71 billionaires (-6)</h4>



Total net worth: $336.5 billion



Richest resident: Natural gas oligarch&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/leonid-mikhelson/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Leonid Mikhelson</a>, $24 billion



Nearly 80% of all billionaires in Russia live in its capital, which is also its most populous city. Moscow is home to five billionaires sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury in April 2018: suspected election meddler <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/oleg-deripaska/" target="_blank">Oleg Deripaska</a>, Michael Cohen-tied <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/viktor-vekselberg/" target="_blank">Viktor Vekselberg</a>, legislative official <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/andrei-skoch/" target="_blank">Andrei Skoch</a>, former Putin judo partner <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/arkady-rotenberg/" target="_blank">Arkady Rotenberg</a> and trained economist <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/suleiman-kerimov/" target="_blank">Suleiman Kerimov</a>. Russia’s Great Gatsby (<a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2018/06/06/2018-global-2000-how-the-biggest-russian-companies-have-weathered-sanctions/" target="_blank">as he’s been called</a>) Kerimov faced money-laundering charged in France that were dropped in June.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">2. Hong Kong, 79 billionaires (+2)</h4>



Total net worth: $355.5 billion



Richest resident: Conglomerate kingpin&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/li-ka-shing/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Li Ka-shing</a>, $31.7 billion



Housing prices in the city have quadrupled since the Great Recession, thanks to its government’s tight grip on supply. The booming market has vaulted the fortunes of developers like&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/lee-shau-kee/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Lee Shau Kee</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/peter-woo/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Peter Woo</a>, and 29 Hong Kong billionaires (and half of its top-ten richest) count real estate as their chief source of wealth. But a correction may be imminent—a Citigroup survey says that 57% of Hongkongers&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonburgos/2019/02/13/hong-kongs-richest-2019-correction-fears-spook-property-markets/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">anticipate a drop</a>&nbsp;in residential real estate prices during 2019.



<h4 class="wp-block-heading">1. New York, 84 billionaires (+1)</h4>



Total net worth: $469.7 billion



Richest Resident: Media magnate&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/michael-bloomberg/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Michael Bloomberg</a>, $55.5 billion



Some Big Apple billionaires were born and raised in New York, including Estee Lauder heir&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/ronald-lauder/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Ronald Lauder</a>, JPMorgan Chase chief&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/jamie-dimon/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Jamie Dimon</a>&nbsp;and Highbridge Capital cofounder&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/henry-swieca/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Henry Swieca</a>. Dimon and Swieca are two of 40 billionaires in the city whose fortunes were built in finance, the richest of whom is&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/carl-icahn/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Carl Icahn</a>, one of&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2019/03/04/carl-icahns-comeback-the-raider-rebounds-after-a-tough-stretch/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">few hedge fund managers</a>&nbsp;to make money in 2018. And though&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/donald-trump/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">the city’s most famous landlord</a>&nbsp;now calls the White House home, 17 other real estate billionaires live in New York City. That includes native New Yorker&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/steven-roth/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Steven Roth</a>, whose real estate company Vornado&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2019/03/07/trumps-secret-windfall-the-crown-jewels-of-his-fortune-are-2-skyscrapers-he-didnt-wantand-doesnt-control/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">owns 70% of Trump’s skyscraper</a>&nbsp;at 1290 Avenue of Americas. But just like in London, NYC’s priciest residence, a $238 million&nbsp;<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/samanthasharf/2019/01/23/most-expensive-us-home-sale-ever-billionaire-ken-griffin-closes-on-238-million-new-york-penthouse/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Central Park penthouse</a>, is owned by out-of-towner Ken Griffin (he calls Chicago home).



<a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/cartercoudriet/">-Carter Coudriet</a>Forbes Staff

Features of New York – New York City – USA

Richest Cities In The World: The Top 10 Cities With The Most Billionaires

Maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s L&#8217;Oréal? In Francoise Bettencourt Meyers case, it’s both. The L&#8217;Oréal heiress, who is also the chairwoman of her family’s holding company, is the world’s richest woman, with a fortune of $49.3 billion.



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



Bettencourt Meyers, who is the 15th-richest person in the world, leads the women on the 2019 Forbes World’s Billionaires list.



 The granddaughter of L&#8217;Oréal’s founder Eugène Schueller (an inventor of hair dyes), and a member of the company’s board since 1997, Bettencourt Meyers debuted on the billionaires list last year following the death of her mother, Liliane Bettencourt, in September 2017. Liliane had been on the list every year since Forbes published its first World’s Billionaires List in 1987. 



Bettencourt Meyers’ fortune increased by $7.1 billion, or 17%, since last year thanks to stellar results at the makeup giant, of which she and her immediate family own a 33% stake. 



READ MORE | <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/woman/2019/03/08/at-21-kylie-jenner-becomes-the-youngest-self-made-billionaire-ever/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="At 21, Kylie Jenner Becomes The Youngest Self-Made Billionaire Ever (opens in a new tab)">At 21, Kylie Jenner Becomes The Youngest Self-Made Billionaire Ever</a>



An estimated 90% of her wealth is tied to shares of the company, which recorded its best sales growth in more than a decade last year with total revenue coming in at $30.6 billion. Revenue in Asia Pacific jumped 20%, driven by China; the region has now overtaken North America in terms of sales.



Bettencourt Meyers, who lives in Paris, is the president of her family’s Bettencourt Schueller Foundation. The philanthropic foundation encourages French progress in science and the arts, giving money and support to projects in life sciences, social progress and traditional crafts. 



The foundation has donated to projects including the research of neurons, support for families of autistic children and French choirs. She is also a writer and has authored a book on the Greek gods and another with commentary on the Bible.



While it’s Bettencourt Meyers’ first official year as richest woman, her name is no stranger to the spot. For the past decade, the world’s richest woman has either been a Bettencourt or Walton. In fact Bettencourt Meyers first overtook Alice Walton, last year’s richest woman, in March 2018, just days after we finalized our annual list.



READ MORE | <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/lists/2019/02/01/fewer-billionaires-poorer-billionaires-on-african-continent-in-2019/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Fewer Billionaires, Poorer Billionaires On African Continent In 2019 (opens in a new tab)">Fewer Billionaires, Poorer Billionaires On African Continent In 2019</a>



Bettencourt Meyers’ mother Liliane Bettencourt, the daughter of L’Oréal founder Scheuller, spent most of her life working at L&#8217;Oréal; late in life she suffered from dementia. She and Walmart heiresses have taken turns holding the title of richest women for most of the past three-plus decades that Forbes has been tracking the wealthy. 



Liliane Bettencourt was the richest woman for most of the first 14 years Forbes published the billionaires’ list. In the years following 2001, she was overtaken some years by Walmart founder Sam Walton’s daughter Alice Walton and other years by Sam’s widow Helen Walton. Bettencourt took back the number one spot in 2006. She and Alice Walton’s sister-in-law Christy Walton took turns holding the title for the remainder of the past decade.



In 2010, buoyed by strong Walmart stock, Christy Walton, Sam Walton’s daughter-in-law, became the richest woman. Forbes understood at the time that she received the bulk of her husband John’s fortune when he died in a plane crash in 2005. 



She continued as the world’s richest woman for the next four years, but in 2015, previously sealed documents revealed that she had inherited just one-sixth of his fortune. Christy and John’s son, Lukas, received one-third of John Walton’s estate, while the rest went to charity.



The Forbes World’s Billionaires list is a snapshot of wealth using stock prices and exchange rates from February 8, 2019. Some people will become richer or poorer between then and the publication of the rankings, or within days of publication.



-Madeline Berg; Forbes Staff

FRANCE-ACADEMY-ARTS-CAROLIS

The Richest Woman In The World

In mid-November, Kylie Jenner marked a milestone moment with a visit to a strip mall. For the past three years, her Kylie Cosmetics had only sold its makeup online and briefly in pop up shops. 



But after signing an exclusive distribution deal with Ulta, the beauty retailer, Kylie Cosmetics was rolling its $29 lip kits—a matte liquid lipstick and matching lip liner—into Ulta’s 1,000-plus stores. 



And Jenner showed up to the Richmond Avenue Ulta in Houston to greet customers, sign autographs on lip kits and, of course, pose for selfies with her fans. 



Over the next six weeks, Kylie Cosmetics sold $54.5 million worth of products in Ulta, according to estimates from Oppenheimer. “I popped up at a few stores, I did my usual social media—I did what I usually do, and it just worked,” she says.



READ MORE | <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wealth/2019/01/24/from-bitcoin-to-bezos-the-18-best-forbes-stories-of-2018/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="From Bitcoin To Bezos, The 18 Best Forbes Stories Of 2018 (opens in a new tab)">From Bitcoin To Bezos, The 18 Best Forbes Stories Of 2018</a>



Fueled in part by the Ulta expansion, Kylie Cosmetics’ revenue climbed 9% last year to an estimated $360 million. With that kind of growth, and even using a conservative multiple from the booming makeup industry, Forbes estimates Jenner’s company is worth at least $900 million. She owns all of it. 



Add in the cash Jenner has already pulled from the profitable business, and the 21-year-old is now a billionaire, with an estimated fortune of $1 billion. She’s the youngest-ever self-made billionaire, reaching a ten-figure fortune at a younger age than even Mark Zuckerberg (who was 23 when he hit that mark).



“I didn’t expect anything. I did not foresee the future,” says Jenner, who is the youngest billionaire in the world. “But [the recognition] feels really good. That’s a nice pat on the back.”



The beauty of Kylie Cosmetics, which Jenner started in 2015, is its minuscule overhead—and the outsize profits that go straight into Jenner’s pocket. Her empire consists of just seven full-time and five part-time employees. Manufacturing and packaging is outsourced to Seed Beauty, a private-label producer in nearby Oxnard, California. Sales and fulfillment are handled by online merchant Shopify. 







Her shrewd mother, Kris, takes care of finance and PR in exchange for the 10% management fee she siphons from all of her kids. Marketing is done mostly through social media, where Jenner has a massive following. 



She announces product launches, previews new items and announces the Kylie Cosmetics shades she’s wearing directly to the 175 million-plus who follow her across Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“It’s the power of social media,” Jenner says. “I had such a strong reach before I was able to start anything.”</blockquote>



When Kylie Cosmetics launched in Ulta in 50 states, the reaction was a real-life version of the online rush Jenner created years earlier, when her initial kits sold out online in less than a minute. Ulta shoppers went wild. In some stores inventory was gone in hours. “It sold out faster than we planned,” admits Tara Simon, Ulta’s senior vice president of merchandising.



Ulta and Jenner are a sensible pairing. With Ulta’s mix of pricier prestige brands, like MAC Cosmetics, and cheaper selections, such as Nyx Professional Makeup, it has a larger footprint than that of its closest competitor, the more expensive Sephora. Analysts say Kylie Cosmetics is drawing younger customers through Ulta’s doors—teens who might not have a credit card to shop online. Plus, selling in physical stores gives Jenner a chance to reach “people that would never buy my products online,” she says. The ones who want to “see, touch and feel before they buy.”



Ulta provides access to a wide swath of America—more than just kids on the coasts—with stores across middle America. (It also has 714 more standalone stores than Sephora.) Ulta, meanwhile, gets a brand that requires no marketing push. So far, the retailer hasn&#8217;t spent a dime on traditional marketing to launch the brand in stores, which is “unheard of,” Simon says: “[Jenner’s] ability to communicate with well over 120 million people in a snap has a lot of power.”



READ MORE | <a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/lists/2019/02/01/fewer-billionaires-poorer-billionaires-on-african-continent-in-2019/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" aria-label="Fewer Billionaires, Poorer Billionaires On African Continent In 2019 (opens in a new tab)">Fewer Billionaires, Poorer Billionaires On African Continent In 2019</a>



“She did well online, but there’s only so far that that can take her,” says Shannon Coyne, an equity research analyst at BMO Capital Markets. “She probably realized: ‘If I want to get big, I’ve got to scale, and to do that, I need a partner.’ Ultimately, she wants to grow her brand, and she needs this store presence to do that.”



Indeed, Kylie Cosmetics has seen its growth slow rapidly lately. It went from essentially zero to $307 million in sales within a year of launching but managed only single-digit growth in 2017 and 2018, Forbes estimates. That’s despite adding 30 new products in 2017, including concealer and makeup brushes, and many more color combinations in 2018.



It’s not the first time Ulta’s breadth has helped propel a makeup entrepreneur. IT Cosmetics, cofounded in 2010 by Jamie Kern Lima, entered Ulta in 2012 and promptly grew to sales of $117 million by 2014. In August 2016, L’Oréal paid $1.2 billion in cash for it.



Would Jenner ever follow a similar route? She firmly dismisses the idea of a sale. But her mother is interested. “It’s always something that we’re willing to explore,” Kris told Forbes last year.



For now, Jenner is focused on expanding her product range to include a setting powder, and bringing eyeshadows, powders and bronzers to Ulta. “I see [Kylie Cosmetics] going very far,” Jenner says. “I work really hard.”



Whatever happens next, one thing is certain. Jenner will share it all on social media, much to the delight of her tens of millions of fans.



She is, after all, the first selfie-made billionaire.



-Natalie Robehmed, Forbes Staff

2018 MTV Video Music Awards – Arrivals

At 21, Kylie Jenner Becomes The Youngest Self-Made Billionaire Ever

Telecom magnate Strive Masiyiwa, who chairs the Econet Group, is on the 2018 FORBES list of African billionaires as Zimbabwe’s first billionaire. FORBES estimates Masiyiwa’s net worth at $1.7 billion. In this interview with CNBC Africa, on the day he launched Pathways For Prosperity as a co-chair with Melinda Gates in Nairobi, he says Africa needs to harness technology to drive inclusive growth.
Africa needs to utilize technology and create jobs. How do we strike the right balance?
It’s not a question of striking a balance; it’s a question of building momentum. Jobs come from enterprise. We don’t need jobs from public service, public service is good, but public service can’t create jobs. What creates jobs is entrepreneurship. We need to believe in our own entrepreneurs. There is no difference between the entrepreneurs who started Google and the entrepreneur who started Ushahidi. They probably went to school together. So we have extraordinary young people with entrepreneurial ideas. What we need is to build an ecosystem to support them. The reason Mark Zuckerberg could create a business that quickly is because there was an ecosystem there that could provide capital, support, expertise, and highly-skilled people to join his organization; that’s the only difference. And it begins with the right policies, it begins with supportive governments who believe that if we nurture these guys, and support them until they list on the Kenyan Stock Exchange, until they hire people, that’s the only place jobs are going to come from.
We are a continent where growth is happening but we have a huge challenge of the population not being touched by some of this growth; how do we use technology to make it work for everyone?
Those are the very questions that have let us sit and create this commission [Pathways for Prosperity], because we are saying, ‘wait a minute, we are seeing GDP growth, but we’re not seeing employment growth, we are not seeing the levels of poverty in Africa coming down as they are in Southeast Asia’. We need to sit down and have conversations about this and look for pathways to prosperity, as we clearly haven’t created them for a major part of our population and there is a lot of frustration and disappointment. We can’t all just shout and scream at governments; we all have to come together and try and see how we can go forward.
We have seen a lot of talk of blockchain and bitcoin… In Africa, are regulators up to speed?
I won’t comment on blockchain and cryptocurrency; that requires another day and another conversation, but the way regulators in Africa will have to approach these new technologies has to be different from the way they have done in the past, because for a start, the new technologies coming through are more profound than anything we have ever seen. If you think computers or mobile phones were extraordinary technologies, you have got to see what’s coming through from areas like biotech, AI, sharing economies, even energy. The combustion engine car we have known for 100 years will be gone before that beard of yours turns white (laughs). By 2040, you will not be allowed to drive, you won’t have anywhere to buy petrol in Europe, and maybe even India. If the people who manufacture the cars have stopped manufacturing, we will have electric cars.
It’s going to be incredibly disruptive but it’s not a cause for concern because new businesses emerge from that. What’s important is our entrepreneurs have to be skilled and supported quick enough to take advantage of opportunities as they emerge so we are not turned into consumers of other people’s technologies. It will be disruptive right through. The teachers must think differently to prepare kids differently; the regulators must see things differently; so it’s going to be much more inclusive; that’s why we are creating a platform for that kind of conversation. – Interviewed by Charles Gitonga

Strive-Masiyiwa4-hires

‘Believe In Our Own Entrepreneurs’

Rocco Commisso darts around his office, gnawing a stick of nicotine gum and playing show-and-tell. &#8220;Look at the rates,&#8221; he says, holding up a plaque celebrating a $2.4 billion financing round from 2001, his cable firm&#8217;s largest ever. Up next are some personal keepsakes: a picture with fellow billionaire Charles Dolan, a golden telescope to take in views of the Catskill Mountains, a signed photo of Pelé, the Brazilian footballer. Every few minutes Commisso calls out to his assistant as if this tour is taking place against his will. &#8220;Jen, this guy wants to see all of my personal stuff!&#8221; he yells. Then he scans the room for another prize to trot out.
Forgive him the braggadocio. Commisso, 68, has risen farther than nearly anyone in America. The son of a penniless carpenter, he immigrated from Italy at age 12 unable to speak a word of English. A quirky talent for playing the accordion got him into Catholic school, the first step on a prosperous path that included stops at Columbia University and the Royal Bank of Canada before he founded his cable company, Mediacom, in 1995.
Mediacom focused on buying cable assets in rural areas, where prices were low and competition scant. The firm has increased its top line every year since its founding; revenue neared $1.9 billion in 2017. Commisso owns the company outright, and its value constitutes virtually his entire fortune. Thanks to a white-hot mergers-and-acquisitions market, the business is worth an estimated $4.3 billion—and Commisso, who makes his debut on Forbes &#8216; Billionaires list this year, seems ready to cash out.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/billionaires/2018/03/07/forbes-billionaires-2018-meet-richest-people-planet/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Forbes Billionaires: Meet The Richest People On The Planet</a>
He founded Mediacom at a time of industry upheaval, when new federal regulations, which both restricted prices and increased competition, were scaring small cable operators into selling. As others jumped ship, he leveraged about $3 million—most of his small fortune—to start buying the cheapest cable lines available, concentrating on secondary markets in states like Iowa and Georgia. Even his offices are far off the beaten path: Mediacom HQ is in Chester, New York, a verdant speck of 12,000 people, 25 minutes from West Point.
Commisso is as much a financier as he is a cable guy—he has an M.B.A. from Columbia and spent nine years as CFO of Cablevision Industries. Mediacom&#8217;s rapid growth was enabled by arbitraging differing perceptions of cable assets in the debt and equity markets. Banks, reassured by the sector&#8217;s predictable cash flows, were willing to lend at reasonable rates even as investors, spooked by regulation, were willing to sell cheaply. In his first five years in business, Commisso made more than 20 acquisitions. Mediacom at one point accumulated $3 billion in debt, over eight times operating cash flow.
Commisso admits he borrowed to the precipice of insolvency, but he stayed afloat by keeping an eagle eye on costs and by meticulously managing his debt. &#8220;You know, we watch the store,&#8221; he says.
But now the core business is changing. The broadband generation is increasingly cutting the cord and relying on online services like Hulu, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video to entertain themselves. Over the past ten years, the number of subscribers to Mediacom&#8217;s television offerings has plummeted 38% to 821,000. This is a faster rate of decline than the 3% the industry as a whole has suffered.
Mediacom&#8217;s woes in television are fueled, in part, by its success in broadband. Commisso has aggressively invested in tech upgrades; customers in places like Cecil, Georgia, enjoy Internet speeds on par with those in Seattle and San Francisco. Mediacom&#8217;s broadband subscriber base has increased 84% over the last decade, far outpacing the industry average of 54%—and many customers are using their lightning-fast connections to watch TV and movies online.
Hence the temptation for Commisso to cash out soon. In his mind, there is little left to prove. &#8220;In the history of Italian immigration, in the business world, I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s another one like me in the last 100 years,&#8221; he says.
ROCCO COMMISSO GREW UP in Calabria, Italy, as the country reeled from its defeat in World War II. &#8220;We were losers,&#8221; he says. &#8220;Just like the Americans coming back from Vietnam, we came back as losers.&#8221; Commisso&#8217;s father, Giuseppe, served in North Africa during the war and was captured in 1942 by the British. He spent the remainder of the war in a POW camp in Kenya. When he returned home, work was scarce.
In 1956, Giuseppe sailed to the United States to start anew. &#8220;What a great country, America,&#8221; Rocco says. &#8220;Prisoners of war got preferential treatment to come here.&#8221; Rocco, meanwhile, stayed back in Italy with his mother and two sisters. In 1962, when he was 12, they joined his older brother and father in Baden, Pennsylvania, 10 miles from Joe Namath&#8217;s hometown. The family moved to the Bronx the following year.
From the outset, New York City brought good luck. Just after Commisso arrived, he spotted an ad for a talent competition. He entered as a solo accordion act and won, which led to a gig playing intermission music at the Wakefield Theatre on East 233rd Street in the Bronx. More important, it drew the attention of the Wakefield&#8217;s manager, who wrote a letter to a local Catholic school, Mount Saint Michael Academy, and got Commisso admitted without an entrance exam, which he had arrived too late to take. &#8220;I ended up being the only kid that ever got in without taking the test,&#8221; he says.
Commisso is now one of the largest benefactors of Mount Saint Michael. But back then he could barely afford to pay his own way. As a teenager he worked long hours at his brother&#8217;s diner to come up with the $300 annual tuition.
When college application time rolled around, Commisso again relied on a favor. His gym teacher called the soccer coach at Columbia University and told him about a promising student with good grades. Within a month, Commisso, who hadn&#8217;t even played soccer in high school, was accepted to the prestigious college with a full scholarship.
A natural athlete, Commisso had shown a knack for the sport in Italy under starkly different conditions: on cement, with a ball made of rags. That training somehow translated to the Ivy League turf. By his senior year he was co-captain of the varsity squad and was invited to try out for the 1972 Olympic team. The trials went terribly. Commisso arrived out of shape, with the lung strength of a smoker; the other players ran laps around him. Still, his legacy remains strong at Columbia, which named its soccer stadium for him in 2013, in recognition of the millions of dollars he has donated to the university.
After graduating in 1971, Commisso found work at a Pfizer plant in Brooklyn, a job he kept even after beginning an M.B.A. program at Columbia in 1974. Each day he rose at 7 a.m., attended class, then headed to the plant. At midnight, when his shift ended, he spent two hours on the subway getting home to the Bronx.
Commisso graduated with one of Columbia&#8217;s top honors, the Business School Service Award, and a plan to go into investment banking. But no offers came in. &#8220;There was discrimination,&#8221; he says. &#8220;I&#8217;ll never forget the guy from Kuhn Loeb telling me, &#8216;Rocco, you know what your problem is? You&#8217;re neither Jewish nor Irish. The Italians haven&#8217;t arrived on Wall Street.'&#8221;
So Commisso took a commercial banking job at Chase Manhattan Bank (now part of JPMorgan Chase). He later moved on to the Royal Bank of Canada, where he led lending to media and communications businesses. &#8220;I got attracted in banking to these types of guys and ladies,&#8221; he says. &#8220;We used to call them &#8216;the cowboys.&#8217; The cable cowboys. Because they dressed differently than everybody, they talked differently than everybody—and they were entrepreneurs.&#8221;
In 1986 Commisso left banking to join one such cowboy—Alan Gerry, the founder of Cablevision—in Liberty, New York, a 50-minute drive from Mediacom&#8217;s headquarters. Commisso spent almost a decade as Gerry&#8217;s finance chief. &#8220;He&#8217;s one of the brightest guys I&#8217;ve ever known,&#8221; says Gerry, now 89 years old.
After the new regulations hit the industry in 1992, Gerry opted out, selling Cablevision to Time Warner for more than $3 billion in 1996. Commisso hated that decision. &#8220;This is a phenomenal time to buy as opposed to sell,&#8221; he recalls thinking. &#8220;And to prove it, I&#8217;m going to start my own company.&#8221;
<div id="attachment_35541" style="width: 510px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35541" class=" wp-image-35541" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Rocco-Commisso-e1520582671913-300x200.jpg" alt="Rocco Commisso Mediacom" width="500" height="333" />Commisso poses at Mediacom HQ (Franco Vogt for Forbes)</div>
COMMISSO&#8217;S OPTIMISM WAS NOT shared by his peers. That disparity only widened in 1996 when an additional batch of regulations brought new competition from telecom firms, like SBC Communications and Ameritech, that had previously been barred from the cable television space. &#8220;The fear was that the phone companies would enter the cable business and, with their stronger balance sheets and brand names, crush the cable companies,&#8221; says Craig Moffett, co-founder of the equity research firm MoffettNathanson.
That anxiety made it possible for Commisso to buy cable assets on the cheap, and he went all in. He bought his first network of cable lines, in rural Ridgecrest, California, for $18.8 million in 1996, using a loan from his old friends at Chase Manhattan.
The risk was extreme, and to outsiders Commisso might have seemed a loose cannon. He can be brash and domineering, his Calabrian accent amplifying heated bursts of profanity. But the banks trusted his background in finance.
After Ridgecrest, Commisso went on an acquisition spree, borrowing millions—then hundreds of millions—to buy up cable systems in Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Missouri, North Carolina, Mississippi and Alabama. He closed nine purchases in his first three years. &#8220;[I] was viewed as just a crazy buyer who&#8217;d buy anything that was for sale,&#8221; he says.
Commisso then invested heavily in infrastructure. To date he has spent $2.5 billion upgrading his networks, which has deterred other operators from entering his territory. Historically, Mediacom has instead fought for subscribers against satellite-television firms such as DirecTV. Phone companies, despite the early panic, never posed much of a menace.
By the end of the 1990s, gloomy forecasts for the sector had softened. Commisso seized on that and, with perfect timing, took Mediacom public on Nasdaq at a $2.5 billion valuation in February 2000, just weeks before the dot-com collapse. In all, he raised $380 million to pay down debt, and his Class B shares allowed him to retain majority voting control. &#8220;Nobody could kick me out,&#8221; he says.
The following July, Mediacom made its largest acquisition ever. After AT&amp;T became strapped for cash, it put some of its cable assets on the market. Commisso snatched up properties in Georgia, Iowa and Missouri for $2.2 billion.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/billionaires/2018/03/01/shy-billionaire-space/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Richard Branson &#8211; The Shy Billionaire In Space</a>
By late 2002, company debt had exploded to $3 billion. The banks wouldn&#8217;t lend another dime, and Commisso was forced to end his buying binge. &#8220;What saved us was not doing the next deal,&#8221; he says. &#8220;It was a great decision to buy when we did. It was an even better decision to stop when we did.&#8221;
Through shrewd balance-sheet management and frequent refinancing, Mediacom never missed a loan payment, allowing it to stay afloat until 2009, when it finally began producing enough cash to start paying down the principal debt.
Still, stockholders were not impressed. Mediacom&#8217;s share price fell nearly 80% in the decade following its IPO. By 2010, Commisso decided he&#8217;d had enough of the public markets. He moved to buy the company outright.
After tense negotiations and a shareholder lawsuit, he acquired the business in March 2011 for roughly $600 million, a 64% premium. Borrowing against the company&#8217;s assets, he became its sole owner.
Again, his timing could not have been better.
SINCE COMMISSO TOOK Mediacom private, the company&#8217;s value has skyrocketed sevenfold. The question now is when Commisso will lock in his gains and walk away.
The company is an attractive acquisition prospect for larger firms like Altice, which has scooped up several operators in the last several years, driving up valuations across the industry. Mediacom is the dominant broadband provider in much of its territory, and its new gigabit-speed service is on par with the fastest in the country. &#8220;For a large portion of their footprint, they&#8217;ve got a clear product advantage over their competitors,&#8221; says James Ratcliffe, managing director at Evercore ISI.
Commisso is coy about plans to sell but admits he&#8217;s taken multiple meetings with investment bankers in the past year. A man who made his fortune on the basis of good timing, he seems to concede that his work is largely finished. &#8220;Unless I&#8217;m here on earth just to become the biggest, the biggest, the biggest buffoon, I&#8217;m very happy with what we have accomplished,&#8221; he says. &#8220;I&#8217;m not Warren Buffett. I&#8217;m very content.&#8221; &#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/noahkirsch/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Noah Kirsch</a>, FORBES STAFF

New Billionaire: How A Poor Immigrant Scored A $4.3 Billion Fortune In Cable

Folorunso Alakija needs no introduction. As one of only two female billionaires in Africa, she has become an icon of enterprise. Alakija, through her philanthropic work with the Rose of Sharon Foundation, a movement she pioneered to help the plight of women and orphans in Nigeria, has been an advocate of women’s rights and the vital role women play in socioeconomic development. She recently launched her women’s empowerment platform, Flourish Africa, to galvanize women in Nigeria and across Africa to gain access to life-changing tools and advice. In an exclusive interview with FORBES WOMAN AFRICA, she sat down after the launch of the Flourish Africa conference to tell us how she plans to impact millennial African women:
What do you hope to accomplish with Flourish Africa?
I am sure we all remember the interview of Indra K. Nooyi, CEO of Pepsico, at the Aspen Ideas festival in 2014, where she gave her very honest take on the growing debate on women and work-life balance. She described the need to have sacrifices and that having it all was just an illusion. Over the years, I have had a great deal of engagement with a lot of young women both in Africa and all over the world and the one thing they ask me is ‘Can a woman have it all’? I realized that a lot of young women are desperate to understand the keys they need to achieve their fullest potential and become what I believe God has ordained for them to become. So I thought to myself, how can we develop a platform that not only helps young women with practical steps and guidance to help them in their career, relationships and all aspects of their lives, but also provide mentorship from women who have achieved the levels of success they aspire to achieve also. Flourish Africa was created to serve that purpose. We have an online platform, an app and we hold biannual conferences that bring female thought leaders from all over the world together under one roof with young millennials in a day of idea-sharing and life-changing messages that will help them grow.
What do you think is the most important management skill necessary for women to become leaders?
I believe that leadership happens when you are able to empower and inspire others to achieve a set of goals. I think the responsibility lies with the individual to be able to employ all their skills and abilities to help bring others up in order to ensure they contribute to the overall growth of the organization. I believe women have the ability to show great leadership skills and those at the top need to tap into their sense of purpose and effectively communicate that purpose so everybody within the organization clearly understands what is needed from them in order to achieve their common goal.
How can women break free from the cultural stereotypes that have led to greater gender disparity in Nigeria?
A lot of work needs to be done on that front. For years, women have been told what type of roles they are supposed to play in society, the types of jobs they are supposed to do and so on. I was and still am one of the only prominent women in the Nigerian oil sector and I know the stigma and the challenges I had to overcome in order to succeed in that sector. I believe the problem requires a change in mindset for women in Africa. I believe that change will require support from all women in order to come together and set our own standards. Gender stereotypes have been one of the main barriers to women achieving leadership positions in Africa. These stereotypes are usually predicated on what many believe are the capabilities of women and that needs to be addressed before women can break free. At Flourish Africa, we showcase in our inspirational section, women who have been able to change that narrative and the impact they have been able to make through that change to hopefully inspire more women to break free and achieve their fullest potential.
How will you address the issue of financial literacy for African women? 
I think women in Africa are amongst one of the most enterprising and entrepreneurial in the world. We are hard-working and our ability to multi-task makes us natural born entrepreneurs. For years, women could not receive bank loans and other facilities readily available to men and until we get the same level of financial freedom, women will continue to remain marginalized. I am a firm believer that women need to be financially empowered to possess the right knowledge and understanding of financial matters. That is an aspect we take very seriously and with the help of our partners, many of whom are leaders in some of the largest financial institutions in Africa, we help shape policies that will enable our young female entrepreneurs to gain access to sound financial principles in areas like investment advice, compound interest and the advantages of savings as well as real estate and tax. The Flourish Africa woman is a well-grounded woman who thrives in all aspects of her life and that includes having access to the right financial tools as well.
Do you think there is anything African women can teach other women in the world?
I think no matter where we are all from, we can all learn from each other. I think there is a great sense of community in Africa. We are natural homemakers as well as entrepreneurial but that’s not to say women from other parts of the world aren’t. I think our sense of culture and our rich African heritage is something we need to be proud of and share with the rest of the world. It is time for people to see how wonderful our continent is and I believe it’s up to all of us to be the ambassadors of that message to the rest of the world.

Folorunso Alakija: Let’s Learn From Each Other

Space is virgin territory, yet, for Sir Richard Branson.
But even that, he appears set to conquer commercially with his company Virgin Galactic this year.
One of the greatest business minds on earth, Branson is in the space race.
In a CNN interview mid-February, commenting on South African billionaire Elon Musk’s recent SpaceX test-launch of the Falcon Heavy rocket, Branson said: “I was a little bit jealous,” and called Musk’s feat “extraordinary”.
The British tycoon, known for his profound love for adventure and sport, admitted in the interview that Virgin Galactic is hoping to put people in space in the coming months.
He also hints about it on his blog: “The team are working tirelessly, and each flight brings us one step closer to commercial service in New Mexico’s Spaceport America.”
“One of our biggest investments has been the space companies, which we have already invested $1 billion to set up,” he says in FORBES’ 100th anniversary issue in 2017.
And should Branson – worth $5 billion according to FORBES – be one of the first space tourists to look down on earth, he would no doubt marvel at the continent he often visits – Africa.
In his new autobiography, Finding My Virginity, launched last year, you find multiple mentions of Africa, and memories and images of the people and places he keeps returning to on the continent.
Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Graça Machel… are revered in these pages.
Branson tells FORBES AFRICA, in an exclusive interview in November last year when in Johannesburg for Virgin Atlantic’s ‘Business is an Adventure’ event, that “almost since the day Nelson Mandela left prison, I got very involved in Africa”.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2017/11/03/lessons-ideas-100-greatest-living-minds/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Lessons And Ideas By The 100 Greatest Living Business Minds</a>
Almost three decades on, he continues to be.
On the continent, Virgin’s biggest presence is in South Africa.
Worldwide, Branson owes his fortune to diverse businesses bearing the Virgin name. The son of a barrister and flight attendant, he started almost 50 years ago with a mail-order record business. He was a school drop-out, but never looked back.
He founded the Virgin Group, which now has interests in mobile telephony, financial services, travel, hospitality, holidays and health, among others.
He created his music label Virgin Records in 1972, signing on artistes such as Mike Oldfield, Janet Jackson, The Rolling Stones and the Spice Girls.
A disruptor in the aviation industry, Branson started Virgin Atlantic in 1984, and the airline has been flying between London Heathrow and South Africa for the last 21 years, and Nigeria for over 16 years.
<div id="attachment_35451" style="width: 330px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35451" class=" wp-image-35451" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Richard-Branson-Getty-Images-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="320" height="480" />Richard Branson (Photo by Kelly Sullivan/Getty Images)</div>
In his new book, he says he is often asked the question: “How do you go about becoming a millionaire?” And his answer has been the same: “Start as a billionaire and launch a new airline.” He recounts the first 15 years of Virgin Atlantic as “a topsy-turvy tale of excitement, innovation and survival”.
Branson famously lives on Necker Island, a British Virgin Islands retreat, which, according to FORBES, he bought for $180,000 in 1978. Tutu has been a visitor: there is an endearing 2006 image of Branson planting a kiss on him with the azure sea in the background.
Far from Necker, at the ‘Business is an Adventure’ event in South Africa in November, Branson, the man who never wears ties, is in a pale blue shirt and khaki chinos. He enters, waving his hands in the air simulating the wings of an aeroplane. And on stage, much to the audience’s delight, rips off fellow panelist and Discovery Group CEO Adrian Gore’s tie, saying: “I believe the workplace should be comfortable, it should be relaxing.”
He recounts his entrepreneurial experiences, and pulls out a little black book to note down everything he learns from the people he meets.
“A notebook you can refer back to, especially if people share pearls of wisdom,” he quips.
And he has found enough wisdom in Africa.
Along with British pop musician Peter Gabriel, Branson was instrumental in starting The Elders, formally launched by Mandela in Johannesburg in 2007. An independent group of global leaders working together for peace and human rights, it also includes stalwarts Tutu, Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon.
In 2005, the billionaire also started the Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship in South Africa to “address a critical need for entrepreneurs, at a time when there were few organizations offering free, practical business training and mentoring to start-up businesses”.
The physical center in Johannesburg is now closed as they “review their entrepreneur support strategy”, but has over 12 years supported more than 4,300 entrepreneurs.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2015/07/01/man-pouring-millions-rich-slice-africa/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: The Man Pouring Millions Into A Rich Slice Of Africa</a>
Tracey Webster, who headed the Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship in Johannesburg for almost three years from 2011, vividly recalls her interactions with Branson.
“He is shy and unbelievably humble,” she says. “He is smart about getting everyone else to do the talking – he’s so charming and gracious about giving others the platform; he just has a way in which he promotes people on the ground.”
Webster, who is currently CEO of Enterpriseroom in South Africa, says the most important leadership lesson she received from Branson was “to respect absolutely every single human you came in contact with”.
“He taught me to be a listener rather than a talker,” says Webster, of the shy, introverted man millions look up to.
<div id="attachment_35452" style="width: 410px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35452" class=" wp-image-35452" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Richard-Branson-with-Archbishop-Desmond-Tutu-pic-courtesy-The-Elders-300x266.jpg" alt="Richard Branson Archbishop Desmond Tutu The Elders" width="400" height="355" />Richard Branson with Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Picture courtesy of The Elders)</div>
<h1 style="text-align: center;">‘Africans Are Natural Entrepreneurs’</h1>
<h4 style="text-align: center;">In our interview with Sir Richard Branson, we let him do the talking, about his new ventures in Africa, his work for the communities around his businesses, his take on wildlife, and that moment he almost fell off the stage in South Africa.</h4>
You have a special affinity for Africa. Why, and what is on the cards for you on the continent? 
Almost since the day Nelson Mandela left prison, I got very involved in Africa and one of the first things we did was put up a statue to [South Africa&#8217;s anti-apartheid activist] Steve Biko in East London [in South Africa’s Eastern Cape]. That was an incredible event with Nelson Mandela presiding over it. I have told quite a few of these stories in my latest book.
I have done quite a few things with Mandela, and Desmond Tutu, and Graça Michael and Kofi Annan, for things like The Elders and so on.
We are building a mobile phone company or financial services company, [then there’s] Virgin Active, Virgin Insurance…
But I suppose the thing I love the most is the bush. I spend a few days in Ulusaba [the reserve Branson owns], which was voted the best game lodge in Africa last year. And we love working on protecting species and wildlife. We also draw circles around any of our properties and try to help the communities within those circles, so quite a lot of our time and energy is spent on [work], for example, near Ulusaba, we set up quite a big clinic to make sure the people got anti-retroviral drugs, malaria tablets and TB tablets and were helped in other ways. We set up orphanages and small schools and so on.
Around our Virgin Active health clubs, we are doing similar things. Not for companies to draw circles around themselves, but to help the communities within those circles. Hopefully, one day all the circles will join up and most of the problems will be solved.
<div id="attachment_35453" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35453" class=" wp-image-35453" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Richard-Branson-with-Nelson-Mandela-on-the-creation-of-The-Elders-pic-courtesy-The-Elders-201x300.jpg" alt="Richard Branson Nelson Mandela The Elders" width="300" height="447" />Richard Branson with Nelson Mandela on the creation of The Elders (Picture courtesy of The Elders)</div>
Your most abiding memory of Mandela?
I was at his funeral and invited by the family to join them by the graveyard. The coffin had been put in. And then I saw one of his grandsons falling into the hole and I thought ‘why is everybody not reacting, everybody just looks very calm about it’ and I saw another grandson jump down in and I assumed he was going to rescue the first one and then another grandson jumped in and I had to turn to somebody on my left and ask, ‘are they okay’ and he said ‘oh, they are just putting personalized gifts on the coffin to send Madiba on his way’. Anyway, I felt pretty foolish after that.
When we did the original Steve Biko statue in East London, there was just myself and Peter Gabriel there who weren’t local. There must have been a 100,000 people in the crowd and Madiba was standing on a small stage with the other main African leaders. He was president at the time, and he made this incredible and impassionate speech trying to unite the country and all the people on stage. The politician in him was coming out as well as the philanthropist he had become and when he finished, I went up on stage and whispered to him and he then gestured Peter forward who then took the microphone from Mandela and sang the song Biko with all the 100,000 in the audience singing along with him. It was the most wonderful moment. And then the crowd rushed to the stage and the whole stage started collapsing and we only just got Mandela and everybody off just in time before the whole thing collapsed.
After all your visits here, what are your lessons for Africa’s youth?
Because of the Branson School of Entrepreneurship, I got to know lots of wonderful young people over the years, and I think Africans are natural entrepreneurs and need help and need encouragement. This morning [November 10], I was at this wonderful center, the GEN 22 On Sloane [a start-up campus in Johannesburg], where they are going to have a few hundred entrepreneurs working there and in fact, [we] may end up doing something there as well.
We spend a lot of time encouraging entrepreneurship in the UK as well and managed to encourage the government to start something – start-up loans – which is loans to help budding businesspeople. Britain is the only country doing it. And what we are trying to do is to encourage Africa to do the same thing&#8230; The other thing the government could do is to get out of business completely themselves, as best they can, and break up any businesses the government is doing into small units and get entrepreneurs to run them. And I think governments have got to encourage competition… and the most important role governments can play is break up monopolies in order to enable thousands and thousands of new jobs to be created by new businesses being started.
The fourth industrial revolution, AI, robotics… where do you see Africa headed? Do you have any investments in these sectors?
One area of AI that we are working with in Africa is with a wonderful foundation and they are trying to get 50,000 women in African villages to have an iPad each; they are not trained as doctors or fully-trained as nurses, but using that iPad, through the fact that thousands and thousands of women have used this iPad and every time they make an answer, it gets better and better and better, they can actually act almost as good as a doctor or a nurse by just asking questions and getting answers and then prescribing malaria tablets, or TB tablets, and even anti-retroviral drugs and so on. Obviously, with serious cases, they’ll refer them to a surgeon or doctor, but again, the tablet will show that. So that actually will create 50,000 jobs and definitely save a lot of lives.
If it works, it will cost about a dollar a person, for a pretty good health service. And that should be happening, they have already trained up to 7,000 and the idea is to go up to 50,000.
You own a wine estate in Cape Town, is that something you see your future in? 
Well, we need to be able to party as well and relax after all the hard work. We found Mont Rochelle and fell in love with it three or four years ago and felt we could turn it into one of the best vineyards in Africa. I think the team have done a great job and of course a lot of people who get to the bush want to come down to the Cape as well, so it’s nice they can stay in the Virgin family.
You started your entrepreneurial journey at the age of 16, any advice for innovators that young?
One of my books is called Screw It, Let’s Do It and I would just say follow that philosophy and give it a go. If you fall flat on your face, beat yourself up and do it again until you succeed.
<a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/richard-branson/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: FORBES&#8217; Profile On Richard Branson</a>
<div id="attachment_35449" style="width: 511px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-35449" class=" wp-image-35449" src="https://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Richard-Branson-on-stage-with-Adrian-Gore-at-the-Business-is-an-Adventure-event-in-Johannesburg-in-2017-pic-supplied-e1519893950896-300x179.jpg" alt="Richard Branson Adrian Gore" width="501" height="299" />Richard Branson on stage with Discovery CEO Adrian Gore at the Business is an Adventure event in Johannesburg in 2017 (Picture supplied)</div>
<h1 style="text-align: center;">Branson’s Ventures in sub-Saharan Africa</h1>
<ul>
<li>The Virgin Group operates 140 Virgin Active health clubs across southern Africa. More recently, it opened its first club in Botswana and a second in Namibia, a strong indication of the growth potential that exists in Africa for the group.</li>
<li>Virgin Active’s presence in South Africa came about following a request by Nelson Mandela to Richard Branson, asking him to help save the country’s Health &amp; Racquet Club chain, which was about to collapse. This resulted in Virgin acquiring the 76 Health &amp; Racquet Clubs in South Africa.</li>
<li>In South Africa’s Western Cape province, in the wine town of Franschhoek, Branson owns Mont Rochelle, a luxe hotel and vineyard an hour’s drive from Cape Town.</li>
<li>Mahali Mzuri is Branson’s safari lodge in Kenya, positioned within the Maasai Mara ecosystem.</li>
<li>The Virgin Limited Edition’s Ulusaba private game reserve in South Africa supports the local communities through a not-for-profit called Pride ’n Purpose, focusing on sustainable development initiatives and improving access to food, water and health services.</li>
<li>Elsewhere in Africa, projects include an investment in M-Kopa, focused on solar power in East Africa and primarily Kenya, helping families gain access to energy using solar technology at affordable prices.</li>
<li>In the financial services sector,Virgin Money has just launched a peer-to-peer payment service called Virgin Money Spot. The app allows customers to send money to friends in a simple, safe and social way.</li>
<li>The Virgin Group has recently invested in South African mobile software firm wiGroup.</li>
<li>Virgin has initiatives called Living Goods and Last Mile Health, aiming to have just under 50,000 digitally empowered community health workers across sub-Saharan Africa by the end of 2021, reaching a total of 34.3 million people. This will be through a mixture of digital devices, including iPads.</li>
</ul>

The Shy Billionaire In Space

The only centi-billionaire on the planet just got another couple billion dollars richer. Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon, saw his fortune rise $2.8 billion on Tuesday as the stock of his e-commerce giant climbed 2.5% &#8211; a day after the launch of its first cashier-less store garnered much buzz around the industry.
Bezos now boasts a net worth of $113.5 billion, according to Forbes&#8217; calculations &#8211; his highest ever. It&#8217;s a significant lead over the world’s second and third richest men, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, who have net worths of $92.5 billion and $92.3 billion, respectively. Bezos’ 12-figure-fortune nominally makes him the wealthiest person since Forbes started tracking fortunes in 1982. If we factor in inflation, Bill Gates was richer back in 1999, when he briefly passed $100 billion &#8211; worth roughly $150 billion in today&#8217;s dollars.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/billionaires/2018/01/10/heres-jeff-bezos-not-truly-richest-person-history/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Here&#8217;s Why Jeff Bezos Is Not Truly The Richest Man In History</a>
The Microsoft founder has also given away a large chunk of his wealth &#8211; his lifetime giving stands at over $36 billion. His Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, run by Gates and his wife, is the world’s largest private philanthropic foundation.
Bezos has only recently begun to give away bits of his fortune. The son of a Cuban immigrant, Bezos asked his 400,000 Twitter followers in June 2017 for philanthropic ideas, and recently <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelauyeung/2018/01/12/jeff-bezos-son-of-cuban-immigrant-gives-33-million-to-nonprofit-helping-dreamers-pay-for-college/#4c47acc148eb" target="_blank" rel="noopener">donated $33 million to fund college scholarships</a> for undocumented high school students.
Bezos derives the majority of his wealth from his 16% stake in Amazon. He is also the owner of The Washington Post and the founder of rocket start-up Blue Origin. Business has been good for The Post; it was reported earlier in January that the storied newspaper more than doubled its digital subscriptions in 2017 and will be profitable for the second year straight.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/billionaires/2017/07/31/besides-jeff-bezos-6-people-whove-also-worlds-richest/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Besides Jeff Bezos: 6 People Who&#8217;ve Also Been The World&#8217;s Richest</a>
On Jan. 18, Amazon announced a list of 20 finalists for its second headquarters, which received 238 proposals from all over North America. Just four days later, the much anticipated Amazon Go store opened in its hometown of Seattle. The shop, which was previously accessible to employees only, sells a limited selection of groceries, meal kits, and prepared foods. Customers swipe into the store with the Amazon Go app, pick items off the shelves, then walk out with the goods &#8211; without ever needing to wait for a cashier. Cameras line the store to keep track of each shopper’s purchases, and the bill is charged to their Amazon accounts.
It remains unclear where Amazon intends to go with Amazon Go next, though it has been expanding its brick and mortar exposure, both with its bookstores and with the acquisition of organic grocery retailer Whole Foods.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2017/08/25/amazon-lays-whole-foods-strategy-shakes-wall-street-anew/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Amazon Lays Out Its Whole Foods Strategy And Shakes Up Wall Street Anew</a>
Bezos got his start on Wall Street, where he worked for famed quantitative hedge fund D.E. Shaw after graduating from Princeton with degrees in computer science and electrical engineering. After climbing up the ladder at D.E. Shaw, Bezos quit and drove across the country to Seattle in 1994. He founded Amazon in the garage of his home and started selling books online, personally driving the packages to the post office in his 1987 Chevy Blazer. The online retailer is now one of the world’s most valuable companies, active in cloud computing, online streaming and smart devices, and has a market capitalization of over $650 billion. &#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/jenniferwang/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Jennifer Wang</a>, FORBES STAFF

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