Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos&#8217; two day streak as the world&#8217;s only centi-billionaire is over &#8211; for now.
Bezos&#8217; net worth topped $100 billion for the first time on Cyber Monday as Amazon shares soared. On Wednesday, his net worth fell $2.2 billion to $98 billion, as Amazon stock dropped more than 2% from Tuesday&#8217;s close as of 1:45 p.m. Eastern Time. Because Bezos owns more than 16% of Amazon, small fluctuations in Amazon&#8217;s stock have billion-dollar consequences for his net worth.
<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>
While he no longer has a twelve-digit fortune, Bezos is still the richest person in the world by an $8.6 billion margin. The second richest person is Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates, who has an $89.4 billion fortune and has been at the top of the Forbes&#8216; annual Billionaires List for 18 of the last 23 years. On October 27, Bezos surpassed Gates on Forbes&#8216; Real-Time Rankings and has held onto the top spot ever since. Three months earlier, Bezos briefly passed up Gates, but dropped into second place after only four hours.
The nearly 60% rise in Amazon stock this year to date has added $33.1 billion to Bezos’ fortune. His net worth has more than doubled since Forbes published the 2016 Billionaires List in March 2016. At that time, he had a net worth of $45.2 billion and had just joined the ranks of the 10 richest people in the world for the first time.
<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>
After graduating from Princeton, Bezos worked at hedge fund D.E. Shaw before leaving to start an online bookstore from a garage in Seattle in 1994. He took Amazon public in 1997 and one year later joined Forbes&#8216; ranking of the 400 richest Americans with a $1.6 billion fortune. In the two decades since, Amazon has grown into an e-commerce giant and one of the most valuable companies in the world, propelling Bezos to the top of Forbes&#8217; Real-Time Billionaires List. &#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Kate Vinton</a>, FORBES STAFF

As Amazon Shares Fall, Jeff Bezos Is No Longer A Centi-Billionaire

The net worth of billionaire Saudi prince <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/prince-alwaleed-bin-talal-alsaud/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Alwaleed bin Talal Al Saud</a>—who was detained by the Saudi government on Saturday as part of what officials have called an anti-corruption campaign—is continuing to fall dramatically.
Alwaleed’s fortune dropped $855 million on Tuesday as the share price of his holding company, Kingdom Holding—which trades on Saudi Arabia’s Tadawul exchange—continued to drop. The stock, which now comprises half of his net worth, is down 21% since the end of normal trading on Thursday, November 2. (The Tadawul is closed on Fridays and Saturdays.) Alwaleed owns 95% of Kingdom Holding; the remaining 5% trades on the Saudi stock exchange.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/current-affairs/2017/11/06/heres-much-money-kevin-spacey-lose-following-sexual-harassment-scandal/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Here&#8217;s How Much Money Kevin Spacey Could Lose Following His Sexual Harassment Scandal</a>
In all, Alwaleed’s net worth is down $2.8 billion since Saturday evening. He is now worth an estimated $15.9 billion, according to Forbes’ <a href="https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/#version:realtime" target="_blank" rel="noopener">real-time</a> rankings of the world’s billionaires. He is presently the 83rd richest person on the planet; he was ranked 64th on Saturday.
Alwaleed, 62, is the nephew of Saudi king Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud and is a cousin of the country’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. He <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/igorbosilkovski/2017/11/04/saudi-billionaire-prince-alwaleed-bin-talal-reportedly-arrested-for-corruption/#4a69f39d5e25" target="_blank" rel="noopener">was one of</a> more than a dozen individuals reportedly arrested last weekend in what many news outlets have described as a purge designed to consolidate the crown prince’s power.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/billionaires/2017/11/03/roadblock-elon-musks-net-worth-drops-800-million-day-amid-tesla-woes/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Elon Musk&#8217;s Net Worth Drops $800 Million In A Day Amid Tesla Woes</a>
Forbes profiled Alwaleed in a <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2013/03/05/prince-alwaleed-and-the-curious-case-of-kingdom-holding-stock/#3ada69e677db" target="_blank" rel="noopener">2013 story</a> that documented his wild eccentricity and self-promotional tendencies. The billionaire had once lived a quieter life. He attended Menlo College in California and Syracuse University before launching Kingdom Holding in 1980. He is perhaps best known in the West for his investments in high-profile companies, including Lyft and Twitter.
Contacted by Forbes on Monday, Kingdom Holding did not respond to a request for comment. &#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

Net Worth Of Billionaire Saudi Prince Under Arrest Falls $2.8 Billion

Tesla’s fleet of electric vehicles are known for their smooth ride; production at the company plant has been markedly choppier.
On Wednesday afternoon, the carmaker unveiled its third-quarter earnings. It posted revenue slightly higher than analyst estimates, but also an adjusted loss of $2.92 per share, 30% greater than predicted. Moreover, production bottlenecks have delayed shipments of the company’s new Model 3 vehicle, rendering it unlikely that Tesla will achieve its target delivery pace of 500,000 cars per year by the end of 2018. (Read more on that <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2017/11/01/tesla-pins-model-3-production-snag-on-battery-packs-as-quarterly-loss-widens/#25b2b4905488" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>.)
In light of that news, investors sent Tesla shares tumbling 7% through 11:15 Eastern Time on Thursday. The stock is now trading below $300 per share for the first time since May.
That decline impacted no person as much as <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Elon Musk</a>, Tesla’s CEO and largest individual shareholder. His net worth slumped $800 million in response to the bad news. He is now worth an estimated $19.1 billion, according to Forbes’ <a href="https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/#version:realtime" target="_blank" rel="noopener">real-time</a> rankings of the World’s Billionaires, and is the 23rd richest person in America. His net worth is down $1.7 billion since the annual <a href="https://www.forbes.com/forbes-400/#400d61287e2f" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Forbes 400</a> ranking was published last month.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/billionaires/2017/08/24/elon-musks-net-worth-eclipses-20-billion-first-time/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Elon Musk&#8217;s Net Worth Eclipses $20 Billion For The First Time</a>
Fortunately for the South African native, his wealth is somewhat diversified. Roughly half of his fortune is tied up in Tesla shares. The bulk of the rest is comprised of his stake in rocket maker SpaceX, which <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/noahkirsch/2017/08/23/elon-musks-net-worth-eclipses-20-billion-for-first-time/#45cdd0c86ac7" target="_blank" rel="noopener">raised $350 million</a> in July at a valuation of about $21 billion. He owns approximately 50% of the business.
Musk, 46, has a long track record of entrepreneurial success. His first major exit came in 1999, when he sold software firm Zip2, which he cofounded, to Compaq for a reported price of over $300 million. He then earned an even more lucrative payout in 2002 after Paypal, which he also cofounded, was acquired by eBay for $1.4 billion.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2015/10/01/teslas-secret-formula/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Tesla&#8217;s Secret Formula</a>
He joined Tesla in 2004 as a major investor and took the helm in 2008. At the time, the company’s future looked dire, as credit markets were drying up during the global financial crisis and development was severely behind schedule.
Eventually, the company began churning out cars, beginning with its sleek Roadster vehicle. Even with this week’s decline, the business has been an overall colossal success. It now boasts a market capitalization of nearly $50 billion. &#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

Roadblock: Elon Musk’s Net Worth Drops $800 Million In A Day Amid Tesla Woes

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is now the richest person in the world for the second time.
On Friday morning, Amazon stock opened up more than 8% higher than Thursday’s close, adding nearly $7 billion to Bezos’ net worth. But thanks to a 7% spike in Microsoft’s stock overnight, it wasn’t quite enough to put him ahead of Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates on <a href="https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/#version:realtime" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaire Rankings</a>. Bezos had a net worth of $89.7 billion, as of the start of trading on Friday, while Gates had a net worth of $90.1 billion, up $550 million from Thursday. Then by 10:15 a.m. Eastern, Amazon stock had climbed nearly 2% since the market opened, adding $900 million to Bezos’ net worth and putting him in the No. 1 spot with a net worth of $90.6 billion versus Gates’ $90.1 billion at that time.
<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>
Amazon stock surged in after-hours trading on Thursday after the company reported strong third quarter earnings. Amazon reported $43.7 billion in revenue, well above the $42.1 billion analysts expected. Whole Foods, which Amazon acquired in August, made up $1.3 billion of total revenue for the quarter.
Bezos became the richest person in the world for the first time three months ago as Amazon stock hit an all-time high on July 27, just before Amazon reported its second quarter earnings. But Bezos’ first time at the top of Forbes’ Real-Time Billionaires List only lasted a few hours. That same day, Amazon reported a big miss on earnings in its second quarter, leading to a drop in the e-commerce giant’s stock. Only today has Amazon stock returned close to its previous high, as the stock market responded positively to Amazon’s third quarter results.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/billionaires/2017/07/28/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-reign-worlds-richest-lasted-just-hours/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Reign As World’s Richest Lasted Just A Few Hours</a>
When Forbes published The FORBES 400 list of richest Americans earlier in October, Bezos was the second richest person in America, worth $7.5 billion less than Gates. Bezos first joined the Forbes 400 in 1998, one year after Amazon went public, with a net worth of $1.6 billion. &#8211; <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Kate Vinton</a>, FORBES STAFF

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Is The Richest Person In The World – Again

A tough New York real estate market, a costly lawsuit and an expensive presidential campaign all contributed to the declining fortune of the 45th president. After months of digging through financial disclosures and public property records and conducting dozens of interviews, Forbes now estimates POTUS&#8217; net worth at $3.1 billion, down from $3.7 billion a year ago. He drops to No. 248 in the ranks of the richest people in America, down from No. 156 in 2016.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/politics/2017/10/12/50-minutes-oval-office-citizen-trump-barely-word-money/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: 50 Minutes In The Oval Office With Trump &#8211; And Barely A Word About His Money</a>
The biggest hit was to Trump&#8217;s real estate portfolio, which is weighted heavily toward New York City. Values of several Manhattan properties, particularly those on or near Fifth Avenue, have dropped, shaving nearly $400 million off his fortune. Some of his golf properties, including ones in Miami, Ireland and Scotland, have also declined in value, as some would-be guests stayed away, apparently offended by the president&#8217;s politics and bombast. Trump&#8217;s cash pile is down an estimated $100 million since last year, after he spent $66 million on his campaign and $25 million settling a lawsuit over Trump University. As always, we refined our estimates based on new information uncovered during months of reporting.
<a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/lists/2017/10/18/forbes-400-2017-meet-richest-people-america/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: Meet The Richest People In America</a>
A handful of Trump&#8217;s assets rose in value in the past year, including the hotel-condo tower in Las Vegas that he owns with fellow Forbes 400 member Phil Ruffin and his minority stake in a downtown San Francisco office building, which continues to benefit from the red-hot real estate market there. &#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Dan Alexander and </a><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdrange/#46912f5c45b3" target="_self">Matt Drange</a>, FORBES STAFF

How Donald Trump’s Fortune Fell $600 Million In One Year

Dressed in a blue suit and red tie, Donald Trump’s 79-year-old pick for Secretary of Commerce sat before a panel of senators for nearly four hours in January, deflecting dozens of questions with relative ease. When one legislator at the confirmation hearing asked <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/wilbur-ross-jr/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Wilbur Ross</a> how he would ensure that his official actions did not create conflicts of interest, given his vast personal holdings, Ross left little room for criticism. “I intend to be quite scrupulous about recusal and any topic where there is the slightest scintilla of doubt,” he said.
What he left unsaid, however, was that between the November election and January inauguration, he had quietly moved a chunk of assets into trusts for his family members, leaving more than $2 billion off of his financial disclosure report &#8211; and therefore out of the public eye. Ross revealed the existence of those assets, and the timing of the transfer, when Forbes asked why his financial disclosure form listed fewer assets than he had previously told the magazine he owned.
The hidden assets raise questions about whether the Secretary of Commerce violated federal rules and whether his family owns billions in holdings that could create the appearance of conflicts of interest.
Federal law requires incoming cabinet members to disclose assets they currently own, as well as any that produced income during the current and previous calendar years, even if they no longer own the assets. Ross says he followed all rules. But how someone could apparently hold $2 billion in assets, without producing big income that would show up on a financial disclosure report, raises more questions than answers.
Three months before the 2016 election, Ross’ assistant described his portfolio to Forbes as a mix that would theoretically throw off plenty of cash: $1.3 billion of municipal bonds, $1.3 billion worth of interests in general and limited partnerships, $550 million of equities, $225 million of art, $180 million in cash and $120 million worth of real estate.
That adds up to $3.7 billion. Last year, Forbes asked for documentation to prove the existence of those assets, received nothing in return, and ultimately estimated Ross’ fortune at a more conservative $2.9 billion for its annual Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans, published in October. This year, the Secretary of Commerce said he would dig up a breakdown of the assets he transferred into trusts, but he never sent anything. It is unclear whether he cited accurate figures either year.
Ross gave some clues about the structure of the trusts. “I’m not the beneficiary of them,” he said. “That’s the point. This is set up for children and things like that.” Are his children the only beneficiaries? “Yes, well, and some third parties.” What are the third parties? “It’s a complicated story, but there are children from former marriages, things like that, that are not actually my children but who are beneficiaries.” His wife’s two children? “No, others. We’ve both had a couple of marriages, as you probably know.” He said no one outside of his family is a beneficiary of the trusts.
But he did not answer more than a dozen follow-up questions, including how many trusts there are, whether he can reclaim the assets after he leaves government, and whether the trusts could pay him income in the future.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/politics/2017/10/12/50-minutes-oval-office-citizen-trump-barely-word-money/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">50 Minutes In The Oval Office With Citizen Trump &#8211; And Barely A Word About His Money</a>
Walter Shaub, who resigned as the director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics in July 2017, said the rules governing a particular trust are key to understanding whether an official has to disclose the entire trust, or just the assets that produced income shortly before they were transferred out of the filer’s hands. “If someone were to divest an asset by giving it away, it’s important that that asset never wind up back in the donors’ hands again,” Shaub said. “If at some point in the future that person ends up with the asset again, it’s going to look like it was a sham divestiture.”
Two trust attorneys expressed doubt that Ross suddenly made a clean transfer of more than $2 billion to his family, a move that could trigger gift taxes of $800 million or more. Such a move would be especially perplexing, they said, since the Trump administration has proposed easing the tax burden on transfers between generations. “If the estate tax goes away,” said Donald Hamburg, a New York City-based trusts and estates attorney, “then why would you pay a lot of money to get property out of your estate to save estate taxes?”
Ross said he followed all tax rules. It is possible that he transferred some of the assets to his family members years ago. He initially told Forbes that he transferred assets into the trusts shortly after the Nov. 8, 2016 election. But in a later email, he hinted that some of the assets may have belonged to his family members previously. “My personal financial affairs have been complex for a number of years, not just one,” he wrote. “The rough estimates used by Forbes for many years were based on a broad definition of family assets.”
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/politics/2017/10/04/trumps-africa-policy-still-incoherent-key-signals-emerging/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Trump&#8217;s Africa policy is still incoherent</a>
Ross would not have been required to disclose assets that earned income in 2016 if he had transferred those assets to children in prior years. He did not answer a follow-up question directly asking if he had transferred some of the assets to his family members before the election.
In any case, the fact that the Secretary of Commerce says his family members are beneficiaries to trusts with more than $2 billion worth of undisclosed assets raised concerns among ethics experts. “That’s an enormous amount,” said Richard Painter, who served as the chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush. “It technically avoids the conflict of interest statutes, but don’t you think that the Senate ought to know that he basically avoided it by handing the conflict-producing asset over to your kids?”
Not including the undisclosed assets, Ross retains an estimated $700 million, still enough to make him one of the richest members of Donald Trump’s cabinet but not enough to qualify for The Forbes 400 list of America’s richest people. “I don’t care if I’m on the list or not,” he said. “That frankly doesn’t matter. But what I don’t want is for people to suddenly think that I’ve lost a lot of money when it’s not true.” &#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Dan Alexander</a>, FORBES STAFF

The Mystery Of Wilbur Ross’ Missing Billions

The world&#8217;s wealthiest woman, L&#8217;Oreal heiress <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/liliane-bettencourt/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Liliane Bettencourt</a>, has died, according to a statement from her daughter on Thursday. She was 94 and was the thirteenth richest person in the world at the time of her death, with a net worth that Forbes estimates at $44.7 billion.
&#8220;Liliane Bettencourt died last night at home,&#8221; her daughter Francoise Bettencourt-Meyers wrote in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/21/world-richest-woman-liliane-bettencourt-dies" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a statement to the Guardian</a>. &#8220;She died peacefully.&#8221;
Bettencourt owned 33% of makeup giant L&#8217;Oreal, which her father Eugene Schueller founded in 1907. Bettencourt was Schueller&#8217;s only daughter and sole heiress. She appeared on Forbes&#8216; first ever World&#8217;s Billionaires List in 1987 with a net worth of over $1 billion.
&#8220;We all had a great admiration for Liliane Bettencourt who always looked after L&#8217;Oreal, the company and its employees, and was very attached to its success and development,&#8221; Jean-Paul Agon, Chairman and CEO of L&#8217;Oreal, said in <a href="http://www.euroinvestor.com/news/2017/09/21/loreal-news-release-the-passing-of-mrs-liliane-bettencourt/13676988" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a statement</a>. &#8220;She has personally contributed greatly to its success for many years.&#8221;
Bettencourt was famously press-shy, but her later years were mired by public court battles. In 2011, a court found Bettencourt, who had dementia, unfit to manage her affairs and placed her under the guardianship of her daughter and her grandsons. Her grandson Jean-Victor Meyers replaced her on the company&#8217;s board the next year. In May 2015, a French court found eight people, including a photographer and several former wealth managers, guilty of taking advantage of Bettencourt&#8217;s mental state and swindling her out of millions of euros.
Over Bettencourt&#8217;s lifetime, L&#8217;Oreal has grown into a global beauty giant, employing 89,300 people worldwide. The company had $28.58 billion in sales in 2016 and has 34 beauty brands in its portfolio, including Kiehl&#8217;s, IT Cosmetics and Maybelline. &#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Kate Vinton</a>, FORBES STAFF

The World’s Wealthiest Woman, L’Oreal Heiress Liliane Bettencourt, Dies At Age 94

On Tuesday, billionaire Carl Icahn announced he had sold the unfinished Fontainebleau resort in Las Vegas for $600 million, quadrupling his money in seven years. Just up the Las Vegas strip a few weeks earlier, in June, Golden Entertainment said it had agreed to buy the Stratosphere resort for $850 million from Goldman Sachs.
These summer deals for the Fontainebleau and Stratosphere show Icahn at his best and are a reminder that while many people go to Las Vegas to gamble, Icahn has been enormously successful playing his own game, betting on the booms and busts of Las Vegas that have humbled other big players.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/billionaires/2017/09/01/spanish-billionaire-keeps-losing-spot-worlds-richest-person/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">This Spanish Billionaire Keeps Losing His Spot As The World&#8217;s Richest Person</a>
One of the greatest deals Icahn ever made was for the Stratosphere resort, a hotel-casino that includes the nation’s tallest freestanding observation tower. The vision of Bob Stupak and located north of the Las Vegas Strip, the Stratosphere opened in 1996 and by the winter of 1997 it was in bankruptcy court.
Icahn took control of the situation by buying big chunks of the Stratosphere’s debt for pennies on the dollar, becoming its biggest creditor. He purchased the Stratosphere out of bankruptcy court in 1998 and eventually bought out the minority shareholders, too.
But he didn’t stop there. Icahn bought 17 acres of vacant land surrounding the hotel, tracking down the owners of individual homes and properties, many of them abandoned in what was then an economically depressed part of town. Some observers thought Icahn had lost his mind. After picking up some other casino assets like Las Vegas’ Arizona Charlie’s, Icahn’s Vegas bet all-in totaled about $300 million.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/billionaires/2017/08/24/elon-musks-net-worth-eclipses-20-billion-first-time/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Elon Musk&#8217;s Net Worth Eclipses $20 Billion For First Time</a>
As Bob Stupak had envisioned, Las Vegas boomed and tourists found their way up the Las Vegas Strip to the Stratosphere. With the credit markets flowing, Icahn sold the Stratosphere assets for $1.3 billion to Goldman Sachs’ Whitehall Street Real Estate Fund in 2007 at the top of the market cycle. Goldman Sachs’ lending arm funded the deal with lots of debt and the land Icahn had purchased around the Stratosphere was the key to the deal that closed on the eve of the financial crisis. Icahn made $1 billion in profits. &#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-ga-track="contrib block byline">Nathan Vardi</a>, FORBES STAFF

How Carl Icahn Made $1.4 Billion Playing The Booms And Busts Of Las Vegas

Elon Musk, a polymath entrepreneur who nearly went bankrupt launching Tesla Motors and rocket company SpaceX, is now worth more than $20 billion.
On Wednesday, Forbes unveiled its annual <a href="https://www.forbes.com/richest-in-tech/#699b58697316" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Richest In Tech</a> list, which ranks the 100 wealthiest self-made tech billionaires. Musk placed 12th in the order, at $20.7 billion, ahead of high-profile names including Paul Allen ($20.5 billion) and Eric Schmidt ($12.4 billion).
This week marks the first time Musk’s fortune has eclipsed $20 billion on Forbes’ <a href="https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/#version:realtime" target="_blank" rel="noopener">rankings</a> of the planet’s wealthiest people. In March, when Forbes released its list of <a href="http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The World’s Billionaires</a>, his net worth stood at $13.9 billion.
Much of the increase since then is attributable to the soaring value of aerospace firm SpaceX. The company, which ultimately plans to send humans to Mars, raised $350 million last month at a valuation of about $21 billion; <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/elon-musk/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Musk</a> owns more than half of the business. News of the funding round was first <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/technology/spacex-is-now-one-of-the-worlds-most-valuable-privately-held-companies.html?_r=0" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported</a> by the New York Times.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/extreme-execs/2017/07/26/investors-believe-elon-musk-not-mary-barra/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Why Do Investors Believe Elon Musk But Not Mary Barra?</a>
SpaceX has notched a number of significant achievements this year. In March, it sent a cargo payload <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2017/03/30/what-spacexs-successful-reusable-rocket-launch-means-for-the-space-industry/#7217ccae731e" target="_blank" rel="noopener">into orbit</a> with a previously-used rocket, making it the first private company to do so. More recently, on Wednesday, Musk revealed the first images of a SpaceX spacesuit on his personal Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BYIPmEFAIIn/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">page</a>. He confirmed in February that the company will send humans to space as early as next year.
Progress at Tesla, Musk’s publicly-traded electric carmaker, has also been strong. The company is rolling out a new, lower-priced vehicle, the Model 3, to substantial demand and nearly universal acclaim. The business continues to rack up losses, but Tesla’s stock has nonetheless jumped 55% in the last year.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/focus/2015/07/01/raise-family-genius-billionaires/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">How To Raise A Family Of Genius Billionaires</a>
Musk, 46, realized his first major entrepreneurial success in 1999 selling software firm Zip2, which he cofounded, to Compaq for a reported price of more than $300 million; he had previously deferred graduate school at Stanford to start the business. He then made an even larger fortune after Paypal, which he also cofounded, was acquired by eBay for $1.4 billion in 2002.
Musk joined Tesla in 2004 as a key investor and became CEO in 2008, when the business struggled to find credit during the global financial crisis. He reportedly liquidated nearly all of his assets to fund continued development at Tesla and SpaceX, both of which were viewed as long-shot ventures by many outsiders.
Now, as SpaceX rockets fly further into space, Musk’s net worth seems to defy gravity as well. &#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

Elon Musk’s Net Worth Eclipses $20 Billion For First Time

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos’ reign on the top of the Forbes’ Real Time Billionaires List only lasted a morning.
Bezos became the richest person in the world for the first time with a $90.6 billion net worth when markets opened on Thursday. But while Amazon stock climbed another 1.3% to an intraday high of $1,083.31, it then dropped down to $1,046 by the time markets closed, knocking Bezos out of the top spot. He ended the day with an $88.7 billion fortune, down $540 million from late Wednesday. Bill Gates is once again the richest person in the world with an estimated $89.8 billion fortune, down $240 million from yesterday.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/billionaires/2017/07/27/amazon-ceo-jeff-bezos-now-less-1-billion-richest-person-world/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Is Now Less Than $1 Billion From being The Richest Person In The World</a>
Despite the drop, this is likely not Bezos’ last time at the top of Forbes’ real-time ranking. Because he owns nearly 17% of Amazon stock, small fluctuations in Amazon’s stock have billion-dollar consequences for Bezos’ net worth. As of the close of markets Thursday, Bezos was only $1.1 billion behind Gates.
Bezos’ net worth took a further hit in after hours trading Thursday when Amazon reported its second quarter earnings and had a big miss on earnings. Amazon reported earnings per share of $0.40, lower than the $1.42 per share analysts had estimated. Amazon stock dropped more than 2% in after hours trading as of 4:45 p.m. Eastern, which further reduced Bezos’ fortune by $1.8 billion. He is now worth $86.9 billion, which means the gap between Gates and Bezos is now $2.9 billion.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/richlist/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">African Billionaires</a>
Bezos joined Forbes ranking of the 400 richest Americans in 1998, one year after Amazon went public, with a $1.6 billion fortune. He started the online retail giant in a garage in Seattle before his 30th birthday. &#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Kate Vinton</a>, FORBES STAFF

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Reign As World’s Richest Lasted Just A Few Hours

Amazon CEO <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/jeff-bezos/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Jeff Bezos</a> is inching ever closer to becoming the richest person in the world.
Bezos&#8217; net worth increased $1 billion to $89.3 billion on Wednesday, putting him less than $900 million away from surpassing Microsoft co-founder <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/bill-gates/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Bill Gates</a> to become the richest person in the world. His net worth has increased $2.2 billion this week due to a 2% increase in Amazon&#8217;s stock price;  it has increased $16.5 billion since Forbes&#8217; <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/kerryadolan/2017/03/20/forbes-2017-billionaires-list-meet-the-richest-people-on-the-planet/#35ae555562ff" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">2017 Billionaires List</a> was published in March.
<a href="https://www.forbesafrica.com/richlist/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Forbes List: African Billionaires</a>
At the end of March, Bezos briefly became the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/2017/03/30/bezos-blastoff-amazon-founder-briefly-becomes-worlds-second-richest-for-first-time/#1ff9cfb7a51e" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">second richest person in the world </a>for the first time. He has been the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/noahkirsch/2017/06/16/jeff-bezos-worlds-second-richest-person-following-whole-foods-deal/#17fb017d4595" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">second richest person continuously since June</a>, when Amazon announced plans acquire Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in cash. At that time, Gates was nearly $5 billion richer than Bezos.
Now, the gap between the two Seattle-area residents has narrowed to just $800 million. If Amazon stock rises more than 1% on Thursday or in after-hours trading, Bezos could unseat Gates, who has been the world&#8217;s richest person on Forbes annual Billionaires List for 18 of the past 23 years.
Bezos&#8217; rise to the top started in a garage in Seattle, where he began selling books online after leaving a hedge fund job. He first joined the ranks of the 400 richest Americans in 1998, a year after Amazon.com went public, with a $1.6 billion fortune. Today, Bezos&#8217; net worth easily rises or falls by that amount with small moves in Amazon&#8217;s stock because he owns nearly 17% of the tech giant, which has a $503 billion market capitalization. &#8211; Written by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/katevinton/">Kate Vinton</a>, FORBES STAFF

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Is Now Less Than $1 Billion From Being The Richest Person In The World

It happened one Saturday afternoon; the meat was on the fire, the smoke was in the air, and a father sat his 13-year-old son down for a paternal chat that was to change his life.
The father was billionaire investor Jannie Mouton – known as the &#8216;Boere Buffett&#8217;. The son was Piet Mouton who was to grow up into a multi-million-dollar investor. Billionaire and son have beefed up PSG, the investment holding company worth $4.3 billion (market cap) that has spread to a combined market capitalization of approximately $12.5 billion in just 22 years.
&#8220;Growing up in our family, at the age of 13 I already knew what options and futures were… It was a new thing on the JSE and my dad came home and, at a braai on a Saturday, he sat me and my brother down and explained it to us. So here I had some great knowledge that I didn&#8217;t know what to do with at school, but I understood the concept of options and futures,&#8221; says Piet.
&#8220;[PSG] was part of our life growing up, the entire business concept. Being mathematically inclined, [my future idea] wasn&#8217;t necessarily to go into business with my father, but it was to go into business.&#8221;
This was the incredible inside story told from the two men as FORBES AFRICA sat down at 35 Church Street, Stellenbosch, in the heart of the quaint South African wine farm to hear how one family built an investment giant.
&#8220;My wife once told me that was your favorite child, PSG, you never ask anything about Jan or Piet, or Charity. It’s only PSG, PSG. The whole braai [barbeque], the whole evening was talking about PSG. It was very much part and parcel of how we started,&#8221; says Jannie.
The choice of the building in Church Street for this interview was a spot-on smart investment.  They call it Ou Kollege and it is as much of a reflection of their humble characters as their life stories. The wooden panels, grey walls, African paintings and sculptures of leopards have that millionaire touch. Jannie bought it with his old friend GT Ferreira, FirstRand founder and also a multimillionaire. The two men decorated it with paint pot and brush in hand.
&#8220;We bought this building and we haven&#8217;t left.  I remember GT saying to me &#8216;Jannie, it&#8217;s just a structure, you must put stuff in it as well&#8217;, so he ended up being the interior decorator here as well,&#8221; says Jannie.
&#8220;You can see this wood paneling is the same as GT&#8217;s office on the third floor which looks very similar to what we&#8217;ve got. It had the same interior decorator at the end of the day,&#8221; says Piet, as they both laugh.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2017/02/01/africas-billionaires/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Africa&#8217;s Billionaires</a>
On this day, in the very room where they plotted billions of dollars of investment around the world, Piet and Jannie don matching black suits and white shirts. They are every inch the shrewd businessmen, with a dash of down-to-earth humility.
Thomas Edison, the man famous for the lightbulb, once said opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. The Moutons are dressed in suits and look like investment.
Jannie founded the group just 22 years ago after a kick in the gut. He was fired by his partners from his own stock broking firm. To add insult to injury, his name as part of Senekal, Mouton &amp; Kitshoff was on the door. The fact that Mouton will never forget August 5, 1995, shows how deeply it hurt him. At the time, probably the last thing on his mind was that this humiliation was the best thing that ever happened to him.
<div id="attachment_32675" style="width: 270px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32675" class=" wp-image-32675" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/IMG_2492.LR_-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="260" height="390" />Jannie Mouton (Photo by Jay Caboz)</div>
<blockquote>&#8220;If you were fired in your life, you must have realized you&#8217;ve made a mistake. I think it was a good lesson. It&#8217;s a team effort and all the team must be happy and must respect their standing credibility and wisdom. I&#8217;ve learned a lot about that,&#8221; says Jannie.</blockquote>
That lesson hit like a sledgehammer when young Piet was told the news.
&#8220;I was in first-year and was 19 years old. The first part started with Jannie being fired. He was so ashamed he got my mother to phone us up and say he&#8217;d resigned,&#8221; says Piet.
Jannie searched his soul and vowed to own a financial services JSE-listed company. It took three months to get onto the JSE. Jannie, then 48 years old, bought a 51% share of JSE-listed PAG for R3.5 million ($273,000). He sold it two years later for R107 million ($8.35 million).
Then he went home. He settled in Stellenbosch, the town where he studied alongside fellow decorator GT, in the Western Cape.
From these humble beginnings the PSG Group took off like a rocket with annual compound growth in earnings of 50.8% a year.
Their main investments are in bank start-up Capitec, private education firm Curro Holdings, PSG Konsult and agribusiness firm Zeder – with the 31% interest in Capitec constituting roughly 40% of the value of PSG&#8217;s portfolio.
Here&#8217;s how rapidly PSG has grown: An investment of R100,000 ($78,000), on its first day in business, would be worth approximately R390 million ($30.5 million) today if all dividends were reinvested. No other company in the world matches this, according to the Moutons and researchers at the Top Performing Companies &amp; Public Sector.
Jannie is Afrikaans with a capital A. When you speak to him you can see he thinks in Afrikaans and speaks in English. Yet when it comes to business he knows, whenever he speaks, English is king. So when it came to sending his sons to school he bent the rules to claim he was English-speaking so they could grow up learning the world language.
&#8220;My wife was a bit smarter than me. She was in an English school her whole life at Rustenburg Girls’ High. She realized how important English was in life and in business… To send your children from an Afrikaans background to an English school, you had to apply officially. Otherwise they wouldn&#8217;t do it. I still have the little document that says I am English-speaking. That was to protect Afrikaans, they didn&#8217;t want Afrikaans schools and English schools to mix.&#8221;
With parental guidance, and the English language, Piet took to business like a duck to water in his first year at Stellenbosch University where he studied actuarial science.
&#8220;Remember, this was at a time when we were coming into a new democracy. We were at university, there was massive growth in the PSG share price, I think it went up from 36c and peaked at about R18 which was my last year at university. Students do take interest in what happens in the world and it&#8217;s a phenomenal story, so everybody knew who Jannie was, and obviously Jannie and GT were Simonsberg Old Boys, which was the residence where I went to,&#8221; says Piet.
With seven years as CEO of PSG, Piet is the new generation injecting adrenalin into the beating heart of this $4.3-billion company. There were no short cuts for the young Piet, according to Jannie, he had to work his way up the corporate ladder.
<div id="attachment_32676" style="width: 266px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-32676" class=" wp-image-32676" src="http://www.forbesafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/IMG_2503.LR_-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="256" height="384" />Piet Mouton (Photo by Jay Caboz)</div>
&#8220;Piet had started in the group in 2004 with a company called Arch Equity. It was actually a tough day in our lives, because his mother and my wife passed away on 11th of May. On the 17th we launched Arch Equity. We never discussed him becoming CEO,&#8221; says Jannie.
&#8220;Piet was a candidate and I stood back. His colleagues selected him. Here, in private and in public, Piet was the best candidate, I couldn&#8217;t get involved. I would never do that in my life, misuse my title and it was the shareholders decision to appoint him head of the board… For us, it&#8217;s the best CEO who must be in charge.&#8221;
Despite this, you can only imagine the pressure that Piet feels. Not only does he juggle billions in other people&#8217;s money, the chairperson is also your father, the person who started to build it.
&#8220;[Jannie&#8217;s] entire business philosophy is a lesson. The biggest one is don&#8217;t give me problems, give me solutions. Jannie always says &#8216;it&#8217;s easier to tell a guy something won&#8217;t work, it&#8217;s a lot more difficult to sit with an idea and think of a way of doing it differently&#8217;,&#8221; says Piet.
A cornerstone of PSG&#8217;s success is a 30.7% stake in Capitec Bank. In 2002, Capitec’s individual shares listings were worth less than a rand and now they are worth R531 ($41.50). The guiding spirit of Capitec is Michiel le Roux, who disrupted South Africa&#8217;s once cozy banking market by bringing in an aggressive strategy in search of deposits from low-income earners.
<blockquote>&#8220;The Moutons, as the main drivers behind PSG, have built a company that created wealth for many. Their active involvement in the beginning years to get the Capitec dream off the ground was crucial to our success,” says Le Roux.</blockquote>
Capitec was built on 300 micro-lending branches. It shook up the banking sector with new ideas, like the no-brainer of opening on Sundays.
&#8220;The five big banks, prior to Capitec, sat back and they had a nice little oligopoly. Capitec came around and they were allowed to build a great business. By the time the competition realized this is a real player, it was too late. Now Capitec is a serious competitor,&#8221; says Piet.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2016/09/01/terrible-time-list-bank/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">&#8216;A Terrible Time to List A Bank&#8217; </a>
PSG has proven time and again that opportunities can be found in the pessimism of others. These are tough times for South Africa, one of Africa&#8217;s most developed economies. It has suffered a string of downgrades, political uncertainty and questions about corruption and fiscal mismanagement.
&#8220;Everybody is always outwardly focused in South Africa… But it means you can actually operate in a very uncompetitive environment. You would not have been able to start a Capitec in London,&#8221; says Piet.
Now technology is also a factor.
&#8220;Each and every week, we at PSG level encourage our subsidiaries to look at the changes. It&#8217;s a fact of life. From the start [Capitec] was a bit of an IT business but now it&#8217;s becoming more and more an IT business. Just look back 10 years; it&#8217;s unbelievable how business has changed. I&#8217;ve also realized my generation has to step back, because we don&#8217;t keep pace with this generation,&#8221; says Jannie.
&#8220;It&#8217;s going to continue changing in the years ahead. It&#8217;s a big thing at all the companies at the moment. You have to sit down and look at your business model and say ‘can it be interrupted?’ There are businesses that are just not there, take for example Kodak,&#8221; says Piet.
&#8220;Now you sit at the Capitec level and you say we mustn&#8217;t be caught with our pants down, because there are guys sitting in garages developing FinTech stuff. At least we at Capitec acknowledge – we don&#8217;t know where the problem is going to come from, we&#8217;ve got to constantly be smart about it,&#8221; says Piet.
&#8220;There are 150 people working on innovation and it’s costing us R200 million ($15.6 million) a year, to constantly scan and see if we can implement some of this new innovation.&#8221;
A recent purchase of an online lender in Poland is a Capitec move toward technology.
&#8220;The model is slightly different here. Whereas here in South Africa we are backed by bricks and mortar with 800 branches with a massive 300 ATM network, there it will be an online operation. Michiel coined a great phrase, shortly after I came back from the UK: it was either going to be a small failure or a big success. Now, where a lot of corporates go overseas and make massive acquisitions and then try implement them, Capitec actually tackled a very small business that has the potential to expand and they can contribute capital if it grows… It&#8217;s a longer path but it&#8217;s a sure way of hitting success at the end of the day. If it&#8217;s a failure it&#8217;s a small failure,&#8221; says Piet.
Another of PSG&#8217;s success stories is Chris van der Merwe&#8217;s Curro Holdings that develops, acquires and manages private schools in South Africa. What started off as a school of 28 learners in the hall of a church in Durbanville, Cape Town, now has a market cap of $1.4 billion.
&#8220;Chris van der Merwe is a unique person. Education and doing something great for the company is his passion. He tells you to your face he doesn&#8217;t understand accounts or profits. He is one of the people I admire in life, he isn&#8217;t fanatically orientated but he has a big thing about education,&#8221; says Jannie.
&#8220;Chris was a primary school teacher who knew he was also phenomenal businessman. He built the school himself, with his own hands. He took his early pension, started with 28 kids in a class, now it&#8217;s up to 50,000,&#8221; says Piet.
In May, Curro Holdings announced it would buy the South African School of Motion Picture Medium and Live Performance (AFDA) – a film, television and live performance higher education institution. Step one of an expansion into the tertiary education system under the soon-to-be JSE-listed company Stadio. In six years, the share price has increased more than 300% to R44.70, with pupil numbers rising 14% to 47,589 in 2016, reports CNBC AFRICA.
&#8220;A typical school class has about 45 students. At varsity, a class could be 100, and the fees are even a bit more than school. It could be a fantastic model,&#8221; says Jannie.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/cover-story/2012/11/01/outbuffetting-buffett/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Outbuffetting Buffett</a>
Asked if this decision had any particular influence from recent education crisis events, like FeesMustFall, the campaign that saw South African universities come to a standstill amid violence over tuition fees, the Moutons were open.
&#8220;See, there you have almost hit the nail on the head of investments. Big macro themes, if you can get it right, you shouldn&#8217;t be limited to growth. Take the whole education sector as a whole, primary and core, if you can get it right, there is actually a massive scope for growth. You are right about the FeesMustFall, because people are becoming disillusioned [with education].&#8221;
Another company Jannie believes could surprise investors is PSG Konsult. With 270 branches and 800 advisors, each branch is its own company, 70%-owned by the individuals who run it – what Jannie calls ultimate empowerment.
&#8220;You should attract very good people alongside you and you must make them co-workers inside the business. You must trust them implicitly and give them the space to grow. That has worked significantly for our group, because they act like shareholders and look after the company,&#8221; says Piet.
Back in the boardroom, the conversation shifts toward the lighter side of life, something the pair can&#8217;t agree on – rugby.
&#8220;It&#8217;s one of the points we don&#8217;t see eye to eye on. Jannie is a Stormers supporter whereas I am a strong Lions supporter. Literally, Saturdays would be a fight to behold.&#8221;
Imagine if the idea to invest in the Stormers or Lions was raised in this Stellenbosch boardroom.

One Name, Two Investors, $4 Billion

With billionaire mining magnate Patrice Motsepe at the helm, the newly crowned African champions Mamelodi Sundowns are not short of resources.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-5571" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/PatriceMotsepe-300x148.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="148" />
Adding up all the presumed transfer fees and estimated running costs over the 13 years since he took ownership, Motsepe has invested more than R150 million ($11 million) in the club, a sum far in excess of what any other owner, among the 16 teams that make up South Africa’s Premier Soccer League (PSL), has put into the game.
The money took a long time to show any kind of return but Sundowns, ironically after a round of recent belt-tightening, can now look to run their operation independently after the windfall of their recent success.
Winning the African Champions League in October has ensured record earnings for the Pretoria-based club, although Motsepe is giving a fair chunk of it to his players as a bonus for their achievement.
In the Champions League, Sundowns took home a purse of $1.5 million for winning – by far the biggest sum the club has ever earned from a single competition. That is, indeed, true of any South African team.
The biggest prize in the domestic game is the R10 million ($750,000) that the winners of the league earn.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-5572" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/000_DM7Q2-300x196.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="196" />
The Champions League purse is to be shared among the players, said Motsepe in the wake of their success in Egypt, where Sundowns overcame hostile conditions in a display of resilience to win the title – only the second time in 21 years that a South African club has done so.
It is the biggest achievement in club football on the continent and brings with it a raft of other opportunities.
First, Champions League success means participation in the Fifa Club World Cup in Japan at the end of the year.
The competition, featuring all the continental champions, also offers prize money with a minimum of $1 million just for participating and going up to $5 million for the winner.
But unlike the Champions League campaign, where the cost of traveling through Africa can be onerous, Fifa pay all costs, including supplying 35 business class return tickets to Japan per club.
Another $1 million would be well received, although the costs of South African football are such now that it is pretty swiftly shredded through.
Not three months ago, Sundowns paid R11 million ($820,000) to sign silky midfielder Sibusiso Vilakazi from Bidvest Wits; a record fee for an internal move in the South African market. They also bought players from Bloemfontein Celtic and Free State Stars, and imported a striker from the Ivory Coast in a bid to strengthen their squad for a rigorous campaign to come.
To do so, the club has to get extra funding from Motsepe.
It is not just for the transfer fees, but the wages needed to lure these players to the club as well.
Bafana Bafana fullback Anele Ngcongca had opportunities to stay in Europe when it became clear he would leave Belgian side Genk, and also attracted interest from the lucrative Chinese Super League. But he has been lured to Pretoria with the promise of not only competing for silverware, but also a hefty pay-packet as he heads towards his thirties.
No PSL club survives on the monthly income of R1.5 million ($100,000) that they receive as their share of the television deal that broadcaster SuperSport agreed to for the next five years.
With attendances declining, gate receipts are for many clubs no longer a revenue source. They lose money on the costs associated with match days, such as security, stewarding and ground rental.
For many clubs, surviving without a benevolent owner with big pockets depends on the ability to develop and then sell players. Some have made it a useful enterprise and keep their heads above water, ensuring survival but effectively losing their ability to be truly competitive.
Free State Stars have an uncanny ability to find quality players at no cost and then sell them on at a healthy profit. Ajax Cape Town, with their extensive youth network, is another ‘selling’ club.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-5570" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/GettyImages-617619734-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" />
As is the trend internationally, emphasized by the rise to the winners’ podium of Manchester City and their Abu Dhabi investors in England or the Qatari cash that has made Paris Saint-Germain the runaway power in France, so the South African league too is fast becoming a lopsided arena.
It was no accident that last season’s top two finishers – Sundowns and Wits – are owned by tycoons with a passion for the game. The growing rivalry between Motsepe and Wits owner Brian Joffe is set to continue this season.
Perennial challengers like Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates are increasingly unable to compete for the best talent – both coaching and player wise. It was not by accident that last season was the first time in almost 50 years of professional football in South Africa that neither of the well-supported Soweto giants won a single trophy.
They will remain competitive while their revenue stream, from sponsorship and replica shirt deals, is strong but that they are no longer the ‘big bulls in the kraal’ is all too evident.
SuperSport United, with the backing of MultiChoice, could grow into the third power in the South African game but do not have the largesse and impulsive ability to strike in the marketplace that both Sundown and Wits possess.
Sundowns’ new-found status and confidence gives them the sporting impetus to continue achieving. The bedrock of Motsepe’s cheque book remains a firm foundation but it helps they are also contributing to the coffers with their success.
The trick for them is to ensure that success of the last two years, which has also seen them win the domestic league title and the Telkom Knockout cup competition, continues for the next few years.
They are best placed to create a dynasty and become goliath in their own league, just like Lyon in the French Ligue 1 who claimed their domestic title for seven consecutive years in early 2000, or Paris Saint-Germain, who have won the last four.
Sundowns’ Champions League success this year could be the start of a period of dominance the rest of the league will be powerless to break.

Wealthy And Healthy

Many would walk past him without a second glance. But this unassuming man, in a brown jacket and faded jeans, is the man who brought up a billionaire in Africa. This is Errol Musk, father to Elon – the $13.3-billion United States entrepreneur who founded PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX and wants to go to Mars. Eroll’s son, Kimbal, is a millionaire and his daughter, Tasko, is a film producer.
“They’ve been doing well all their lives. It’s not like one suddenly jumps into it right now. It’s been like that as far as I can remember. [Elon’s] sister Tasko would say you can ask Elon to do a lot of things on his computer but don’t ask him to catch a bus. We traveled a lot in those days, their mother and I split up when they were quite young and the kids stayed with me. I took them all over the world. Elon was generally in the backseat, Kimbal, my other son who is just as energetic as Elon, would do all the guiding and navigating,” says Errol.
“Elon has always been an introvert thinker, so where a lot of people would go to a great party and have a great time and drink and talk about all sorts of things like rugby or sport, you would find Elon had found the person’s library and was going through their books. He’d find fun in that, not to say he wasn’t a person who would party every now and then.”
“The kind of things he would come up with as a youngster was always surprising. When he was very small, he would ask me ‘where is the whole world?’ when he was three or four. It was these sorts of questions that made me realize that he was a little different,” says Errol in an interview on radio station 702, in Johannesburg.
The Musk family is full of adventurers. Errol’s grandmother was Canada’s first chiropractor. His father and mother were the first to fly from South Africa to Australia in a single-engine plane. Errol, a pilot, sailor and engineer, raised Elon and Kimbal in the quiet suburbs of Pretoria.
Elon’s siblings also share the limelight. Toska is a producer and director. Kimbal owns a number of restaurant chains and spearheads a non-profit school education based program, The Kitchen Community, which grows vegetables in the United States.
“Kimbal is much more of a party animal. He is one of the two original directors of SpaceX and he’s a director of Tesla… But he’s in his own world [and has] gone into restaurants and catering. He has a number of very large restaurants. He is also part of one of the fastest growing fast foods spaces called Chipotle Mexican Grill.”
“Kimbal started a thing where he put fiberglass tubes in a snakelike shape to make a garden and taught children to grow vegetables… an article on FORBES said he was the Musk who is going to change how we eat.”
It’s a story that dates back to the 1980s in Pretoria. Errol made money by consulting and developing properties while the boys scribbled away at their desks at Pretoria Boys High School (PBHS).
“My impression is that Elon kept to himself and was relatively quiet and reserved. I believe he was involved with the computer club at school, but otherwise was not really visible in mainstream activities,” says Gavin Ehlers who was headboy at PBHS in 1988, the same year Musk finished school.
Not surprisingly, Elon graduated with distinctions in physical science and computer science, recalls Bill Schroder, the headmaster of the school from 1990 to 2009. Elon and Kimbal then emigrated to Canada with their mother, Maye, in part to avoid conscription in the South African army, before taking the plunge as entrepreneurs in the United States.
“In the mid-eighties I remember him showing me a box with a red light on it and he would say this is a modem. With this, computers can talk to one another. If that computer is on the line then I can talk to a computer in England and ask it questions. He was always switched on,” says Errol.
So what lies ahead for the billionaire Elon who wants to go to Mars?
On the cards is a possible return to Africa to install thousands of Tesla Powerwalls, a 15-centimeter sized battery box that can store up to 10kWh of free, cheap renewable energy for your house.. This is enough energy to keep your fridge cold for 600 hours, according to Eskom, South Africa’s national power utility, and could solve the country’s energy problems.
“As far as Elon is concerned, I worry, what now? What is there? I start to worry of boredom. I get worried that he is getting bored of sending stuff to NASA every week or two weeks. I mean this is becoming passé… He is one of those people, and certainly was as a boy, if he suddenly decides it’s not interesting anymore he just kind of drops it. I doubt he will though,” says Errol.
From Pretoria to the stars, Elon could go to Mars.

How To Raise A Family Of Genius Billionaires

London could be Nigeria’s 37th state. From the underground to the finest hotels, you can hear an army of Nigerians on the march. There is an attitude about them – forward thinking, money spending – a force steeling Britain’s economy with streetwise Lagos cut-and-thrust. Be it academia, business, or just plain rich, there is plenty of Nigeria to go around in London. One of the best known is the Nigerian billionaire, Femi Otedola, who owns a $53.5-million home in the heart of rich Knightsbridge.
Otedola, the man who always wears white, clearly doesn’t believe in doing things by half. He owns a fleet of custom Rolls Royce cars in London and a Mercedes fleet in Nigeria, together worth $7.7 million. On the waters off Lagos, he has a sleek, custom-made, $19.5-million yacht in the Victoria Island lagoon. His home in Lagos is bigger than the one in Knightsbridge, with more expansive balconies and better weather.
Be it homes, gadgets or cars; Otedola appears to love the good life and doesn’t mind spending on it.
On a Thursday morning, in his tastefully furnished London pad adorned with family portraits, we meet for a chat; Otedola is jolly, answering phone calls and checking stocks on his tablet. He does this every morning after a few hours in the gym. There is no doubt it has been another prosperous year for the chairman of a leading Nigerian downstream oil company.
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-3199" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/W0A9934-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />
Otedola was the second Nigerian to make the FORBES billionaires list in 2009. Following a major plunge in the shares of African Petroleum (now Forte Oil), he fell off the list. Another blow came when he topped the list of Nigeria’s debtors – owing banks around $900 million. Otedola has since reshuffled his finances and paid off every cent, according to the Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria (AMCON). He returns to the FORBES rich list in 2014 wealthier and wiser. He is worth at least $1.2 billion, as valued this year by the FORBES wealth unit in the United States and FORBES AFRICA. The rise in net worth was helped by a spike in the share price of his company, Forte Oil where he owns an 80% shareholding.
Otedola is part of a group of relatively young men who represent the new face of Nigerian capitalism. Born around the sixties and seventies, they came of age in the eighties and nineties as Nigeria inched deeper into military dictatorships that crippled the economy and the ambitions of entrepreneurs. They had to wait until the return of democracy in 1999 – and the subsequent opening up of the economy – to unleash their entrepreneurial skills. They have since taken advantage of the upturn in the country’s fortunes; their rise coinciding with waves of Nigeria’s economic reform.
So, how do you run up $1.5 billion in debt and become solvent in a few years? Just ask Otedola, who believes it was something he had to go through that had an echo in his childhood.
“I had my first business at the age of six. It was called FEMCO. I’d offer to groom my parents’ guests’ nails. Then, write a receipt and charge them for my service. They paid me too. I always had an interest in business. For my seventh Christmas present, I remember asking my dad for a briefcase. I just thought it was a good look. He gave me one of his and I insisted on taking it to school with me. The kids laughed at me, but I still loved the briefcase.”
Down the years, Otedola nursed his passion and grew up to work for his late father, Michael Otedola, the former governor of Lagos State.
It was a career that began with inky fingers. Otedola ran the marketing side of the family printing press in the late 1980s. It was a springboard to becoming a name in the world of Nigerian business.
An insight into the way Otedola’s mind worked came years later in a very public feud with his now best friend and one-time business partner, Aliko Dangote – the richest man in Africa. The squabble was over a bid for the Nigerian arm of Chevron, Texaco’s downstream business, which the company put up for sale in 2006. Otedola – the oil-and-gas man and second largest shareholder in Texaco at the time – was beaten to it by a company with links to Dangote, the cement-and-commodities man; a move said to be in violation of a gentleman’s agreement to respect each other’s turf. When Otedola announced that he would be investing in sugar and cement factories – Dangote territory – few missed the dig in the ribs.
The squabble lingered, but the storm passed, leaving the two men closer than brothers. A nautical manifestation of this is their identical yachts that bob side-by-side in the lagoon off Lagos.
“It was a case of conspiracy theories. Aliko and I have a genuine relationship and it was only natural that we had a few differences along the line. Today, he is my mentor. I like his sincerity and integrity. Aliko’s word is his bond and I have a lot of respect for my friend. I believe he is a real blessing to Nigeria and Africa as a whole. He is a godsend to this continent. I believe Aliko is highly underrated too. He will become the richest man on the FORBES list someday,” says Otedola.
<div id="attachment_3200" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-3200" class="size-medium wp-image-3200" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/000_Par1412570-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="200" />TO GO WITH AFP STORY IN FRENCH BY JACQUES LHUILLERY ******Nigeria-économie-énergie-société-politique*** (FILES) File picture of Nigerian businessman Aliko Dangote (L) and Femi Otedola are pictured during the opening of the second Lagos domestic airport MM2, 7 April, 2007. Aliko Dangote said that he is far more wealthier than US TV anchorwoman Oprah Winfrey which US magazine Forbes said her wealth fetches USD 1,5 billion. AFP PHOTO / PIUS UTOMI EKPEI/FILES</div>
Otedola’s foray into the oil business began after he stopped working for his father and started working for himself.
Being the son of a governor, Otedola had friends in government who supplied him with diesel. Friends that didn’t do his business any harm down the years. When the political climate changed, the supply stopped. He made enquiries and approached a company for fresh supplies of diesel.
The light bulb in his head went off when Otedola saw a clanking, broken-down truck deliver supplies to his house three days after placing the order. He decided to open his own, more efficient, diesel supply business.
“I started buying diesel from a guy who had control of the market for retailing. I soon realized that a lot of companies in the country actually used diesel. I once received an order from a big transport company. The banks were closed and I could only offer a cheque. I was my supplier’s biggest customer but he refused to take a cheque from me. I immediately realized I needed to source alternative methods of getting my diesel.”
With outrageous ambition, Otedola approached the new management of the depot, which was worth $4 million, and offered to buy it for $20 million.
“I contacted Zenith Bank, sold my pitch on the venture and how we would finance it. I had a meeting that barely lasted 10 minutes with Jim Ovia (another billionaire on the FORBES rich list); he believed in me and it was a done deal. This was in 2003.”
Soon, Otedola had full control of the diesel supply infrastructure with his company, Zenon Petroleum and Gas Limited, holding 91% of the market. It turned out to be a great business decision. He set up a transport and shipping company in line with the logistics attached with diesel supply – F.O. Transport and Seaforce Shipping. At a stroke, he took control of the entire chain. He went further to diversify into property and buying into a string of other large companies. He was 35; he felt the adrenalin rush and wanted to dominate the market. All this in a mere seven years.
At this point, Otedola’s biggest competitors were oil giants Total and Mobil. Soon, he was setting the diesel price and supplying his competitors.
“While my competitors were sleeping, I was busy strategizing. I was liberal too. My strategy was: high volumes, little margins. I was very excited at this point. However, I knew that at some point the government would fix the power issue (diesel is mainly used for generators during power cuts) and I needed to move a step forward.”
In what proved a wise move to cushion the business, Zenon bought a 28.7% stake in African Petroleum. Zenon invested aggressively across the financial sector becoming the second largest shareholder in Zenith Bank, largest individual shareholder at United Bank for Africa (UBA) and many more banks in Nigeria. As the banks sought share capital, following a new directive from the reserve bank, many approached Otedola. He rolled the dice in the knowledge he was playing safe.
At that time, Zenon was very solvent and the largest diesel importer in Nigeria. It invested a lot of money in African Petroleum with Otedola increasing the shareholding from 28.7% to about 55%, at a cost of $400 million. Then, the worst happened – the crude oil prices plunged from $146 to $36 in 2008.
“We took a very big hit and I lost about $1.5 billion, plus interest, in the process. When the oil prices were dropping, I saw it all coming. I could see myself losing big money. I had diesel worth $400 million on the high seas. It didn’t look good. I’m a capitalist though. It was great while the money was rolling in. Now that I lost so much, it was also time to face the tune. It was a very low time for me and I explored different options, including suicide, but ultimately, I knew I had to solve this problem. My debts had to be paid.”
“The same banks that had once sent pretty sales ladies to get money from me for their accounts in the past were now sending tough looking men to knock at my door to get me to pay my debts in the mornings. The only people I’d credit at this point were my wife for her great support, Jim Ovia of Zenith Bank and Segun Agbaje of Guaranty Trust Bank who understood the situation and offered a restructure of the loans for ease of payment. I was however determined to pay it all up and move on. The banks sold the debt to Asset Management Corporation of Nigeria. It was a total of N200 billion
($1.2 billion).”
Otedola separated his personal fortune from his business, so Zenon was bankrupt but he wasn’t. AMCON bought the debt for $867 million. They valued the Zenon assets, Otedola’s property company and existing assets. He added some cash and there was a court settlement. He had also started selling his bank shares, before the big plunge. It dragged on for four years.
“The most important lesson I learned, is that no one is invincible. No matter how high up there you are today, you can lose it all tomorrow if you’re not on top of your game. I also learned that being a good entrepreneur does not necessarily make you a good business manager. I learned to keep my hands off managing and leave it in the hands of experts.”
Today, Otedola describes his approach to business as very risk averse and content. Having sold all the Zenon assets to pay his debts, he shifted his focus to African Petroleum which had to go through restructuring.
Otedola’s fingers were burned and he was going to be tougher this time around. In 2011, a complete overhaul saw him sack all staff at African Petroleum, albeit with a handsome severance package. In the restructuring, African Petroleum became Forte Oil.
“I also made a decision not to run the business as I had failed at running it well. I then brought in a crop of fresh young talented guys to take over. I wanted fresh, brilliant minds and ideas. I wanted to build an institution based on the best corporate governance practices; a whole new direction.”
Forte Oil owns about 500 retail outlets across the 36 states of Nigeria. Its audited half year 2014 results show growth. Its revenue grew by 33% to $511.18 million as against the $385.03 million in 2013. Contributing significantly to revenue, for the first time, is the company’s power generation segment from Amperion Power. Under Nigeria’s power privatization program, it acquired the 414MW Geregu plant in Kogi State. Overall sales costs increased by 30% to $453.39 million from $348.20 million in 2013. Gross profit surged by 57% to $57.79 million from $36.82 million while profit before tax grew by 152% to $26.92 million from $10.68 million.
Alongside recovery in underlying business performance, exposure to the power sector acted as a catalyst for a rise in the share price at Forte Oil. The company has aggressive ambitions and is on the brink of a big deal.
On returning to the FORBES list, Otedola says: “It is good to be back and is simply an indication of how well we are doing.”
On family, he says: “I’m extremely dedicated to my family. They come first at all times.”
Speaking of family, Otedola’s daughter is on the way up through turntables rather than oil barrels. Florence Otedola, one of four children who is also known as ‘DJ Cuppy’, plays and produces music on the dance floors and flies around the world to spin the tunes.
“Cuppy is a very smart young lady who will go places. She has done very well and is currently in the United States for her Master’s program. She is very talented at her DJing. It is her passion and I have no choice but to support her. I want my children to follow their respective passion and I’ll support them to the best of my ability.”
Otedola believes Nigerians are enterprising and therein lies the country’s strength. He detests the bad light in which Nigeria is often seen and hopes for fairer reporting that celebrates its successes as well.
“I’d like to see a Nigeria with about 50 Dangotes,” he says on Nigeria’s future.
As the FORBES list welcomes Otedola back, he is looking towards a brighter future and increasing his $1.2-billion wealth. He may have made a small slice of FORBES history by making a billion, losing it and clawing it back. Either way, he is burned, humbled and bouncing back – w

Tag: Billionaire

FORBES AFRICA SOCIAL MEDIA