<h6>SHERYL SANDBERG</h6>
<h6>$1.05 billion</h6>
<h6>US, Self-made</h6>
<h6>Age: 44</h6>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-6121" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Apr-May-032-035-FLIST-Billionaires-001-188x300.jpg" alt="" width="188" height="300" /></p>
<p>In the world of self-made, hoodie-wearing technology billionaires, Sheryl Sandberg has pulled off something improbable: She has joined their ranks without founding her own company or writing a single line of code. The fact that Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer is a woman is incidental, of course, but it’s also noteworthy: Of the 268 newcomers to the 2014 FORBES Billionaires list, 42 are women – a single year record and, more notably, the highest-ever percentage of newcomers (and of women billionaires overall – 172 out of 1,645). That’s progress. But only a bit. Only 32 billionaire women – or 1.9% of all the globe’s billionaires – had a meaningful hand in building their own fortunes, as opposed to inheriting one from a parent or husband. Sandberg joins the dozen women, including Spanx’s Sara Blakely, fashion designer Tory Burch and Oprah Winfrey, who accomplished this feat without the help of a husband or sibling. And only she and Meg Whitman, who worked at Hasbro and FTD before joining eBay, accomplished this feat as hired hands of tech companies. Thus Sandberg’s perspective, distilled in her bestseller, Lean In, seems doubly apt. In a recent interview with FORBES she said she was “real optimistic” about the dialogue and debate generated by her book, which exhorts professional women to pour more energy into their careers, stop tolerating that high achievers are termed “bossy” while their male counterparts are praised as “aggressive”, and pick partners who will share in parenting and household duties.</p>
<p>“Businesses are going to care about diversity not because they want to do good in the world,” says Sandberg. “They’re going to care about diversity if it’s going to change their bottom line.” She says that she hosts private “Lean In Circles” and, in her book, advocates for others to do the same. Over dinner at her home, other leading women hear from special guests. One speaker: Cisco CEO John Chambers.</p>
<p>“What he understood is that it wasn’t about having women in your company but about having women in leadership roles. If you have the best talent, you’re going to have the best performance.” That presumably will translate to more women like Sandberg shattering the ten-figure ceiling.</p>
<h6>Folorunsho AlakIja</h6>
<h6>$2.5 billion</h6>
<h6>Nigeria, Self-made</h6>
<h6>Age: 63</h6>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-6122" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Apr-May-032-035-FLIST-Billionaires-002-212x300.jpg" alt="" width="212" height="300" /></p>
<p>Daughter of a wealthy man who had eight wives and 52 children, Alakija is Nigeria’s first female billionaire, thanks to her own lucrative oil-producing asset. After working as a secretary in a Nigerian merchant bank in the 1970s, Alakija quit her job to study fashion design in England. She subsequently founded Supreme Stitches, a Nigerian fashion label that catered to upscale clientele, which reportedly included Maryam Babangida, wife to Nigeria’s former military president Ibrahim Babangida. The government awarded her an oil-prospecting license for a 620,000-acre plot in 1993. She hired Texaco to assess the oil potential three years later, creating Famfa Oil. It went on to become OML 127, one of Nigeria’s most prolifc oil blocks. Famfa Oil owned a 60% stake in the block until 2000, when then President Olusegun Obasanjo tried to take back as much as a 50% interest. Famfa Oil went to court to challenge the acquisition. The Nigerian Supreme Court reinstated the stake to Famfa Oil in May 2012; it is now the bulk of her fortune. Says Alakija of her fate: “My entry into this [oil] business was God’s own way of leading me down a particular path.”</p>
<h6>denISe CoaTeS</h6>
<h6>$1.6 billion</h6>
<h6>UK, Self-made</h6>
<h6>Age: 46</h6>
<div id="attachment_6116" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-6116" class="size-medium wp-image-6116" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Apr-May-032-035-FLIST-Billionaires-003-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" /><p id="caption-attachment-6116" class="wp-caption-text">Denise Coates, chief executive of Bet 365</p>
<p></p></div>
<p>While still in school, Coates worked for her father, Peter, as a cashier crunching numbers in his betting shops. She finished school, trained as an accountant and then took over some of those shops, turning around their fortunes before selling them to large bookmaker Coral. She had noticed the success of online gambling businesses around the time of the dot-com boom and steered her family in that direction. In 2000, she bought the domain Bet365.com and launched the website in March 2001 after being shunned by traditional venture capitalists. Today, she is joint CEO (with her brother John) of online betting firm Bet365 and is by far its largest shareholder, with a 50.3% stake. Sales hit $1.6 billion last year for Bet365, which also owns British Premier League soccer team Stoke City. Her fortune comes primarily from her stake in the private betting company (based in Stoke-on-Trent) and dividends earned from over 13 years of operation.</p>
<h6>AerIn Lauder Zinterhofer</h6>
<h6>$1.1 billion</h6>
<h6>US, Inherited</h6>
<h6>Age: 44</h6>
<div id="attachment_6117" style="width: 233px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-6117" class="size-medium wp-image-6117" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Apr-May-032-035-FLIST-Billionaires-004-223x300.jpg" alt="" width="223" height="300" /><p id="caption-attachment-6117" class="wp-caption-text">167080839SH00055_The_Americ</p></div>
<p>The much-watched style maven joins the rich list thanks to the surging value of her stake in the $10 billion (sales) Estée Lauder cosmetics firm, founded by her late grandmother. The elder daughter of philanthropist and World Jewish Congress leader Ronald Lauder, she now presides over her own lifestyle empire. In 2012, she launched her eponymous brand, Aerin, starting with makeup (of course) and now encompassing perfume, accessories, jewelry and even decor, fabrics and lighting for those wishing to emulate her modern Manhattan-via-East Hampton aesthetic. While the beauty line was launched in collaboration with Estée Lauder, she operates the rest as a separate company. She remains image and style director at her family’s conglomerate, where she has worked for over two decades, starting during summer breaks from the University of Pennsylvania. Lauder often mentions her grandmother in interviews and recently tweeted a favorite saying of Estée’s: “I didn’t get there by wishing for it or hoping for it, but by working for it.” She’s married to her college sweetheart, Eric Zinterhofer, a Harvard M.B.A. who cofounded private equity firm Searchlight Capital in 2010 after 12 years at billionaire Leon Black’s investment powerhouse, Apollo.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h6>jane lauder</h6>
<h6>$1.15 billion</h6>
<h6>US, Inherited</h6>
<h6>Age: 41</h6>
<div id="attachment_6118" style="width: 210px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-6118" class="size-medium wp-image-6118" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Apr-May-032-035-FLIST-Billionaires-005-200x300.jpg" alt="" width="200" height="300" /><p id="caption-attachment-6118" class="wp-caption-text">FINANCO RETAIL</p></div>
<p>The granddaughter of cosmetics legend Estée Lauder became America’s youngest female billionaire in 2013, joining the ranks following a transfer of shares in the family cosmetics empire. In April, Lauder will take the helm at Clinique, a mall-staple skin-care line and one of the 30 brands under the Estée Lauder umbrella. Her new gig as global brand president marks the culmination of 18 years at her late grandmother’s company; she joined in 1996, a year after graduating from Stanford. Before being appointed to run Clinique, she oversaw business at natural-makeup company Origins. She replaced her father, Ronald, on the Estée Lauder board in 2009 and now serves alongside big sister Aerin and cousin William. Her husband, Kevin Warsh, also a Stanford grad, was the youngest-ever appointee to the Federal Reserve Board; he’s currently a visiting fellow at their alma mater’s Hoover Institution. The couple lives in Manhattan’s trendy Nolita.</p>
<h6>Carrie Perrodo</h6>
<h6>$10 billion</h6>
<h6>France, Inherited</h6>
<h6>Age: 63</h6>
<p>Singapore native Ka Yee (Carrie) Wong was already a top model when she met French entrepreneur Hubert Perrodo in the early 1970s. At the time, Perrodo was traveling the world drilling for oil and gas. Soon they got married. Sharing the entrepreneurial bug, Carrie launched her own agency, Carrie Models, while Hubert started his first business. In time, Perrodo formed Perenco, which has become one of the world’s biggest family-owned oil companies, with estimated annual revenues of $6 billion and far-flung operations in the likes of Gabon, Peru and Cameroon. Hubert and Carrie enjoyed the good life; he was a keen polo player and wine lover who bought up Bordeaux vineyards, including Château Labégorce. Perrodo died in 2006 while hiking in the Alps. Carrie and her three children, François, Nathalie and Bertrand, are heirs to the company, though a breakdown of their stakes is not clear. François now chairs the company and likes to race cars. Nathalie oversees the wine investments. Carrie sold Carrie Models years ago, but the agency remains active to this day.</p>
<h6>Sandra ortega Mera</h6>
<h6>$6.1 billion</h6>
<h6>Spain, Inherited</h6>
<h6>Age: 46</h6>
<div id="attachment_6120" style="width: 238px" class="wp-caption alignleft"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-6120" class="size-medium wp-image-6120" src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/FWA-2014-Apr-May-032-035-FLIST-Billionaires-007-228x300.jpg" alt="" width="228" height="300" /><p id="caption-attachment-6120" class="wp-caption-text">OLEIROS, SPAIN &#8211; AUGUST 17: Sandra Ortega Mera, daughter of Amancio Ortega and Rosalia Mera, attends her mother funeral on August 17, 2013 in Oleiros, Spain. (Photo by Xurxo Lobato/Getty Images)</p></div>
<p>A daughter of Inditex clothing retailer Amancio Ortega, the world’s third-richest person, Ortega Mera enters the ranks sooner than she had hoped, taking the place of her late mother, Rosalia Mera, who died suddenly of a brain hemorrhage while on vacation with Sandra last August. Her parents, who started the apparel business in their living room, divorced long ago. While her half-sister Marta works at her father’s investment arm, Ortega Mera devotes her time to Fundación Paideia, the non-profit her mother started to support vocational training for people with mental and physical disabilities. (Her brother Marcos, who shares the fortune, has cerebral palsy.) She has a psychology degree from the Universidad de Santiago and lives in the Galician town of La Coruña, on the Atlantic coast, with her husband and three kids.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>


The Class Of 2014 Leans In

<p>Our annual snapshot of the 100 women with the most impact are top politicians and CEOs, activist billionaires and celebrities who matter. In roughly equal measure you’ll find next gen entrepreneurs and media mavens, technologists and leaders in philanthropy – all ranked by dollars, media momentum and impact.</p>
<p>We’ve selected women that go beyond the traditional taxonomy of the power elite (political and economic might). These change-agents are actually shifting our very idea of clout and authority and, in the process, transforming the world in fresh and exhilarating ways.</p>
<p>This year the list features nine heads of state who run nations with a combined GDP of $11.8 trillion –including the No. 1 Power Woman, German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The 24 corporate CEOs control $893 billion in annual revenues, and 16 of the women here founded their own companies, including two of the three new billionaires to the list, Tory Burch and Spanx’s Sara Blakely. Speaking of, this year’s class has 14 billionaires valued in excess of $82 billion.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-5693" src="/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/FWA-2013-Oct-012-019-MOU-Top-100-006-197x300.jpg" alt="" width="197" height="300" /></p>
<h4>Here, a quick peek at Power Women 2013:</h4>
<p>Newcomers: Among the 15 newcomers on this year’s list are South Korean President Park Geun-hye (No. 11); Lockheed Martin LMT +0.52% CEO Marillyn Hewson (No. 34); CEO Tory Burch (No. 69);  Spanx founder Sara Blakely (No. 90) and Baidu BIDU -1.28% CFO Jennifer Li (No. 98).</p>
<p>Old friends: At this 10th edition, attention must be paid to the 15 who appeared on the inaugural list in 2004 and are still here today:  Oprah Winfrey(No. 13), of course. Ditto for Hillary Clinton (No. 5). But there’s also  Christine Lagarde (No. 7),  Sonia Gandhi (No. 9), Indra Nooyi (No. 10), Helen Clark(No. 21), Nancy Pelosi (No. 22), Anne Sweeney (No. 24), Amy Pascal (No. 36), Queen Elizabeth II (No. 40), Abigail Johnson (No. 60),  Ho Ching (No. 64),Diane Sawyer (No. 73), J.K. Rowling (No. 93) andGreta Van Susteren (No. 97).</p>
<p>She’s No. 1: Chancellor Merkel has made the list eight times out of the past 10 years – seven times as No. 1.</p>
<p>She’s the first: Forty percent  of the women on the list are “female firsts,” such as African head of state (Liberia’s Ellen Johnson Sirleaf), billionaire to sign The Giving Pledge (Sara Blakeley), and CEO at IBM (Ginni Rometty). Even more impressive are a the women who are multiple “firsts”, such as Judith Rodin, first president of an Ivy League and of the Rockefeller Foundation  and Hillary Clinton.</p>
<p>Hillary stays on: Clinton’s CV is chock full of firsts: The only first lady to become a U.S. senator turned viable presidential candidate turned secretary of state. Now a private citizen, she continues to be one of the most watched and listened-to women on the planet. All bets on that she will be the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate and the free world’s presumptive next leader. She’s done little to quiet the chatter, including hitting the speaking circuit last month at an estimated $200,000 fee per event and inking a reported $14 million book deal.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-5696" src="/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/FWA-2013-Oct-012-019-MOU-Top-100-008-202x300.jpg" alt="" width="202" height="300" /></p>
<p>Tech takes a second turn as a category on the Power Women list. Five tech women made the top 25 this year, including Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg (No. 6), Rometty (No. 12) and HP’s Meg Whitman (No. 15). There are 16 tech women in total, including also Susan Wojcicki, SVP of ads at Google (No. 30) and Sun Yafang, chair of Huawei Technologies (No. 77).</p>
<p>in South Africa. Joining the efforts of the U.N. are Angelina Jolie (No. 37), Shakira (No. 52), and Gisele Bundchen (No. 95). Beyonce (No. 17) rules the House of Dereon and Sofia Vergara (No. 38) co-owns LatinWE.</p>
<p>Businesswomen are booming in Asia: The whole region makes a strong showing, from China and Singapore to New Zealand and Thailand. Entrepreneurship is on the rise: see Zhang Xin (No. 50), The rising tide of female entrepreneurs:</p>
<p>A remarkable number of women are founders or owners of their own enterprises, not a few of whose eponymous companies are synonymous with high fashion. Consider Miuccia Prada (No. 58), Zara founder Rosalia Mera (No. 66), Tory Burch (No. 69) andDiane von Furstenberg (No. 74). Other self-made self-starters include Oprah Winfrey (No. 13), Arianna Huffington (No. 56), Chinese real estate tycoonZhang Xin (No. 50), and Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, India’s first biotech entrepreneur (No. 85).</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-5697" src="/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/FWA-2013-Oct-012-019-MOU-Top-100-012-300x210.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="210" /></p>
<p>The new celebrity role models: Sure, they’re famous but they deserve special attention for their outside work, be it ambassadors for meaningful causes or as business owners.</p>
<p>Oprah founded both Harpo Productions and The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls Sun Yafang (No. 77) and Solina Chau (No. 80). And Asian region women are showing their political might, from newcomer Park Geun-hye, the South Korean president (No. 11) and Burmese dissident and parliamentarian Aung San Suu Kyi (No. 29) to Australian PM Julia Gillard (No. 28) and Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra (No. 31).</p>
<p>Healing, feeding and educating the world: If they’re not topping corporations or state, the women on our list are heads of major nonprofits and NGOs and they wield as large budgets and impact millions, from Melinda Gates (No. 3) and IMF chief Christine Lagarde (No. 7) to Director-General of World Health Organization Margaret Chan (No. 33), World Food ProgrammeExecutive Director Ertharin Cousin (No. 49) and Harvard University’s Drew Gilpin Faust (No. 43).</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-5698" src="/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/FWA-2013-Oct-012-019-MOU-Top-100-003-217x300.jpg" alt="" width="217" height="300" /></p>
<h4>Joyce Banda</h4>
<p>Malawi’s first female president (and second on the African continent) spent her initial year in office pushing for rapprochement with the international donor community while grappling with spiraling inflation and an angry populace at home. With foreign aid accounting for nearly 40% of Malawi’s revenue, Banda urged global financial institutions to restore the dollars and Euros frozen during the autocratic regime of her predecessor. But her decision to devalue Malawi’s currency by 50% – to meet IMF conditions – has resulted in soaring costs for food and fuel and widespread protests. Her first 12 months were also marked by progress in decriminalizing homosexuality and major public health initiatives such as the $15 billion Global Fund to Fight Aids, TB and Malaria.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-5691" src="/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/FWA-2013-Oct-012-019-MOU-Top-100-004-203x300.jpg" alt="" width="203" height="300" /></p>
<h4>Sri Mulyani Indrawati</h4>
<p>When Sri Mulyani Indrawati addressed the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in April, the Indonesian economist shared a curious insight: while high-income countries continue to suffer in the wake of the financial crisis, developing countries have come out relatively unscathed. The World Bank projects average global GDP growth of just 2.5% in 2013. Indrawati has served as managing director and the most senior woman at the World Bank since May 2010; as managing director, she oversees the World Bank’s operations in Asia and Africa, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. After a series of deadly accidents in Bangladesh, the World Bank and the International Labor Organization have put pressure on the country to overhaul its labor laws.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-5692" src="/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/FWA-2013-Oct-012-019-MOU-Top-100-005-221x300.jpg" alt="" width="221" height="300" /></p>
<h4>Liyuan Peng</h4>
<p>China&#8217;s most public first lady since Madame Mao, Peng is the stylish second wife of new leader Xi Jinping. She toured with her husband during Xi&#8217;s first presidential trip abroad to Russia and Africa in March and was credited with putting a human face on the Communist regime; not for nothing, Peng is a member of the Public Diplomacy Association, an organized tasked to make China more appealing abroad. The former superstar folk singer is often joked about for being more famous than her husband: &#8220;Who is Xi Jinping? He is Peng Liyuan&#8217;s husband.&#8221; Fashion editors watch her for her (mostly) made-in-China style, but she&#8217;s also a U.N. ambassador for health and a Goodwill Ambassador for the World Health Organization focusing on TB and HIV/AIDS.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4>Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala</h4>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-5689" src="/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/FWA-2013-Oct-012-019-MOU-Top-100-001-221x300.jpg" alt="" width="221" height="300" /></p>
<p>One year in office after a failed bid to for the World Bank presidency, Nigeria&#8217;s Harvard-educated finance minister produced a 6.5% increase in GDP from 2011 to 2012. Nigeria is the third largest economy in Africa with nearly $50 billion in foreign reserves.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<h4>Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf</h4>
<p>Johnson-Sirleaf is an African icon. She is the  continent&#8217;s first female head of state, a 2011 Nobel Prize winner for her work  n the global women&#8217;s empowerment circuit.</p>
<p><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-medium wp-image-5690" src="/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/FWA-2013-Oct-012-019-MOU-Top-100-002-208x300.jpg" alt="" width="208" height="300" /></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>


The world’s 100 most powerful women

<p>After several years of steady growth in Africa, some sectors of the economy hit a wall. Lower prices for oil and other commodities led to a smaller number of African billionaires than a year ago on Forbes’ new list of Africa’s 50 Richest – 23 billionaires this year, down from 28.</p>
<p>As a group, the continent’s wealthiest 50 are worth $95.6 billion, a decline of $15 billion from a year ago.  Aliko Dangote of Nigeria retains his spot as number one richest African for the fifth year in a row, but his $16.7 billion net worth is nearly $5 billion lower than a year ago, a result of a drop in the stock price at his Dangote Cement and a weaker Nigerian currency.</p>
<p>Number two on the list is Nicky Oppenheimer, whose estimated $6.6 billion fortune stems from the stake he inherited in diamond miner and marketer De Beers. In 2012, Oppenheimer sold the De Beers stake to mining giant Anglo American for $5.1 billion in cash. He moves up the ranks from the number three spot in 2014.</p>
<p>South Africans made the best showing on the Africa’s richest list this year, occupying 16 spots, up from 11 last year. Nigerians had a smaller representation, with 10 members of the list, down from 13. Eight members hail from Morocco, 7 from Egypt, 3 from Tanzania and 3 from Kenya. There was one each from Algeria, Angola and Uganda.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<ol>
<li>
<h3>Aliko Dangote</h3>
</li>
</ol>
<h3>$16.4 billion</h3>
<h3> Nigeria</h3>
<p>Despite a weaker Nigerian currency and strife in the northern part of Nigeria, Aliko Dangote is still Africa’s richest man by far, even after a net worth decline of nearly $5 billion in the past year. In 2015 his Dangote Cement, Africa’s largest cement producer, launched new cement plants in Cameroon, Ethiopia, Zambia and Tanzania. In total, Dangote Cement produces more than 30 million metric tons annually, with a plan to double capacity by 2018. Dangote owns nearly 91% of publicly-traded Dangote Cement through a holding company; this percentage exceeds the 80% ownership ceiling set by the Nigerian Stock Exchange. A note in Dangote Cement’s 2014 annual report states that “controlling shareholder Dangote Industries Limited has continued to reduce its holding in Dangote Cement towards the NSE-required level of 80% or less” but Dangote doesn’t appear to have sold many shares this year. Other companies in the Dangote Group – which is active in 15 African countries – include publicly-traded salt, sugar and flour manufacturing companies.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<ol start="2">
<li>
<h3>Nicky Oppenheimer &amp; family</h3>
</li>
</ol>
<h3>$6.5 billion</h3>
<h3> South Africa</h3>
<p>Nicky Oppenheimer, who inherited his family’s stake in diamond giant De Beers, exited the business in 2012 and has kept a relatively low profile since then. For 85 years, the Oppenheimer family occupied a controlling spot in the world’s diamond trade; in 2012 Nicky sold his 40% stake in De Beers to mining conglomerate Anglo American for $5.1 billion in cash. Anglo American, which Nicky’s grandfather founded, controls 85% of De Beers; the government of Botswana owns the remaining 15%. Nicky Oppenheimer served on Anglo American’s board for 37 years through 2011, and retains an estimated 1.8% stake in the company. His E. Oppenheimer &amp; Son entity controls investment arms Stockdale Street Capital and Tana Africa Capital, a joint venture with Singapore government-owned investment firm Temasek. Tana Africa Capital holds minority interests in African food manufacturers Promasidor and Regina. In 2002 at the World Summit on Sustainable Development, Nicky Oppenheimer, who was then chairman of De Beers, helped launch the Diamond Route. The initiative set aside 250,000 hectares of land surrounding diamond mines, including property owned by De Beers and Oppenheimer, for tourism and conservation. But in October 2015, three years after he sold his family’s stake in De Beers, Oppenheimer announced at a Diamond Route research conference that he was uncoupling Oppenheimer land from the diamond route.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<ol start="3">
<li>
<h3>King Mohammed VI</h3>
</li>
</ol>
<h3>$5.8 billion</h3>
<h3> Morocco</h3>
<p>From his late father King Hassan, King Mohammed VI of Morocco inherited a 35% stake in Societe NationaWle d’Investissement (SNI), a holding company that has stakes in several publicly traded companies, including the country’s largest bank, Attijariwafa; mining company Managem Group; sugar producer Cosumar; and dairy firm Centrale Danone. Forbes’ estimate of the king’s net worth is up significantly from a year ago due to new information about the value of SNI’s assets.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<ol start="4">
<li>
<h3>Christoffel Wiese</h3>
</li>
</ol>
<h3>$5.7 billion</h3>
<h3> South Africa</h3>
<p>In a year when many moguls in Africa saw their fortunes shrink, South African retailing tycoon Christoffel Wiese is flourishing. His net worth has risen by more than $1 billion in the past 12 months. In February 2015, two companies in which he held stakes – Pepkor and Steinhoff – struck an agreement whereby Steinhoff, a furniture and home goods retailer, agreed to purchase Pepkor, a clothing and footwear seller, for $5.7 billion in cash and stock. Wiese’s resulting 17% stake in Steinhoff is now his largest asset, worth $3.7 billion as of mid-November 2015. His other investments include 15% of publicly-traded Shoprite Holdings, which controls supermarkets, furniture stores and fast food outlets in 15 countries across Africa and the Indian Ocean Islands; and stakes in private equity firm Brait, industrial products company Invicta Holdings and mining-sector investor Pallinghurst. Wiese has had his eye on the U.K. In Spring 2015, he acquired British fashion retailer New Look for $1.23 billion and gym chain Virgin Active for $1 billion.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<ol start="5">
<li>
<h3>Johann Rupert &amp; family</h3>
</li>
</ol>
<h3>$5.4 billion</h3>
<h3> South Africa</h3>
<p>Johann Rupert chairs listed Swiss luxury goods firm Compagnie Financiere Richemont, best known for the brands Cartier and Montblanc. He created the company in 1988 after spinning off international assets owned by Rembrandt Group Limited (now Remgro Limited), a South African company his father Anton founded in the 1940s as a tobacco manufacturer. Rupert owns a 7% stake in Remgro, which he chairs, as well as 25% of Reinet, an investment holding company based in Luxembourg that has a stake in British American Tobacco. He also owns part of the Saracens English rugby team and Anthonij Rupert Wines, named after his deceased brother. In recent years, Rupert has been a vocal opponent of plans to allow fracking in the Karoo, a region of South Africa where he owns land. At a luxury conference in Monaco in June 2015, Rupert said income inequality – exacerbated by the rise of tech and automation – was one of the biggest concerns for the luxury industry, because it makes luxury goods customers afraid to publicly display their wealth through the fancy goods they purchase.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<ol start="6">
<li>
<h3>Nassef Sawiris</h3>
</li>
</ol>
<h3>$4.2 billion</h3>
<h3> Egypt</h3>
<p>Egypt’s richest businessman, Nassef Sawiris, is pressing ahead with investments in his country. In November 2014 he partnered with Abu Dhabi’s International Petroleum Investment Co. to develop a coal-based power plant in Egypt. His company OCI, which decamped from the Egyptian stock market during Mohamed Morsi’s Islamist regime in 2013, formally split in February 2015. Its construction arm, Orascom Construction, now trades on Egypt’s exchange and Nasdaq Dubai; while OCI, the fertilizer and chemicals business, trades on Euronext Amsterdam. Sawiris also owns nearly 5% of LafargeHolcim, making him one of the largest shareholders. The two cement giants merged in July 2015. In October, he emerged as the biggest individual shareholder in Adidas with a 6% stake worth more than $1 billion. A University of Chicago graduate, Sawiris donated $20 million to the school in March 2015 to establish a scholarship program named after his father Onsi, also a billionaire. The funds will benefit Egyptian students.</p>
<h3></h3>
<ol start="7">
<li>
<h3>Isabel dos Santos</h3>
</li>
</ol>
<h3>$3.5 billion</h3>
<h3> Angola</h3>
<p>Isabel dos Santos is the oldest daughter of Angola’s longtime president and, by virtue of her investments in Portugal and Angola, is Africa’s richest woman. Though her representatives deny that her holdings have any connection with her father, Forbes research found that her father, President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, transferred stakes in several Angolan companies to her. Her assets in Angola include 25% of Unitel, the country’s largest mobile phone network, and a stake in a bank, Banco BIC. In Portugal she owns a nearly 7% chunk of oil and gas firm Galp Energia (alongside Portuguese billionaire Americo Amorim), and nearly 19% of Banco BPI, the country’s fourth-largest bank. She is also a controlling shareholder of Portuguese cable TV and telecom firm Nos SGPS (formerly called Zon). In June 2015, media reported that she spent slightly more than $200 million to buy a stake in Portuguese equipment firm Efacec Power Solutions. In October 2015, four members of the European Parliament publicly called for an investigation into Isabel dos Santos’ investments in Portugal, questioning the legality of the purchase, saying that the method of payment – a transfer of funds by the Angolan government – “raises the possibility the Angolan State is indirectly and illegally financing private investments of his daughter Isabel dos Santos.” A spokesperson for Dos Santos did not respond to an email requesting comment on the allegations.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<ol start="8">
<li>
<h3>Issad Rebrab &amp; family</h3>
</li>
</ol>
<h3>$3.1 billion</h3>
<h3> Algeria</h3>
<p>Issad Rebrab founded Algeria’s biggest privately held conglomerate, Cevital. It owns one of the largest sugar refineries in the world, with an annual output of 1.5 million tons; it also produces vegetable oil and margarine. Rebrab has been diversifying by buying European companies in distress. In 2014, he acquired (for an undisclosed amount) Groupe Brandt, a large French-based maker of appliances which had filed for bankruptcy protection. Cevital has invested more than $200 million to build a Brandt plant in Algeria which will employ 7,500 people. Rebrab is betting that his country can compete with China for cheap labor. “We have huge potential; we can make up for lost time very quickly,” he said at a conference in Algeria in February 2015. Rebrab, whose five children work at the company, is the son of militants who fought for Algeria’s independence from France.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<ol start="9">
<li>
<h3>Naguib Sawiris</h3>
</li>
</ol>
<h3>$3 billion</h3>
<h3> Egypt</h3>
<p>Naguib Sawiris captured world headlines in September 2015, when he offered to buy an island from Greece or Italy to settle refugees fleeing the war in Syria. A picture of the lifeless body of a Syrian boy on an Turkish beach prompted the gesture. “I am serious with my intentions,” he told FORBES. However, so far he has not purchased an island. Sawiris, who built his fortune in telecom, runs Orascom Telecom Media &amp; Technology (OTMT), a publicly traded company in Cairo. It has investments in mobile phone, media and technology companies in Egypt, Lebanon and Pakistan, but earlier this year exited the cell phone business in Egypt when it sold its stake in Mobinil to Orange, a multinational telecom firm formerly known as France Telecom. In North Korea, OTMT operates Koryolink, the country’s only 3G mobile telecom firm. Sawiris, who owns liberal TV station ONTV in Egypt, added to his media holdings by recently buying a majority stake in France’s news channel Euronews.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<ol start="10">
<li>
<h3>Mike Adenuga</h3>
</li>
</ol>
<h3>$2.9 billion</h3>
<h3> Nigeria</h3>
<p>Mike Adenuga, Nigeria’s second richest man, built his fortune in telecom and oil production. His mobile phone company Globacom is now the second largest operator in Nigeria with more than 30 million subscribers and operations in Ghana and the Republic of Benin. In May 2016, Globacom made a $600 million bid for Ivorian mobile telecom operator Comium Cote d’Ivoire, which has been grappling with debt and cash flow problems; the outcome of the purchase offer is still pending. His exploration outfit, Conoil Producing, operates six oil blocks in the Niger Delta; weaker oil prices have led to a lower value for the private company. Adenuga studied in the United States in the 1980s, getting an MBA at Pace University in New York, where he worked as a taxi driver to support himself. He returned to Nigeria and made his first fortune trading lace and Coca-Cola. Along the way he made friends with Nigerian military bigwigs who awarded him lucrative state contracts, those formed the foundation of his fortune.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>


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