Moscow, August 31 - Vesti.Ekonomika. Amancio Ortega, co-founder of the Spanish retail giant Inditex, ranked first on Forbes Real Time and became the richest person on the planet. Below are the top 5 richest people in the world.
1. Amancio Ortega
Net Worth: $85 billionAge : 81
Company : Zara
Country : Spain
Ortega was number one on the list three times, but he never stayed at number one for more than a day. The shares of the billionaire's company rose 1% on August 29.
Now he is richer than Bill Gates - the traditional leader of the rating - by $ 200 million. Currently, the fortune of the 81-year-old native of Spain is estimated at $ 85 billion. Over the past month, he has grown rich by $ 1.2 billion, but Gates also contributed to his promotion in the rankings. and Bezos have given up their positions.
Interesting Facts:
Amancio Ortega was born the son of a railroad worker, his mother worked as a servant for a wealthy family of German financiers.
Due to the poverty of the family, Amancio could not even finish high school and from the age of 13 he began working as a messenger in a shirt shop.
Then, in 1950, he was hired by the haberdashery La Maja, where his brother Antonio, sister Pepita, and later Rosalia Mera, who would become his first wife, already worked.
When Amancio was fourteen years old, the family moved to La Coruña (Galicia) following the transfer of his father there.
Here, at first, he was engaged in corrugating fabrics, then he took up drapery, and eventually became an apprentice with an Italian fashion designer.
The owner of the atelier once said to the father of the future fashion magnate: "You know, a tailor will not work out of him, a tailor should be easy, sociable."
In 1972, at the age of 37, Amancio opened his own knitwear factory called Confecciones GOA.
In 1975, a German partner unexpectedly canceled an order for a large batch of linen, in which Amancio had already invested all his free capital.
To save the business, the couple decided to sell clothes on their own and on May 15, 1975, they opened their own shop on one of the central streets of A Coruña called Zorba.
The store was originally named after their favorite character, Anthony Quinn from Zorba the Greek, but due to registration issues, the store was immediately renamed Zara.
In 1985, based on the Zara chain of stores, he created the Inditex corporation.
Amancio Ortega enjoys horseback riding and raising chickens.
2. Bill Gates
Age : 61
Company : Microsoft
Country: USA
Interesting Facts:
Gates attended Seattle's most privileged school, Lakeside, where he developed his programming skills on the school's minicomputer.
At the age of 13, Bill wrote his first program - the game "Tic-Tac-Toe" in the BASIC programming language.
With his friends, Gates was testing a PDP-10 computer from Digital Equipment Corporation, owned by Computer Center Corporation (CCC).
When Bill and his friend Paul's time at the CCC expired, they hacked into the program. For computer hacking, four students of the school - Rick Wayland, Kent Evans, Paul Allen and Bill Gates - were banned from working on computers throughout the summer.
The initiator of the punishment was the Computer Center Corporation, whose computer was hacked by the students. At the end of the punishment, the students offered the company to find bugs in their software for the opportunity to work on the company's computers.
The company agreed, and Gates and his comrades studied many software sources written in languages such as FORTRAN, LISP, and machine code. This collaboration continued until 1970, when the company went bankrupt.
3. Jeff Bezos
Age : 53
Company : Amazon.com
Country: USA
Interesting Facts:
When Jeff was 4 years old, his mother married Cuban immigrant Miguel Bezos, who adopted Jeff.
After graduating from Princeton University in 1986, Bezos worked on Wall Street in computer science.
After that, he was engaged in the development of a network for international trade.
He later took up the position of vice president of D. E. Shaw & Co, from which he left in the summer of 1994.
In 1994, Bezos founded the Amazon.com online store with an initial investment of $300,000.
The site was launched on July 16, 1995, although at that time it was not completely finished, for example, a negative number of books could be ordered on the site.
Bezos motivated this by the need to get ahead of competitors.
Bezos starred in one of the scenes of the movie "Star Trek: Infinity" as an alien.
4. Warren Buffett
Age : 87
Company : Berkshire Hathaway
Country: USA
Interesting Facts:
At the age of 11, Warren first tried his hand at the stock exchange. Together with his sister Doris, he bought three preferred shares of Cities Service for $38.25 each.
First, their price dropped to $27, then rose to $40, and Buffett sold them for a profit of $5 (less commission).
Curiously, a few days later, the share price rose to $202. If Buffett had waited, he could have made a profit of about $500.
This first experience taught Buffett that an investor should be patient and not panic if prices fall; do not sell for short-term gain; be sure of success if you invest other people's money (after the price drop, he felt guilty, as he risked his sister's money).
The initial capital of $ 10,000. Warren earned by implementing a successful business idea - pinball machines in hairdressing salons.
In June 2010, Buffett announced that he was donating more than 50% of his fortune, or about $37 billion, to five charitable foundations.
Most of the funds went to the fund managed by Bill and Melinda Gates. This act was the most generous act of charity in the history of mankind.
5. Mark Zuckerberg
Age : 33
Company : Facebook
Country: USA
Interesting Facts:
Mark Zuckerberg did not complete his higher education: in 2002 he entered Harvard University, where he studied at the Faculty of Psychology until 2004.
In parallel with this, Mark attended IT courses. He listed his area of interest as "C, C++, Java, Visual Basic, VBscript, JavaScript, PHP and ASP". Zuckerberg has repeatedly described himself as a hacker by vocation.
Together with Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskowitz, he began to create the social network Facebook. He was financially assisted by a student of Brazilian origin, Eduardo Saverin.
His attempts to remove Saverin from the management of the company in 2005 became the subject of legal proceedings.
With a 24% stake in Facebook, Inc., Mark Zuckerberg became the youngest billionaire in history.
In December 2015, Zuckerberg announced that he would donate nearly all of his fortune to charity. "We will give away 99% of our Facebook shares - currently about $45 billion - over the course of our lifetime to join many others to improve this world for the next generation," the billionaire wrote on his Facebook page.
On September 21, 2016, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan announced the launch of a new project within the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative - Chan Zuckerberg Science. The project is aimed at combating various diseases, $ 3 billion will be spent on it over 10 years.
On the Olympus of multibillionaires castling. For the first time in many years, Microsoft founder Bill Gates was in second place, and the leader of the list of the richest people in the world was 81-year-old Spaniard Amancio Ortega Gaona, founder of the Zara fashion empire, whose fortune exceeded $ 100 billion. The Spanish fashion designer outperformed not only Bill Gates, but also Jeff Bezos, the founder of the Amazon empire, Arab sheikhs, and Chinese nouveau riche.
Read the details of the biography of the billionaire, who has a reputation as the most secretive and mysterious person on the planet.
Millions of fans of the fashion brands Zara, Pull & Bear, Bershka and Massimo Dutti have hardly heard the name Amancio Ortega Gaon. Meanwhile, it was they who made Ortega the richest man in the world and the founder of a fashionable empire that covered more than eighty countries of the world. Even experienced fashion tycoons learned about the existence of Ortega only a decade and a half ago, because wealth, according to the principles of Amancio Ortega himself, does not at all mean a thirst for fame. And so he stubbornly refuses to communicate with the press, and from high society events. He did not even go to an appointment with the royal family, citing terrible employment.
The Law of Silence
Amancio Ortega Gaona was born on March 28, 1936 in the town of Buzdongo de Arbaz, in the Spanish province of León. He was the youngest, fourth child in the family of Antonio Ortega Rodriguez and Josephine Gaona Hernandez. His father was a stationmaster on the local railroad and an activist in the Republican Left Party.
In the same 1936, a civil war broke out in Spain, and the province of Leon, which had long dreamed of autonomy, was completely on the side of the rebel communists. The Sovereign Council of Asturias and León was formed, declaring sovereignty and secession of the provinces from Spain. And Antonio Ortega joined the Government of Asturias and León as Minister of Propaganda.
Win or die! POUM poster, 1936. Soldiers of the Spanish Republican Army. Photo: Wikipedia.org
The uprising was drowned in blood by the troops of General Franco. Soldiers from the division of General Lopez Ochoa, nicknamed the Butcher of Asturias, recruited in the African colonies, captured small towns and mercilessly exterminated all men - from infants to the elderly. Women and girls were raped. As the Spanish journalist Juan Simeon Vidart wrote, it was fashionable among African soldiers in those years to flaunt "necklaces" made from the cut off ears and genitals of captured communist soldiers. After such a total cleansing, many Spanish towns disappeared forever from the map of the country, as, for example, the town of Vega la Mosa, which was located near Buzdongo, was exterminated and abandoned.
After the defeat of the Sovereign Council of Asturias and León and the establishment of Franco's dictatorship, many communists were forced to flee the country. But Antonio Ortega fled to the west of the country - to the small town of Tolosa, hoping to get lost from the Francoist police in the Basque Country. It was then that Antonio introduced the iron law of silence for his children: not a single superfluous word to strangers.
Amancio Ortega followed this law all his life.
General Franco. Photo: Wikipedia.org
Already after the end of the Second World War, when General Franco ordered to stop the killings and persecution of the Spanish communists, Antonio Ortega decided to return from Tolosa to the mainland. Together with his family, he moved to the port city of La Coruña on the Atlantic coast. Antonio got a job as a simple worker in a railway depot, Josephine became an ordinary maid in a hotel, and the older children - the daughters of Pepita and Joseph and the son of Antonio - began to work as messengers in an atelier where men's shirts were sewn to order for wealthy clients. At the age of 13, young Amancio joined them.
bikini master
The first employer of Amancio - the owner of that very studio - once said to his father:
“You know, he won’t make a tailor, a tailor should be easy, sociable, a tailor should be able to please the client.
But young Amancio was not going to follow the lessons of a provincial couturier - gloomy, reserved and silent, he was completely different from a typical Spanish child, noisy and talkative. He remembered too well his father's stories about what these polite and smiling gentlemen would do to his family and to himself if they found out the truth about his past...
Therefore, Amancio preferred to remain silent. Only once, in an interview with his old friend Xavier Blanco, did he admit that the years of his childhood he remembered most of all for anger:
One day my mother and I were returning home and went to a local shop. My mother did not have money to buy me bread and milk, and she began to beg the owner to let her go on credit. But he, bursting into curses, drove us out the door. I swear, never in my life have I felt such anger and resentment. And I swore to myself that I would earn a lot of money so that my family would never be in need again.
At the age of 15, he left school and got a job as a salesman in the La Maja store. There he met Rosalia Mera Goinechea, who later became his business partner and first wife.
In 1960, 24-year-old Amancio became the manager of one of the clothing stores. Three years later, having accumulated enough money, he opens his first company - Confecciones GOA (his initials, if you read backwards). On the advice of his wife, he began to produce women's swimwear - during the years of the sex revolution, bikinis were the most popular clothing for women.
Things quickly went uphill, and his company turned into a family company. Amancio sewed swimwear at home according to his own patterns, his elder brother Antonio conducted commercial negotiations, and his sister Josefa was responsible for accounting.
In 1966, Amancio Ortega married Rosalia Mera, who two years later gave birth to his first daughter, Sandra. In 1971, the son Marcos was born, suffering from cerebral palsy from birth.
“The birth of Marcos forever changed the life of Amancio Ortega,” wrote his biographer Xavier Blanco. “The incurable illness of his son and heir was a fatal blow for him, from which he has not recovered even today, finding all his solace in work.”
Amancio founded the Amancio Ortega charitable foundation, directing huge amounts of money for scientific research that contributes to the search for methods of treatment for cerebral palsy and oncological diseases.
In 1975, a new blow followed - in the wake of the oil crisis, the demand for beach holidays dried up. In addition, it was in 1975 that the first medical reports appeared in the press about skin cancer, which provokes solar ultraviolet radiation. Many stores began to refuse his products, and Amancio Ortega's company was on the verge of bankruptcy.
And then Ortega decided to sell his own swimwear. With the rest of the money, he rents the first floor of a house in the heart of the city of A Coruña, and on May 15, 1975, the first Zara store opens. In fact, Amancio himself wanted to name his store Zorba - in honor of the character Anthony Quinn from the movie "Zorba the Greek", which collected three Oscars. But then it turned out that this name was already taken by other moviegoers, and Ortega had to change the name.
fast food fashion
“The goal of Zara was and remains the democratization of fashion,” Amancio Ortega himself formulated the principle of his company’s work. “In contrast to the generally accepted opinion that fashion is the privilege of the rich, we offer acceptable fashion inspired by the taste, passion and everyday life of modern men and women ".
The province of A Coruña was the perfect place for a sewing startup. Here, from time immemorial, men fished for cod in the sea, and their wives on the shore weaved linen and sewed clothes for all of Spain. Amancio Ortega, showing enviable acumen, created a conglomerate that controlled the entire production process - from a textile factory to ready-made clothing stores.
Today, businessmen exploring the phenomenon of the Zara empire cite three main components of the success of Ortega's companies: cheap labor, tremendous speed of production, and a unique distribution system.
First of all, Ortega relied on local peasants, or rather on hundreds of small workshops scattered throughout the poorest provinces of Spain and Portugal. Pensioners, single women, and often teenagers work in such workshops, receiving only 400-600 euros per month, despite the fact that the average salary of a worker in Spain is three times higher. But pensioners are happy about this - there is still no other work in these Spanish villages.
Surprisingly, even in our time, Ortega did not transfer clothing production to Southeast Asia. Of course, Chinese or Vietnamese tailors charge even less for their work than Pyrenean grandmothers, but for Ortega, not only low cost is important, but also the speed of production of fashionable clothes.
The fact is that today, clothing manufacturers, concerned about cost reduction, are forced to work in the difficult conditions of a global network economy, that is, for example, the fabric for sewing trousers is bought in China, the dyeing process takes place in Indonesia, but the trousers themselves are already sewn in Vietnam. As a result, most firms take from one to three months to complete the production cycle - from the development of an idea to the receipt of a thing in a store. At Zara, a full cycle takes only ten days, and for a fashion world in which new trends are set by TV series characters, as well as new videos of Justin Bieber or Taylor Swift, such speed is crucial.
However, ten days is not the limit. Legend has it at Zara that Amancio Ortega likes to personally call the design department of the company's headquarters to tell him what an amazing jacket with patches he just saw on some motorcyclist at a traffic light. By evening, a sketch of a new jacket should be on Amancio's desk, and in five to seven days new things should be hanging on store shelves.
Amancio Ortega for his tailoring industry came up with a new philosophy of fast fashion - fast fashion. Every week in Ortega stores, a third of clothing models are updated, which are not at all designed to last forever. Throw away your old stuff, buy something new!
Another fundamental point: just as the gloomy silent Ortega did not like to communicate with clients, he also does not like advertising for his company. Zara's main competitor, the Swedish concern H&M, annually spends more than five percent of its turnover on promoting its brand. Zara, on the other hand, spends no more than half a percent on advertising - Amancio Ortega believes that the best advertising for a fashion brand is the clothes themselves, which are worn by all peers. Therefore, he says, we would rather lower the prices of the things themselves than spend money on advertising.
Moreover, if competitors periodically hire popular fashion designers, such as Karl Lagerfeld or Roberto Cavalli, to create new collections, then Ortega stated on principle that he did not intend to attract any well-known designers. For what?! After all, Zara already builds its business on exact copying of the new models of the most fashionable couturiers in the world, and it does it completely free of charge!
Behind the brand brand
Zara's success was swift. Already in 1985, Ortega opened his first international store in Portugal. And on the basis of a chain of stores, he founded the Inditex holding.
In 1989, the Zara store appeared in New York, in 1990 - in Paris. In 1991, an explosive expansion of brands begins for all social and age groups: first, the teenage chain Pull and Bear is launched, then Massimo Dutti for older clients. In 1998, the Bershka chain of stores was created, then the Stradivarius brand and the Oysho brand, specializing in underwear, appeared.
In 2003, the first Zara store opened in Moscow.
Today, the total retail network of Inditex Corporation has over seven thousand stores in 88 countries around the world. Annual sales last year exceeded 20 billion US dollars.
However, Ortega invests not only in the production of clothing, but also in apartments and hotels in Madrid, Paris, London, Lisbon. For example, he owns The Epic Residences and Hotel in Miami, one of the most luxurious hotels in the United States. Not so long ago, Ortega also bought the 43-story Picasso Tower, the famous office center in Madrid.
At the same time, Amancio Ortega himself does not look like a typical millionaire. He still lives in A Coruña, dines in a working canteen, and never arranges banquets or social gatherings. His main place of residence is his factory.
The only exception is that Ortega owns The Global Express BD-700, a luxury private jet built by Bombardier. On this air "limousine" Amancio Ortega loved to fly around the world - among the billionaire's hobbies is the fact that he always personally chooses places for future stores. Ortega usually flies to another city, gets into a taxi and asks the driver to bring him to the center. There he walks around the area, makes a list of rooms for rent or for sale, then sits down in a cafe and just watches the flow of people. After that, he decides whether or not to open a store in the area.
True, after the plane nearly crashed over the Mediterranean Sea, Ortega lost interest in flying. Today the plane is rented out, and Amancio bought himself a farm outside the city and the Valoria yacht.
Pious Martha
In November 2001, all employees of the Bershka store, located in one of the shopping centers of A Coruña, were in a state of shock. What about store employees? The entire management of the Bershka chain was quite puzzled to learn that the modest saleswoman Marta Perez - a tanned 17-year-old dyed blonde, who for more than a year dutifully arranged boxes on the shelves - is actually their new mistress.
Marta turned out to be the youngest daughter of Amancio Ortega himself.
As is often the case, the companions of billionaires, who started a business from scratch with her husband, go astray in the middle of the race. Rosalia Mera did not escape this either. While his wife was preoccupied with the care of her sick daughter Marcos, Amancio became interested in an affair with his secretary Flora Perez Marcote, who in 1984 gave birth to his daughter Marta.
Ortega filed for divorce in 1986, paying Rosalia a fantastic alimony of $600 million in company stock. No one has ever paid such divorce sums in Spain.
In addition, Rosalia remained the director of the Amancio Ortega charity until her death in 2013 - she died of a stroke while relaxing with her daughter on the island of Menorca.
However, Ortega was in no hurry to marry Flora Perez, preferring to lead the life of a free bachelor.
Meanwhile, in 2001, having survived a heart attack, he thought about the heirs of his empire. The eldest daughter Sandra was clearly not suitable for the role of the boss: she raised three sons - Martinho, Antia and Uxia - and was absorbed in the work of the foundation. Then he decided that Marta should become his successor.
He officially formalized the marriage with Flora and began to gradually introduce his daughter to the course of business, starting from the lowest rung of the saleswoman, and Martha had to get a job in a store and honestly work for a year without any patronage. Then Marta went through all the career steps: she ran a store in London, did business in Shanghai and New York, and became a member of the board of directors of the Inditex empire. Now she lives again in A Coruña. In 2012, she married the Spanish equestrian star Sergio Alvarez Moya - Marta and is a professional jockey herself, for the sake of her daughter her father built her a personal equestrian club Casas Novas. True, lately she has rarely been in the saddle, torn between work meetings and the upbringing of her son, who was named after his grandfather - Amancio Ortega Alvarez.
For seven sorrows
The business world began to actively discuss the personality of Amancio Ortega in 2011, when the founder of Zara entered the top ten richest people in the world according to Forbes. Ortega was also recognized as the richest Spaniard, the second largest European in terms of capital. Ironically, in the same year, Ortega stepped down as chairman of the board of Inditex, formally retiring.
True, by that time doubts had already arisen in journalistic circles: is this Amancio Ortega, the sole creator of Zara, really real? Nobody saw his interview, and the number of photos could be counted on the fingers of one hand.
“I want the only people who recognize me on the street to be my family, friends and colleagues,” Ortega told the only journalist who managed to approach him literally for ten seconds and ask everyone a question of interest.
True, recently Ortega has been impossible to meet on the street - he spends all his time on the Valoria yacht. No cruises. Ortega moves away from the coast for a couple of miles and spends days reflecting on life in complete solitude.
Not quite sure if anyone can answer this question. Let's say we know exactly the fortune of Bill Gates, which is about 72 billion dollars. And these are just the official numbers. As for the wealth of countries, then everything is a little more complicated. It depends on what we mean when we say the wealth of the country. Countries are rich in their minerals, population, size of investments and so on. There are many states in the world that have a lot of these resources. Another question is how they use them. In light of these facts, probably most countries are richer than Bill Gates. If we take into account the country's budget, then there are other figures. I think that about a dozen countries can compare their income with the Bill ...
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John Rockefeller
Peak fortune: $318 billion (at the dollar rate at the end of 2007). Age at this time: 74
When John Rockefeller was young, he said that he had two dreams - to earn 100 thousand dollars and live to be 100 years old. He died 2 months before his 98th birthday. But Rockefeller coped with the first task with a bang.
John Rockefeller was born into a poor family. His father, William Avery Rockefeller, known by his nickname "Big Bill" was a helpless man who spent most of his time thinking about how to avoid hard work. His mother Eliza, a representative of the Baptist church from childhood, instilled in her son faith in God and a desire to work hard.
Rockefeller started out as a simple accountant, then was the owner of his small wholesale business, and went on to the founder of the largest oil company in the world - Standard Oil. His company went down in history as the largest monopoly in US history. Standard Oil owned...
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If you think that the Forbes Top 10 are the richest people in human history, you should carefully re-read the history books. So rich personalities previously lived on our planet that some modern billionaires seem to be financial modest against their background.
10. Genghis Khan
Years of life: 1162–1227 Homeland: Mongol Empire Assets: huge land fundOf course, Genghis Khan is one of the most famous military leaders in the history of mankind. He was the ruler of the Mongol Empire, which at one time occupied the territory from China to Europe.
Under the control of the great khan was the largest empire in history. However, researchers say that Genghis Khan did not use his position for his own enrichment. On the contrary, he consolidated his power with unheard-of generosity. It is known that the Mongol warriors were strictly forbidden to plunder the settlements of opponents. After the conquest of the city, every thing in...
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Image copyright AFP Image caption Bill Gates has topped Forbes' list of super-rich 16 times over the past 21 years
Bill Gates has been named the world's richest man for the 16th time by Forbes magazine.
The founder of Microsoft once again overtook Mexican businessman Carlos Slim, who took second place in the list of billionaires.
In a year, Gates' fortune grew by only $3 billion. As of February 13 this year, it was 79 billion.
According to Forbes, there are now a record number of billionaires in the world - 1826 people, 181 more than a year ago.
Over the past 21 years, Bill Gates has topped the Forbes list 16 times.
American investor Warren Buffett returned to third place with $72.2 billion from Amancio Ortega, founder of Spanish clothing firm Zara.
The top ten rich people of 2015 according to Forbes:
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Forbes magazine once again showed who is the richest in the world by publishing a list of the richest people in the world. As it turned out, Bill Gates, the founder and ex-head of Microsoft Corporation, retained the first line.
Gates is on the first position of the Forbes list for the fourth time (the third was last year). Bill Gates has been at the top of the Forbes ranking for about 18 years. Now his fortune is estimated at $ 86.8 billion. This is $ 9 billion more than Urren Buffett, who occupies the second position in the ranking. By the way, Microsoft's assets do not make up the bulk of Gates' capital.
In February, the entrepreneur said that he owns 174,992,934 shares of Microsoft. This is more than $11 billion in monetary terms and 13.1% of Gates' fortune. He himself sells millions of his shares each year. For ten years, the founder of Microsoft has sold several hundred million securities of the corporation. He's not doing this to get money to put on his...
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On March 20, at the age of 101, David Rockefeller, the grandson of the founder of the powerful Rockefeller dynasty, died in his home. At the time of his death, his fortune was estimated at three billion dollars. Although the name of David Rockefeller has never been listed in the top of the richest people on the planet (according to Forbes, he ranked 581st), nevertheless, incredible stories are associated with his figure about how he ruled the world through a secret organization of the same rich like-minded people. In any case, the grandson of the famous Rockefeller was an influential and powerful man, as well as an ardent supporter of globalization.
We want to recall 10 more examples of incredible wealth in the history of mankind. So who had more money - John Rockefeller or Genghis Khan? The answer to this simple question can be very, very complex, since these people lived in completely different financial systems. Throughout the history of human civilization, there were rich people who owned a huge fortune. But how to compare dollars and sable skins or Central Asian dinars and modern bitcoins?
This ranking of the richest people in the world is based on the research of leading economists, historians and financiers and is an attempt to compare the wealth of various historical figures. Despite the difficulty of such a comparison, this list more or less accurately ranks the wealthiest people in history and clearly shows the extent of their economic influence.
1. Genghis Khan
Lived: 1162-1227.
Country: Mongol Empire.
Wealth: a lot of land, a lot of land.
Genghis Khan is undoubtedly one of the most successful military leaders of all time. As the leader of the Mongol Empire, which at its height stretched from China to Europe, he controlled the largest empire in history. However, despite his great military power, Genghis Khan never amassed wealth and was a very generous ruler. The key to his success is the fact that he always shared with his commanders and gave them territories comparable in area to an average European country.
2. Bill Gates
Lived: 1955 - present.
Wealth: $78,900,000,000
The richest man alive, Bill Gates owns a fortune that is recalculated at least once a year. This year, Forbes estimates the net worth of the Microsoft founder at $78,900,000,000. That's eight billion more than Zara co-founder Amancio Ortega, who is listed as the second richest person in the world.
3. Alan Rufus
Lived: 1040-1093.
Country: England.
Wealth: $194,000,000,000
William the Conqueror's nephew Rufus joined his uncle in the course of the Norman Conquest. He died with a fortune of £11,000, or $194 billion in today's money.
4. John D. Rockefeller Sr.
Lived: 1839-1937.
Country: United States of America.
Wealth: $341,000,000,000
Rockefeller began investing in the oil industry in 1863, and by 1880 his Standard Oil Company controlled 90% of American oil production. As stated in Rockefeller's New York Times obituary, his net worth at the time of his death was estimated at $1.5 billion based on a 1918 federal tax return.
Lived: 1835-1919.
Country: United States of America.
Wealth: $372 billion.
Andrew Carnegie may be considered the richest American of all time. This Scottish immigrant propelled JP Morgan to a value of $480 million in 1901, equivalent to about just over 2.1% of US GDP.
Lived: 1878-1953.
Country: USSR.
Wealth: Complete control of a country with 9.6% of global GDP.
Stalin is a special figure in modern economic history: a dictator with absolute power who also controlled one of the largest economies in the world. While it is nearly impossible to separate Stalin's wealth from that of the Soviet Union, Stalin's unique combination of economic power and complete control over the USSR makes him one of the richest men of all time.
Lived: 1542-1605.
Country: India.
Wealth: An empire with 25% of the world's GDP.
An Indian emperor from the Mughal dynasty, Akbar ruled an empire that generated about one quarter of the world's GDP. Belonging to the Indian elite imposed its own rules of conduct on Akbar, so the fame of the luxurious life of the minion of fate outlived him for a long time.
Lived: 1048-1085.
Country: China.
Wealth: Empire from 25% to 30% of global GDP.
Song Dynasty China (960-1279) was one of the most economically powerful empires of all time. According to Professor Ronald A. Edwards, a historian of the Chinese economy, China of that time produced 25 to 30% of all output at the time. The emperor had a huge set of tools to control the economy, which is why he entered our rating.
Lived: 63 BC - 14 AD
Country: Rome.
Wealth: $4.6 trillion.
It was not only Augustus Caesar who led the empire, which accounted for 25 to 30% of the world's total production. But only he managed to control the wealth equivalent to one-fifth of the total capital of the Roman Empire. With current money, this amount will be equal to 4.6 trillion dollars.
Year: 1280-1337.
Country: Mali.
Wealth: richer than anyone could describe.
Mansa Musa, king of Timbuktu, is often referred to as the richest man in history. History professor Richard Smith describes Musa's kingdom as the largest gold mining operation in world history. But how rich was Musa himself? Many remember his pilgrimage to Mecca, when his generous donations caused an economic crisis in Europe, and camel caravans, loaded to the top with gold, stretched from horizon to horizon.
