Monday Blues, Ep. 6

A few days ago, Forbes magazine released its 2010 List of Billionaires. This is a prestigious list that is generated yearly based on various factors including a person’s cash flow, personal property valuation and stakes in various business ventures or companies. In some cases some of those who made the list even provided copies of personal bank statements.

There are 1,011 persons who made this year’s list which is an increase from 793 persons on 2009’s list. The combined net worth of all billionaires listed this year is approximately US$3.56 Trillion.

While browsing this year’s list, I realized the following facts:

  • The youngest billionaire is 25-year-old Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg from the United States
  • The oldest billionaire is 99-year-old business entrepreneur Walter Haefner from Switzerland
  • 403 billionaires are United States citizens with 396 of them having active current residence in the United States
  • China has the second highest number of billionaires at 64

The technology industry has always had a presence on this yearly list. Most would normally expect to find well-known names such as Bill Gates, Michael Dell and Sergey Brin and Larry Page to be mentioned. However, I want to make mention of the following billionaires who made this year’s list and are heavily affiliated with technology:

  • Yoshikazu Tanaka – Founder of the social networking site in Japan, Gree
  • Robin Li – co-founder of China’s most popular search engine Baidu
  • Jack Ma – founder of the the world’s largest online business-to-business trading platform Alibaba
  • Shi Yuzhu – founder of Giant Interactive, one of China’s most successful online game companies

Achieving billionaire status is truly an achievement especially taking into consideration the world’s current state of economy in the last few years. Who do you think will be new to this list in 2011?