America's 400 Wealthiest Billionaires Are Worth $4.5 Trillion In 2021 | Forbes

the four of 400 is a list of the 400 richest people in america this is the 40th annual list forbes started it in 1982. the richest person back in 1982 when we did the list was worth 2 billion so this year the 400 members all together are worth a whopping 4.5 trillion dollars that's up from 3.2 trillion a year ago it's a really huge number it's hard to even imagine what a trillion dollars is but the stock market increases in companies like amazon and facebook and google alphabet have just pushed the particularly the very richest of the rich up to stratospheric levels [Music] so jeff bezos is number one richest at 201 billion dollars is the first time we've had somebody worth more than 200 billion on the forbes 400. behind him at number two is elon musk whose net worth has just rocketed in the past year because of the growth in the value of tesla stock and then at number three is mark zuckerberg this is the first year since the early 1990s that bill gates has not been in number one or number two spot so bill gates is at number four below zuckerberg bill gates's fortune has shrunk a little bit because of the divorce with that he got divorced um this year and he transferred a little bit less than six billion dollars worth of his stock to melinda french gates his ex-wife so that's probably knocked him down a little bit in the rankings it's possible that bill gates has transferred even more of his assets to melinda they're not talking they have a secret separation agreement we know about this transfer of assets because there have been public filings of stocks that gates has owned bill gates has owned a bunch of um but it could be he could be transferring other assets where there's no public records available and they're not talking so hopefully we'll find out more about that in the future but melinda is new to the list um because of the divorce she's worth about six billion dollars the google founders larry page and sergey brin um follow right behind bill gates and then larry allison and then warren buffett new in the top 20 for the first time um are stephen schwartzman the founder of um co-founder of blackstone whose shares of like more than nearly doubled in the past year and then also lynn blavatnik who is a soviet-born entrepreneur who's a big investor in warner music and also um chemicals company lion del blasel and many other assets this year we saw a lot of new people on the list we've had 44 newcomers which is pretty amazing because to get onto the forbes 400 list it took a fortune of 2.9 billion dollars which is the highest cutoff we've ever had and it's 800 million dollars more than a year ago so for the past few years it's taken 2.1 billion to get on the list and so when you get to number 400 that person is at 2.9 billion so it's it's kind of crazy so that means a lot of people who dropped off didn't necessarily get poorer there's but they just got passed by by folks who are whose stocks are going crazy some of the newcomers are in growing fields um like cryptocurrency and one of the most prominent newcomers is a 29 year old sam bankman freed sam bakeman freed is based in hong kong and has started cryptocurrency exchange and also a crypto um company and he's signing up high profile athletes tom brady and steph curry and the like to be spokespeople for his company for ftx he wants to get as rich as possible so that he can give it all away but he hasn't started giving away very much yet so we'll see where it goes but we have a super interesting story about him um on the cover of the magazine we have um electric vehicle billionaire r.j scarange his company is rivien which has gotten a large order of vehicles from amazon he's worth 3.4 billion dollars that's the company's still private although it is filed to go public um and so it will go public in in the future the most prominent drop-offs for this year's 400 are donald trump and oprah winfrey basically neither of them got a whole lot poorer in fact they're either flatter or higher than they were a year ago but it's just that everyone else got so much richer and kind of passed them by a couple other um interesting drop-offs um jim koch behind sam adams beer um boston brewery they had made a big bet on their seltzer i should say hard seltzer that's called truly with sales of which kind of plummeted this year and the stocks down about 50 so the interesting thing about um this year's of the force 400 most people's net worth is up there only a few people's net worth dropped and then even of the drop-offs many people are flat but not that many people who fell i mean the main thing is just the the shocking increase in how rich the richest americans have gotten and the fact that so many are are worth more than a year ago and we also looked at um philanthropy so we have for each member of the list we have a philanthropy score and the score is based on how much of their net worth they have given away and that's not how much they've given to their own private foundations but how much like if they have you know the bill and melinda gates foundation or somebody has a foundation in their own name how much is that foundation given so we're looking at out the door giving how much has gotten from to into the hands of you know non-profit organizations who are using the money as opposed to sitting in a foundation you know of course as your net worth increases people's people's giving is not increasing at the rate that their net worth is increasing it's sort of what that says um we don't have scores for all of the people on the list there's some people for whom we don't know anything about their philanthropic giving and they don't want to tell us and so it could be that they're not doing any or that they're doing it anonymously we don't know but it's possible to to be an anonymous donor we just we don't know at a time where we're still like the global pandemic is not over you know the delta variant certainly made things worse across the country in a lot of states and so it's a little bit of a disconnect for us to see you know news about people dying of cove and people being hospitalized with covid hospitals being overwhelmed with covered patients and and yet the you look at the stock market and that's sort of not reflected in that at all um that these people are getting richer than ever and some of them are you know hiding out on on their yachts in off of the coast of fiji and you know being able to separate themselves from the masses because they can afford to do so stocks up everybody's net worth is up so the question is will the stock market stay where it is and if it does or if it keeps rising we'll see more billionaires we certainly have seen a lot of of ipos of of companies that have minted new billionaires even just in the past month um so we could see more of that going forward but i think it's really the key for the future of billionaires wealth and the number of billionaires is tied to the performance of the stock market you

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Length: 8min 1sec (481 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 05 2021