Forbes Dropping Billionaires with Few Overperformers
A year of steady losses. Of the 793 billionaires on Forbes’ 2009 Billionaire List, 656 lost money while 44 surprisingly added multi-millions in the downturn. Bill Gates returned to the top position ($40B net worth, down $18B) with Warren Buffett ($37B, down $25B) and Carlos Slim ($35B, down $25B) changing the first three seats. From a list of 1,125 billionaires recently, and $1.4T (that’s “trillion“) lost, we’ll look at a few of the past year’s success stories – and offer discussion and links to how those few overperformed.
Of those successful, some highlights of the Forbes’ billionaires who made good, i.e., did better than well, in 2008:
- Michael Bloomberg: $16B, up $4.5B or 28% with revaluation and buyback of Bloomberg LP. Smart media titan with an automated and highly licensed platform. The ‘Steve Jobs’ innovator of financial systems, and a dynamic politician. Think Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi without the courtroom attentions.
- James Simons: $8B, up $2.5B; ex-mathematician’s fund up 80% last year, uses algorithms to exploit stock marketing inefficiencies.
- Georges Soros: $11B, up $2B; currency trader, warned of the 25-year “super bubble” and steered his $20B Quantum Endowment right. A great philanthropist with a legacy of long-term planning. Time to get his ear on when the crisis corrects, and how much innovation plays a role.
- John Paulson: $6B, up $3B; hedge funder who pocketed $3.5B in 2007 on sub-primes, biggest one-year payday ever on Wall Street. Paulson has been around for a while, but with such a glory year, it will be interesting to understand how he outperformed. Good read in Portfolio on his keeping a low profile after his banner year.
- Tadashi Yadai + Family: $6B, up $2.4B; Japan’s richest man whose discount clothing group (Japan’s “Gap”) is up 36%. Budget retailers of faux-luxury fashion (Forever 21, Zara, H&M, Top Shop) appear likely to continue to build in 2009. Luxury that remakes itself, while retaining its high-end branding, will be the industry to watch for the next 2-3 years.
- Added Bonus: Guy Laliberte: $2.4B, up $800M; Cirque de Soleil owner and former street performer, smartly passed on selling half of his company for $1B. Great Forbes pull-out article on Laliberte. Believes strongly that entertainment is “the last industry to go under, and the first to recover.”
Techcrunch, as expected, has a great chart/breakdown of the 2009 versus 2008 tech (and media) billionaires. Below, a few of the highlights from the 40 billionaires with $203.4B net worth and $81.5B lost:
- Larry Ellison (Oracle), a close #4: $22.5B, down $2.5B
- Sergey Brin (Google): $12B, down $6.7B
- Larry Page (Google): $11B, down $4B
- Jeff Bezos (Amazon): $6.8B, down $1.4B
- Eric Schmidt (Google): $4.4, down $2.2B
- Pierre Omidyar (Ebay): $3.6, down $4.4B
- Steve Jobs (Apple): $3.2B, down $2B
- Mark Cuban (Yahoo!/Broadcast): $3.2B, down $300M
- Jeff Skoll (Ebay/Participant Media): $1.8B, down $1.8B
- Omid Kordestani (Google): $1.4B, down $800M
- Todd Wagner (Y!/Broadcast): $1.3B, down $200M
- Sumner Redstone (Viacom): $1B, down $5.8B
- Barry Diller (IAC): $1B, down $300M