According to Forbes Magazine, 2024 was a good year for the uber-rich and the number of billionaires reached a record breaking 2,781 after the addition of 141 new names to the list bringing their combined wealth to 14.2 trillion dollars, 2 trillion more than the previous year and 1.1 trillion more than the previous record set in 2021.
Forbes crowned Bernard Arnault, who heads the lucrative LVMH empire, the richest man on earth for the second year in a row thanks to his 233 billion dollars. Elon Musk was rated second richest with 195 billion dollars followed by Jeff Bezos with his 194 billion dollars, Mark Zuckerberg with 177 billion dollars and Larry Ellison with 141 billion dollars.
The tech industry once again dominated the list of billionaires with a combined fortune of 2.6 trillion, up by 750 million dollars from the previous year.
There are 36 Israelis on Forbes billionaire list including five new names, four of whom are the founders of WIZ: Assaf Rappaport · Ami Luttwak · Yinon Costica · Roy Reznik, with 1 billion dollars each. The fifth newcomer is Roy Mann, founder of Monday.com with 1.3 billion dollars.
Hotel mogul David Fattal was back on the list after being demoted last year, and is now estimated to have 1.3 billion dollars.
The Richest among the Israeli billionaires is Eyal Ofer, with his 24 billion dollars, placing him at number 84 out of 100, followed by his brother Idan Ofer with 15.8 billion dollars. Both saw an increase of their fortunes in the past year.
Playrix founders brother Igor and Dimitry Bukhman are next among Israeli billionairs with 9 billion dollars each, followed by Teddy Sagi with 6.4 billion dollars, the Wertheimer family with 6.3 billion dollars and Yuri Milner whose fortune shrunk from 6.8 to only 5.9 billion dollars.
The richest Israeli woman on the Forbes list is Shari Arison whose estimated worth is 5.5 billion dollars, she is followed by Itzhak Tshuva with 4.5 billion dollars, Gil Shwed with 4.4 billion dollars and Shaul Shani with only 4.3 billion dollars.
Women make up only 13% of billionaires of Forbes' list. The richest among them is Loreal heiress Francoise Bettencourt Meyers with an estimated 99.5 million dollars. The richest self-made woman is Swiss shipping tycoon Rafaela Aponte with a fortune of 33.1 billion dollars.
The youngest on the list is the Brazilian 19-year old Livia Voigt who is still a college student and is estimated to have 1.1 billion dollars from her minority holdings in her Grandfather's WEG company.