FIVE SOUTH AFRICANS AMONG WORLD’S BILLIONAIRES
Forbes has recently published its annual Billionaires List and this year’s list features five South Africans.
The list contains the names of the 250 richest people in the world.
The richest man in South Africa, Johann Rupert, has an estimated net worth of $8.9 billion. Since last year’s list has been published, Rupert’s wealth grew by 25% from $7.1 billion.
Closely behind Rupert is fellow South African Nicky Oppenheimer with a fortune of $8.7 billion.
On 2022’s list, Rupert came in at number 230 and Oppenheimer at 241.
Business Tech reports that South Africa’s other billionaires include familiar names on the list. Mineral resources boss Patrice Motsepe saw his fortune grow by $400 million over the period, while Capitec founder Michiel le Roux has cemented his place on the ranking with his net worth growing to $1.8 billion.
Local media mogul Koos Bekker suffered a major loss over the last year. His wealth declined by 23% from $3 billion to $2.3 billion.
Commenting on a global scale, Forbes said that “the most dramatic drops have occurred in Russia, where there are 34 fewer billionaires than last year following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and China, where government crackdown on tech companies has led to 87 fewer Chinese billionaires on the list.
South African born Elon Musk has made it to the top of the list followed by Jeff Bezos, Bernard Arnault, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet.
For the first time since making the list, Meta founder and owner Mark Zuckerberg has fallen out of the top 10. He is currently ranked at number 15.
Image credit: Forbes