Chidi Okereke
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Michael Bloomberg – $53.3 billion
Industry: Media
Michael Bloomberg wears many hats – Entrepreneur, philanthropist and politician. He was a partner at Salomon Brothers, a Wall Street investment bank, before he started his own company in 1981. Today, Bloomberg L.P. is a global financial services, mass media, and software company that is notable for its Bloomberg Terminal – a computer software system providing financial data widely used in the global financial services industry. This conglomerate has now grown to be worth $45 billion with more than 100 offices worldwide.
From 2001, he served as Mayor of New York for 3 terms before returning to the boardroom.
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Larry Ellison – $61.3 billion
Industry: Software
Larry Ellison was born in New York, to an unwed Jewish mother and an Italian American US Army pilot. After Ellison contracted pneumonia at the age of 9 months, his mother gave him to her aunt and uncle for adoption. He did not meet his biological mother again until he was 48.
He moved from Chicago to California after dropping out of college (twice), and worked several jobs where he learned about computer programming, including one where he helped build a database for the CIA. In 1977, he and two co-workers left the company to found Oracle, which became the world’s most popular database. He was the CEO from its founding until September 2014. He is now the Executive Chairman and CTO of the corporation.
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Carlos Slim Helu – $68.6 billion
Industry: Telecommunications, banking, retail
Mexican business tycoon Carlos Slim Helú is the richest person in Mexico, and owns more than 200 companies in industries ranging from banking to retail to telecommunications. The 77-year-old owns America Movil, the largest mobile phone company in Latin America, as well as the Grupo Carso conglomerate company, which includes a host of retailers and restaurants, among other companies. He accounts for 40% of the listings on the Mexican Stock Exchange, while his net worth is equivalent to about 6 percent of Mexico’s gross domestic product.
In 2010 he displaced Bill Gates as the richest man in the world and stayed on top till 2013, before the tech guys returned with a vengeance.
