Ernesto Bertarelli, the Swiss former owner of biotech firm Serono, and his family are the wealthiest people in Switzerland, according to Forbes magazine’s 2014 list of the world’s billionaires.
The 48-year-old Italian-born founder of the Alinghi yachting syndicate has an estimated net worth with his family of $12 billion (CHF10.6 billion), the business magazine says, putting them in 92nd place worldwide.
The list of 1,645 billionaires, released on Monday, includes 21 Swiss billionaires. Medical device entrepreneur Hansjörg Wyss, who lives in the United States, is ranked as the second wealthiest ($10.5 billion), followed by Zurich resident Margarita Louis-Dreyfus ($8.1 billion), chairman of the French commodities giant Dreyfus.
Fourteen of the Swiss billionaires either have such low profiles or are so discreet that Forbes does not show photos of them.
The Swiss billionaires include the three daughters of industrialist and rightwing politician Christoph Blocher. Rahel Blocher, Magdalena Martullo-Blocher and Miriam Blocher, principal shareholders in EMS-Chemie, have a collective fortune estimated by Forbes at $6.9 billion.
Feeling poor?
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is back on top of the list. Gates, 58, who has led the list for 15 of the past 20 years, won the spot back from Mexican telecom mogul Carlos Slim, who had been in pole position for the past four years. Gates’ net worth is estimated at $76 billion, Slim’s at $72 billion.
Spanish clothing magnate Amancio Ortega, known for the Zara retail chain, maintained his third-ranked spot and came out ahead of US investor Warren Buffett, who ranked fourth. Larry Ellison of Oracle came in fifth.
Forbes says a record 1,645 billionaires made the list this year, with an average net worth of $4.7 billion. That’s up from 1,426 billionaires last year with a net worth of $4.2 billion. Total net worth of this year’s list was $6.4 trillion, up from $5.4 trillion last year.
The magazine said that 1,080 of the billionaires were self-made, 207 inherited their wealth and 352 inherited a portion but are still growing it.
Winners and losers
The largest net worth gainer on the list was Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, who more than doubled his fortune to $28.5 billion as the value of his company’s stock soared. He ranks 21st on the list.
The social media giant helped bring a few notable newcomers to the list, including Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg and WhatsApp founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton, who recently sold their business to Facebook for $19 billion.
The year’s biggest loser was Brazilian Eike Batista, whose net worth decreased from $10.6 billion in 2013 to less than $300 million, causing him to drop off of the list. Large debt payments cut into his cash reserves, while stock in his publicly traded natural resources companies plummeted
Forbes said 268 billionaires were new to the list, beating out a prior high of 226 newcomers in 2008. And a record number of women made the list this year, with 172 women joining, up 25% from last year.
The highest ranked woman on the list, Wal-Mart heiress Christy Walton, featured in ninth position, with a net worth of $36.7 billion.
The US was the country with the greatest number of billionaires at 492, followed by China with 152 and Russia with 111. Billionaires joined from four new countries: Algeria, Lithuania, Tanzania and Uganda.