By
Godfrey Benjamin
April 18th, 2024
The 2010s was the decade of the unicorn startups and the billionaires. The number of billionaires more than tripled. One became a president. Here are some of the biggest names over the last ten years.
This year was pretty good for one of the most famous world’s billionaires. However, the whole decade seems to finish even better. Take Warren Buffett for example. He is ending the year with a net worth of approximately $89 billion, up around $42 billion since 2010 and making him the seventh-biggest billionaire gainer of the past 10 years. Let it also be known that the Oracle of Omaha never sold any Berkshire Hathaway, and about 98% of his fortune is made up only of the company’s shares.
But, it isn’t only Buffett to whom 2019 was a fruitful year. Still, he is the one famous for his never-ever let go strategy. Be that as it may, this kind of “hodling” has worked for others too. If you look back at the decade’s biggest gainers – you can see that they are approximately $40 billion richer than it was the case in 2010. Altogether the ten richest added a brutal $555 billion to their wealth. All of the aforementioned are founders of successful companies or long-term executives, past and present. Same as Buffett, they mostly didn’t sell stakes in those companies.
For example, take ex. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer who gave in his chair to current chief executive Satya Nadella in February 2014. However, he always stayed faithful to the technology giant and is known for saying: “I bleed Microsoft – have for 34 years and I always will. The company will move to higher heights. I will be proud, and I will benefit through my share ownership,” he stated when he was stepping down a few months later.
The actual fact is that eight of the ten biggest gainers get 80% or more of their fortune from shares in firms they founded or were leading. Except for Ballmer and Buffett, we shouldn’t forget the gainers of the “newer generation” as are Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. The latter is also the best performer of the decade (despite going through the most expensive divorce in history). Since 2010 he earned more than $97.4 and is now the richest person in the world, up from number 43 at the start of the decade.
Chinese Emperor’s Name is Ma, Jack Ma
There is also Jack Ma, who has around 60% of his fortune in Alibaba, the e-commerce behemoth he founded 20 years ago with only $60,000.
Alibaba’s listing on the New York Stock Exchange back in 2014 was the largest IPO ever until this month Saudi Aramco’s took the lead. 9% of Ma’s net worth comes from the firm’s fintech subsidiary, Ant Financial, pronounced the world’s most valuable unicorn, worth $150 billion. Back in 2010, Ma had only $1.2 billion.
Be it as it may, one of the richest people in the world decided not to hold the majority of his wealth in only one stock. Bill Gates has sold or given away most of the Microsoft shares stock that made him rich and decided to form a more diversified portfolio. During this decade, his wealth grew by $54.6 billion.
Among the other biggest gainers of the decade are Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Alphabet, Amancio Ortega of Inditex (parent of Zara), Bernard Arnault of LVMH.