Category: Billionaires

Many people imagine that being fabulously wealthy means living a life of excess and grandeur, buying luxury homes, cars, and traveling the world. While this may be how many of the world’s richest people spend their cash, philanthropic billionaires like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet donate over half of their incomes to causes. But just how much impact can their fortunes have on society? Could billionaires solve the world’s problems?

Many of the biggest issues faced today are simply too large and complex for one person, or even group, to solve on their own. No single one person can change the course of climate change or world hunger, for example.

But could the 2,208 billionaires solve the world’s problems together? Or at least, some of them? Could they eradicate issues like credit card debt, homelessness or the rising cost of living? While money can’t buy happiness, the very wealthy may have the capital to spread just a little to someone else.

Could Billionaires Solve the World’s Problems?

Self Lender did the math to see which problems the world’s billionaires could solve if they got together. With an average net worth of $4.1 billion each, the top 500 billionaires have a combined net worth of $5.38 trillion. And there are some major problems that this wealth could solve, including wiping out credit card debt, solving homelessness, and granting healthcare to all. Check it out:

It’s pretty clear that a lot of money goes a long way. Whether or not the majority of the world’s billionaires feel inclined to spend their wealth on others in another issue entirely.

Featured image from Shutterstock.

Rock Holdings, the company, owned by Detroit billionaire Dan Gilbert, announced that it had purchased both Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com from InterActiveCorp (IAC), a media firm based in New York. The terms of the deal are still unknown, at press time.

Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com were launched in 1995, and they offer the public free access to a catalog of words, phrases, abbreviations, and much more. The site’s major income stream flows from online adverts.

The press release from Rock Holdings Inc. took a jab at readers that might downplay the importance of a dictionary. It stated:

“The annexations of Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com append a prodigious coterie of inestimable content proprietaries to Rock Holdings and its affiliated companies such as Rocket Mortgage, ForSaleByOwner.com, LowerMyBills, StockX, the Cleveland Cavaliers, Robb Report, and Genius, among others.”

Rock Holdings is also the parent company of Quicken Loans, a mortgage giant, and other financial service firms owned by the 56-year-old Gilbert.

Dan Gilbert Also Owns a Hotel and Casino

Gilbert, who has a personal net worth of $6.6 billion, also announced on Wednesday that he was selling the Greektown Hotel and Casino in Detroit for $1 billion.

The Detroit-based billionaire, who also has holdings in Cleveland (most notably his ownership of the Cleveland Cavaliers) and Cincinnati, bought the casino five years ago through his company JACK Entertainment.

The hotel is being acquired by casino company Penn National Gaming and VICI Properties, a New York-based company that serves as an offshoot of Caesars Entertainment. Penn will provide payments of $300 million for the hotel and casino while VICI has made a $700 million commitment to purchase the land.

In addition to all of this, VICI also agreed to lease the property to Penn for a 15-year period, with an annual rent of $55.6 million being remitted.

Speculations have been rife regarding what he plans to do with his proceeds, with reports claiming that he might make a move for The Detroit Tigers, a Major League Baseball franchise.

The Tigers are valued at $1.2 billion and are owned by the Litch family. Although they came out in September to say that they weren’t looking to sell the club, it wouldn’t be so much of a surprise if Gilbert snatched them up, knowing his penchant for making deals.

The purchase of Greektown is the latest in a series of purchases made by Penn National, which also recently made a $2.8 billion acquisition of Pinnacle Entertainment. In total, Penn now has a stake in 41 gaming ventures across 19 states.

Featured image by Wikipedia.

We all know that British billionaire and serial entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson likes to back innovation. Just last month, the winners of the Extreme Tech Challenge (XTC) held by Sir Richard Branson on his own private island in the Caribbean were announced. Now he’s upping the stakes and backing the Global Cooling competition jointly with the Indian government to find a breakthrough in air-conditioning technology.

Cooling Systems Demand Is Rising

As the planet population swells and the median income rises, there’s a higher demand for air cooling systems than ever before. And that’s a problem for the climate. That means more pollution, greater energy spend, and a higher use of refrigerants such as hydrofluorocarbons which are harmful to the environment.

Contestants of the Global Cooling competition will be expected to come up with a more economic and less harmful way of providing indoor cooling systems to meet the growing demand.

There are approximately 1.2 billion air conditioning systems installed around the world today. As living standards improve across developing continents, that number is expected to rise to 4.5 billion by 2050.

If we carry on using the same technologies for a/c systems we could raise the global temperature by 0.5% according to the Rocky Mountain Institute. Air conditioning has been flagged up by the International Energy Agency for being one of the largest yet most overlooked threats on climate change moving forward.

Inspiring a Solution through the Global Cooling Competition

The competition for innovative cooling systems initiated by Sir. Branson and the Indian government will hand out $3 million in prizes. $2 million will be shared among the top 10 participants with the most innovative and practical ideas, with at least $1 million reserved for the winner. Although, participants stand to win much more than that if their system becomes licensed and commercially successful.

The problem is not an easy one to solve, however, and the infamous entrepreneur recognized that it may not bring about a solution. However, the competition should at least start to encourage people to look for a solution and raise awareness about the issue. He said:

“If we don’t do something about the growing global impact of air conditioning on our climate today, it will derail our best attempts to meet the Paris Agreement goal on emissions.”

Since some 3.5 billion of the new air conditioning units are expected to be installed in India, the government felt its responsibility to take part. While competitions like this have had some success in the past, others are still trying to overcome a problem.

In 2011, Bill Gates launched his Reinvent the Toilet challenge and is still trying to scale up a suitable solution today. Let’s hope Branson has more luck with this one.

Featured image by Shutterstock.

The salmon farming business owned by Gustav Magnar Witzøe has delivered strong third-quarter results, elevating its share price and increasing the wealth of the world’s third youngest billionaire at 25 years old.

Witzøe controls over 52% of one of the largest producers of farmed salmon – SalMar, through his 97% ownership of SalMar shareholder Kverva.

SalMar has exceeded analyst’s expectations delivering revenue growth and cost savings, according to its quarterly report on Friday. SalMar’s third-quarter revenue for 2018 is up to around $213 million from just over $200 million for the same period last year.  Operating profit for Salmar has reached around $111 million for the quarter compared to around $95 million last year.

Olav-Andreas Ervik, SalMar’s CEO, referring to this year’s healthy salmon crops said:

“Efficient operations and a strong biological performance have helped SalMar deliver a strong financial result. This achievement has been made possible by the dedication and hard work of our employees, whose efforts have contributed to lower costs, good price achievement and increased efficiency in our harvesting and processing plants.”

Based in Frøya, Norway, SalMar owns 100 licenses for the production of Atlantic salmon in the country and operates commercial salmon farming operations as well as processing and selling the fish.

Overnight Million Dollar Gains for Witzøe

SalMar’s share price jumped by 4% immediately on Friday after the release of the results, then continued to rise during trading to achieve over 10% gains.

The growth delivered billionaire owner Witzøe an overnight increase to his stock value of $332 million. The company has seen steady and significant growth, 84% overall to date, across 2018, on the Norwegian Oslo Børs stock exchange.

Witzøe, avoiding inheritance tax, was transferred the bulk of his father’s company shares in 2011 when he was just 19. He’s reportedly earned the equivalent of over $2 billion over 2018.

The young billionaire also models professionally and has recently invested in Norwegian social media startup Gobi.

Whatever the results of the US midterms, one thing that was hard to miss is the obscene amount of money spent by candidates and election donations in the whole exercise. According to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), the 2018 midterm elections were the most expensive congressional election in US history.

With an estimated total bill of $5.2 billion, they even surpassed the 2016 election figures which were just over $4 billion.

It’s true that elections are often awash with money and the candidates running have the strong backing of influentials. Billionaire candidate, J.B. Pritzker, who just became the next Illinois governor spent a whopping $171.5 million of his own fortune for his campaign.

His opponent, Republican Bruce Rauner, a private equity billionaire, spent almost $60 million of his own money in the race. J.B. Pritzker, a venture capitalist, and Hyatt Hotel heir also dethroned Donald Trump as the richest American politician with a net worth of estimated $3.2 billion.

The trend to openly acknowledge the use of money to influence the electorate has been widely known for some time, but this particular strategy doesn’t work every time works and in 2016 it failed to sway the results in favor of the candidate.

Hillary Clinton spent almost $768 million on her unsuccessful presidential campaign, twice as much as Trump who spent $368 million.

The US elections have more become like a battle of billionaires who can create influence over the elected person and promote their field of interest.

Just like in the case of Michael Bloomberg, who made political donations of $38 million in the US midterms to flip the House of Representative towards Democrats and also promote causes like climate changes, anti-gun, and education policies.

Michael Bloomberg is not alone, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, heads of an international casino empire, topped the chart with $113 million donations and were also the largest individual donor in 2016 Trump campaign.

Thomas Steyer and Kathryn Taylor, staunch supporters of Democrats for decades gave nearly $50.7 million in donations.

The biggest billionaire loser in this race was Donald Trump himself, who helped to rake in millions in private donations through his friends for Republicans, and now has to deal with both split Congress and the new leadership in the house to pass his policies.

So what drives the billionaires and rich people into politics? According to a senior fellow at Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business, it’s more like a power trip for these billionaires, who have achieved all their materialistic goals and now want to experience real power. They said:

It’s psychic satisfaction for megalomaniacs.

In politics, you can sway millions in your favor and this is the place where they can experience a real power game.

Featured image from Shutterstock.

As the US midterms battle between Republicans and Democrats has been heating up, literally billions of dollars have been plowing into both parties to fund candidate campaigns across America.

The 2018 midterms are expected to be the most expensive in US history to date with funding estimated to top $5.2 billion. An increase of 35% on the 2014 midterm elections, according to reporting by the Guardian and statistics from the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP).

The CRP found individual donations account for much of the funding, over 60% for both Senate and House candidates.

Big donors to US politics, whether ethical or not, do influence elections and in turn the creation of public policy which may suit their agendas. Ian Vandewalker of the Brennan Center for Justice said:

“Just being rich and being able to write million-dollar checks gets you influence over elected officials that’s far greater than the average person.”

Of an analysis conducted of the top 20 spenders less than a week before today’s elections, here are five surprising million-dollar donors.

1. Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos – $10.1 Million

As the richest person in the world, and an American, it’s perhaps no wonder that Jeff Bezos has decided to exert some influence in the world of US politics. He’s also ranked fifth in the world’s most “Powerful People 2018,” by Forbes.

With a net worth of $134.6 billion, Bezos has donated just over $10 million to the US 2018 midterms. It’s the first time Bezos has donated such a sum in the midterms and it could well have been triggered by US President Trump’s criticisms both of Amazon and Bezos to the owner of the Washington Post.

That said, Bezos’s donations have been largely non-partisan. Most of them have gone to a non-partisan political action committee (Pac) called the “With Honor Fund.” The fund is dedicated to supporting veterans in elections and creating a less polarized government. Bezos also donated $5,400 to his local Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell.

Bezos’s wife, author MacKenzie Bezos has been making smaller donations to candidates and Pacs for much longer. She also founded the anti-bullying organization “Bystander Revolution,” in 2014 and is the Executive Director.

2. Timothy Mellon – $10 Million

Timothy Mellon is the grandson of entrepreneur and politician Andrew Mellon, born in 1855 and dying in 1937. Before politics, he built the vast Mellon family empire with investments in steel, shipbuilding, and coal. A conservative and Republican, Andrew Mellon was also an influential donor to the Republican Party. Timothy Mellon owns Pan Am Systems and is worth around $1 billion. Most of his contributions go to the Congressional Leadership Fund Pac and to Republican candidates.

Surprisingly, for the 2018 midterms, Timothy Mellon has also donated $2,700 to 29-year-old, female, Democratic candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Ocasio-Cortez, one of the youngest women in American politics, overthrew Democratic Caucus Chair Joe Crowley to win New York’s 14^th congressional district, including parts of the Bronx and Queens, in June 2018. Her win was described as one of the biggest upsets in the 2018 midterm season. Ocasio-Cortez represents the Democratic Socialists of America.

3. Reid Hoffman – $8.1 Million

LinkedIn co-founder Hoffman’s involvement in politics is no surprise to Silicon Valley, he’s the tech hubs most prominent donor on paper. However, when Silicon Valley was less inclined to back Democrats, he funded the Senate Democrats’ primary super PAC and Senate Majority PAC.

Hoffman revealed his motivations to Recode:

“First, support traditional groups while enabling them to modernize… Second, amplify new and innovative efforts to build tools and organizations.”

Hoffman has also donated to Win the Future, a forward-thinking democratic group he founded with Zynga founder Mark Pincus, as well as some donations to Republicans.

As well as trying to encourage Democrats to become more modern in their approaches, Hoffman has been hiring advisors to grow his political influence and influence other billionaires who don’t know where to commit cash in American politics. Hoffman is not a supporter of Trump, saying to Recode, calling him a threat to American democracy.

4. Dustin Moskovitz – $ Unknown

Moskovitz, the lower-profile co-founder of Facebook emerged as a major donator to Democratic candidates and liberal groups in the 2016 presidential race, according to Recode. He is worth over $10 billion himself and donated around $35 million at that point, surprising many analysts.

Since then Moskovitz and better-known Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg have continued to support housing and criminal justice reform campaigning for the 2018 midterms. The pair does so through their organizations the Open Philanthropy Project and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Donations include $1 million from each organization to an Ohio ballot initiative for criminal justice reforms and $250,000 from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to an affordable housing ballot initiative in California. The organizations both support ballot measures where local voters can have a more direct influence on public policy.

The “grass-roots” approach from Moskovitz and Zuckerberg is continuing into ballot initiatives for 2020 including working to close commercial tax loopholes in order to fund education and local services and a jail reform initiative for Los Angeles.

5. Karla Jurvetson – $7 Million

Jurvetson is a Silicon Valley Psychiatrist and the ex-wife of venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson. She made an unusual donation in May 2018 of $5.4 million to a super Pac “Women Vote!” tied to women’s group Emily’s list. Made unusual by the fact it’s a payment in equity, in the form of shares of Chinese firm Baidu. It’s controversial as only U.S citizens can donate to U.S elections but the super Pac in question has said:

“We cleared the donation through our lawyers.”

Jurvetson’s previous donations have been low, around $100,000 in 2016 but reports indicate she is serious about political donations.

Emily’s List, which runs “Women Vote!” is dedicated to the election of pro-choice female candidates. The current concerns regarding women’s rights over how both Trump and the new Supreme Court appointee Brett Kavanagh may or may not have influence in future may have triggered Jurvetson to action.

The top 20 list of 2018 midterm donators also includes more well-known and traditional contributors like George Soros and his Liberal donations of $17 million and powerful Conservative couple Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein who have donated $39 million.

Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, also conservative donors, have contributed the most at $113 million.

In second place are the largest Liberal and Democratic donors Thomas Steyer and Kathryn Taylor contributing over $50 million.

With the biggest US midterm campaign spend in history, tonight will tell its effects on the elections, the US, and indeed around the world.

Image credits:

• Featured image from Shutterstock
• Jeff Bezos, Forbes
• Timothy Mellon, Pinterest
• Reid Hoffman, Forbes
• Dustin Moskovitz, Forbes
• Karla Jurvetson, Flickr

Did you know that renowned pop singer Rihanna has been dating a Saudi billionaire for the past year or so? Well, whether you did or no, it seems that the relationship has finally come to an end.

The news is circulating that Rhianna has separated from her Saudi billionaire boyfriend Hassan Jameel in sources revealed by the entertainment website Hollywood Life.

Rihanna and Her Relationship Woes

Rihanna has been in the news over the past few days in regards to her sentiments toward US president Donald Trump using her music at a rally. However, this time she’s making the news again due to her relationship matters.

Rihanna’s relationships sometimes get more hits than her music. Everyone can remember the Chris Brown domestic violence debacle in 2013. But thankfully, news reports suggest that her latest split is on much more amicable terms.

Hassan Jameel is the deputy president of his family-owned business Abdul Latif Jameel. The company was once described in Forbes Middle East as the “world’s largest independent distributor of Toyota and Lexus vehicles.” The company has transportation and engineering operations in over 30 countries.

Rihanna Is Single Again

If you’re a self-respecting billionaire or business mogul, the news that Rihanna is single again must be music to your ears. She will have no shortage of suitors.

The 30-year-old ‘Umbrella’ singer and multiple Grammy winner supposedly split with her Saudi billionaire boyfriend as the romance fizzled out of their relationship some time ago and the two are busy working on other projects. Sources close to Hollywood Life and Rihanna said that:

“Rihanna is totally single again. Things kinda fizzled between her and Hassan a while ago. Their lives were really busy and it was hard for her because she often didn’t feel like a priority to him.”

The pair hadn’t been seen in public together since July, so the entertainment media carousel had been speculating on the split for some time.

Sources close to the pair also said that there might be a time in the future when the Saudi billionaire and Rihanna romantically reunite–but don’t hold your breath on that one.

Featured image from Pixabay.

Did you know that Scotland’s biggest landowner is a Danish billionaire fashion mogul? Anders Povlsen owns a vast swathe of land in Scotland that totals 222,000 acres. And he’s not stopping there as he recently purchased the 1,100-acre Kinrara Estate.

Known as the land of Braveheart, the home of Billy Connolly, James Bond, and legendary alcohol consumption rates, Scotland is not just historic, but also immensely beautiful.

Anders Povlsen Buys Estate with 12-Bed Mansion

Danish billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen is not new to beautiful things. Indeed, the fashion mogul has built a vast empire and is now worth a reported $6.5 billion by Forbes.

The clothing tycoon recently acquired the 1,100-acre Kinrara Estate and its 12-bedroom mansion that is located near Aviemore in the Scottish Highlands. The reported sale price is $4.3 million. He recently became Scotland’s largest landowner overtaking the Duke of Buccleuch who owns an estimated 217,000 acres.

The Danish billionaire basically owns more land in Scotland than the British Royal Family members such as Prince Charles and the Duke of Westminster.

The estate is now owned by Povlsen’s Wildland Ltd. company, which is interested in maintaining and re-establishing native woodlands in the area. A statement on their official website says:

“Over the coming years, we plan to re-establish native woodlands to their natural limits, including high-altitude mountain woodland. To restore peatlands, wetlands, and rivers and at the same time build support and understanding locally, nationally and internationally.”

Getting to Know Mr. Povlsen

Anders Povlsen is 46-years old, has four children, and is known for being a family man. He is regarded as the richest person in Denmark and was ranked #207 on the 2018 Forbes billionaire rich-list.

The vast majority of his fortune is said to stem from sales from his retailer Bestseller, which was originally formed via his parents’ first stall in the Danish town of Ringkobing in 1975. He took over the family business when just 28-years-old and is now the sole owner of Bestseller.

Mr. Povlsen is now the largest landowner in Scotland, and with his ecologically sound ethos to restoring the surrounding nature, it is refreshing to hear that someone is dedicated to preserving the stunning Scotish Highlands.

Featured image by BT.