1. Bill Henry Gates III

Instead of buying airplanes and playing around like some of our competitors, we’ve rolled almost everything back into the company.

Net worth: $40.0 Billion USD
Age: 53
Born: United States
Source of Wealth: Microsoft – Primarily from Windows, the series of operating systems.

2. Warren Edward Buffet

I always knew I was going to be rich. I don’t think I ever doubted it for a minute.

Net worth: $37.0 Billion USD
Age: 78
Born: United States
Source of Wealth: Berkshire Hathaway it’s a conglomerate holding company which owns lots of little companies.

3. Carlos Slim Helú

In this new wave of technology, you can’t do it all yourself, you have to form alliances.

Net worth: $35.0 Billion USD
Age: 69
Born: Mexico
Source of Wealth: Telmex, América Móvil – a compnay that provides telecomunications products and services such as a range of telephone services (landline, mobile and VoIP) and internet service provider.

4. Lawrence Joseph “Larry” Ellison

When you innovate, you’ve got to be prepared for everyone telling you you’re nuts.

Net worth: $22.5 Billion USD
Age: 64
Born: United States
Source of Wealth: The Oracle corparation specializes in developing and marketing enterprise software products — particularly database management systems.

5. Ingvar Feodor Kamprad

You can do so much in 10 minutes’ time. Ten minutes, once gone, are gone for good.. Divide your life into 10-minute units and sacrifice as few of them as possible in meaningless activity.

Net worth: $22.0 Billion USD
Age: 83
Born: Sweden
Source of Wealth: IKEA shop that sells flat pack furniture, accessories, and bathroom and kitchen items in their retail stores around the world.

6. Karl Hans Albrecht

Albrecht’s Law – Intelligent people, when assembled into an organization, will tend toward collective stupidity.

Net worth: $21.5 Billion USD
Age: 89
Born: German
Source of Wealth: Karl was the founder and current owner of the store ALDI, the discount supermarket chain based in Germany.

7. Mukesh Ambani

I think that our fundamental belief is that for us growth is a way of life and we have to grow at all times.

Net worth: $19.5 Billion USD
Age: 51
Born: India
Source of Wealth: Owner of Reliance Industries, a company which creates Petroleum and Petroleum Products based products.

8. Lakshmi Niwas Mittal

Everyone experiences tough times, it is a measure of your determination and dedication how you deal with them and how you can come through them.

Net worth: $19.3 Billion USD
Age: 58
Born: India
Source of Wealth: CEO of ArcelorMittal, the the largest steel company in the world, with 326,000 employees in more than 60 countries.

9. Theodor Paul Albrecht

Interesting Fact: He was kidnapped in 1971 and ransomed for $2M-$4M.

Net worth: $18.8 Billion USD
Age: 87
Born: Germany
Source of Wealth: Owner of Aldi Nord and helped to set up the shop Trader Joe’s.

10. Amancio Ortega Gaona

Intresting Fact: His first store, Confecciones Goa, made bathrobes.

Net worth: $18.3 Billion USD
Age: 73
Born: Spain
Source of Wealth: Chairman of Inditex which owns other stores such as Zara.

Some data is sourced from Wikipedia – List of billionaires (2009) | 03 Sept 2009

Article accurate for 2009.

How many of us really know what poverty is and how many people are affected?  This thought has spurred me on to share the following with you.

Poverty:

“the state of having little or no money and few or no material possessions”.

1. Half the world — nearly three billion people — live on less than two dollars a day.
2. The poorest 40% of the world population accounts for 5 percent of global income, the richest 20 percent accounts for three-quarters of world income.
3. 26,500-30,000 children die each day due to poverty.
4. More than 50% of Africans suffer from water-related diseases such as cholera and infant diarrhoea.
5. More than 2.6 billion people—over 40% of the world’s population—do not have basic sanitation and more than one billion people still use unsafe sources of drinking water.
6. Every 3.6 seconds another person dies of starvation and the large majority are children under the age of 5.
7. Less than 2% of what the world spends each year on weapons is needed to put every child into basic education and yet it doesn’t happen.
8. Every year six million children die from malnutrition before their fifth birthday.
9. More than 800 million people go to bed hungry every day…300 million are children.
10. 51 percent of the world’s 100 hundred wealthiest bodies are corporations.

Sources:

1. UNICEF
2. Poverty Facts and Stats by Global Issues – Last Updated Tuesday, March 04, 2008
3. UN Poverty Facts by Millennium Project

Copyright Info

I don’t claim ownership or origination of any of this information – it’s sort of sobering regardless of it’s source.   I have however supplied links to those websites where most of this information was found.

Do you want to add anything to this post about poverty, or related? Please post it in the guestbox below.