Posts Tagged ‘billionaires’
Gates, Buffett say China charity meeting a success
The mansion where the private banquet was held
After a night of wining and dining 50 of China’s richest people in the name of promoting philanthropy, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates told a horde of journalists on Thursday that the biggest difference between eating with Chinese tycoons and Western ones was the food.
Thus ended the two billionaires’ mission to promote charity in China, a journey that provoked weeks of breathless speculation here about whether this nation’s much-resented class of superrich was too miserly to measure up to Western philanthropic standards.
At a news conference, Mr. Buffett and Mr. Gates said the answer was an emphatic “no.”
“I was amazed last night, really, at how similar the questions and discussions and all that was to the dinners we had in the U.S.,” said Mr. Buffett, who had wisecracked about the food. “The same motivations tend to exist. The mechanism for manifesting those motivations may differ from country to country…”
On Thursday, the two men pronounced the dinner an unqualified success, saying that two-thirds of those who were invited had shown up, and that more than half of those at the dinner had offered their own ideas on how Chinese philanthropy should work…
China is widely reported to be second only to the United States in the number of dollar billionaires. Mr. Gates and Mr. Buffett said the nation was unique in that its wealthy class had arisen almost wholly in the past 30 years, so philanthropic practices that are entrenched among European and American dynasties are new here, and open to change.
“What you have is a first generation of fortune,” Mr. Gates said, “and it’s natural that they’re thinking through, in this society in particular, ‘What do you do?’ ”
But Mr. Gates suggested that their philanthropic globetrotting was not yet over. “We may do an event in India,” he said.
I’ve worked on a number of homes for the nouveau riche who ended up choosing Santa Fe either as their primary residence or just a holiday home. Cripes, I worked on a “vacation cottage” that was 24,000 square feet in size.
But, even the folks who owned that last example were involved with charity from the local scale to global. As I’ve noted before, most folks I’ve worked with who made their own fortunes were not stingy. The greedy grasping types usually were trustfunders, those who inherited their wealth.
I think a fair number of folks who earned their own way remember where they come from.
India’s 100 richest are worth 25% of GDP
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission
The Billionaires Club of India almost doubled from last year to 54 members up from 27, aided by are bounding stock market that gained two-thirds in the past year and an economy growing at six percent, says the Forbes Asia magazine.
The country’s 100 richest people have a combined net worth of 276 billion U.S. dollars, which was almost a quarter of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP)…
Mukesh Ambani, heading Reliance Industries Limited, is once again the wealthiest person in India with his net worth increasing by 54 percent to 32 billion U.S. dollars from nearly 21 billion last year.
Trailing behind him are Lakshmi Mittal with a net worth of 30 billion U.S. dollars, up 46 percent from 20.5 billion, and Mukesh’s estranged brother, Anil, whose net worth of 17.5 billion U.S. dollars, 40 percent higher than before, put him in the third place.
India Editor of Forbes Asia Naazneen Karmali said in a statement, “Happy days are definitely back again for India’s richest. This year’s list shows yet again that when conditions in the financial markets and the economy are right, India has the scale and resources to produce billionaires faster than most of the countries on earth.”
Anyone wondering if the politics of India are offering the same growth in income to the remainder of the population? That’s nothing hard-nosed – just a reminder from a distant friend. When you’re rocking and rolling down the Yellow Brick Road, sometimes you forget about the streetcleaners.
Mexican drug lord on Forbes rich list
How Guzman makes his billion$
Forbes magazine’s latest list of the world’s billionaires includes Mexico’s most wanted man – Joaquin Guzman. The 54-year-old, who is said to be the head of one of Mexico’s most powerful drug cartels, is 701st on the list with an estimated fortune of $1 billion.
Mr Guzman, who escaped from a Mexican prison on 2001, is understood to be at large in Mexico or Central America.
Forbes estimates that last year Mexican and Colombian traffickers made between $18 billion and $39 billion. Mr Guzman’s slice of that pie comes from his assumed control of the Sinaloa cartel, which is named after the Mexican state in which it is based.
For over a year the Sinaloa Cartel has been trying to oust a rival gang from the border city of Ciudad Juarez; the turf war has left more than 2,000 people dead.
Those who have met Mr Guzman, who stands at just 5 feet tall (152cm), describe him as a man of extraordinary charisma and intelligence.
I always get pissed off when people waste my time describing the positive qualities of a scumbag. What does charisma have to do with a thug who orders the murder of thousands of people?
It’s like – if George W. Bush or Dick Cheney walked up my driveway and asked for a drink on a hot day – I’d pee in a glass.
