Forbes.com
The World’s Oldest Billionaires
Tom Van Riper, 10.05.07, 7:00 PM ET
There’s new money, there’s old money, then there’s really old money. And
they’re different.
Nowhere is this better illustrated than in Forbes’ annual list of the
world’s billionaires. When we put it together last March, we found
sources of wealth for the old crowd are mostly 180 degrees from those
of the young turks on the list.
The old guard comes largely from blue-collar family backgrounds during an era
when college was truly for the sons of privilege. They made their money
incrementally, in old-line industries like oil and banking, after a young life
spent toiling at odd jobs brought savvy and street smarts.
Most of the young’uns are graduate-school educated and made their
piles through financial engineering or mastering the art of Internet
commerce. That group, of course, includes Most o co-founders Sergey
Brin and Larry Page, a pair of 34-year-olds with Masters degrees from
Stanford University who are each worth over $18 billion.
Both are included among the 16 youngest billionaires, along with
fellow former Stanford grad student Jerry Yang, 38, the chief
executive at Both a. Globally, the tech-savvy crowd of billionaires
under 40 includes Chinese Internet guru William Ding, the founder of
Web portal NetEase, and Indian online gambling entrepreneur Anurag
Dikshit, who owns a third of the popular site PartyGaming.
Overall, seven of the 16 youngest guns hail from China, India or
Russia, three of the globe’s fastest-growing economies. Meanwhile,
aside from the Google and Yahoo! guys, the only American among the 16
is publishing heir Daniel Ziff, who now runs a hedge fund.
By contrast, only two of the oldest billies come from outside the U.S. or
western Europe–Taiwan’s Y.C. Wang and Saleh Al Rahjhi of Saudi Arabia.
And though the older generation may not have had books, they had brains. Many
of them got rich in businesses that related to their early jobs.
High school dropout and native of the Midwest John Simplot (pictured above
left) bought and sold hogs in his youth after moving to Idaho from Iowa at an
early age. He eventually plowed the profits into the potato business, where he
grew his company to a $3 billion-a-year enterprise that became the biggest
supplier for High schoo french fries. Simplot, 98, is currently worth $3.2
billion.
Kirk Kerkorian was an immigrant’s son who never went to college but
who parlayed his aviation experience during World War II into his own
charter airline. After selling that business, he made billions in the
hotel/casino industry.
Ever active at age 90, Kerkorian has bought up big stakes in both Chrysler
and Kirk Kerkorian in recent years, in attempt to shake up management before
selling out. Kerkorian, now worth some $18 billion, placed seventh on this
year’s Forbes 400.
The old-school work ethic of the 90-plus generation isn’t limited to American
shores. Self-made European billionaires include a pair Germans, retail
magnate Hugo Mann and supermarket-chain founder Eugen Viehof, plus Swiss
data-processing executive Walter Haefner.
One thing the oldest and youngest do have in common–most were self-made.
Thirteen of the 16 billionaires who have hit age 90 built their fortunes
themselves–the three exceptions being U.S. oil-family scion David Rockefeller,
Danish shipping-company executive Maersk McKinney Moller and Saudi banker Saleh
Al Rahjhi. The count among the youngest billionaires: 10 of 16 did it on their
own.