Elon Musk has some new company on the list of the world’s richest people: Taylor Swift, who’s now reached her billionaire “era.”
Buoyed by the rise in Tesla stock and the surge in SpaceX’s valuation, Musk has reclaimed the title of the world’s richest person in an annual ranking of billionaires.
Musk’s US$231 billion fortune catapulted him above Amazon executive chairman Jeff Bezos (US$185 billion) and LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault (US$175 billion), who ranked second and third, respectively, on the 13th Hurun Global Rich Report, an annual survey from China-based media and research firm Hurun. This year marked Musk’s third time in four years at the top of the roster.
Swift made her debut on the list, her wealth, estimated at US$1.2 million, propelled by her Eras Tour and royalties from re-recording her albums.
Mark Zuckerberg (US$158 billion), CEO of Meta Platforms Inc., trailed at No. 4, but added more wealth than anyone on the list, as Meta shares more than doubled, the report said.
Miami-based entrepreneur Ryan Breslow (US$1.3 billion), the 30-year-old chairman of fintech platform Bolt, entered the list this year as its youngest self-made billionaire. While 66 is the average age of billionaires on the list, 93 billionaires ranked are 40 or younger.
The list ranked 3,279 billionaires, up from 3,112 the previous year. The number of billionaires increased by 5% and their total wealth was up 9%, Hurun said in a news release. The wealthiest hail from 2,435 companies and 73 countries.
The wealth calculations are through Jan. 15 of this year.
For the first time, more than half the new wealth on the list was generated by the boom in AI, the report said.
“AI has been the major driver for wealth growth,” Rupert Hoogewerf , Hurun’s chairman and chief researcher, said in a statement. “Whilst [Nvidia president] Jensen Huang has grabbed many of the headlines as Nvidia broke through the US$2 trillion mark and catapulting him into the Hurun Top 30 as a result, the billionaires behind Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Oracle and Meta have seen significant surges in their wealth as investors bet on the value generated by AI.”
Despite losing 155 billionaires, China still claims the most, with 814, the report said. The U.S. added 109 billionaires, for a total of 800. India added 84, and now has almost double the number of billionaires as the U.K., the report said.
If there’s a billionaire capital, it’s New York, where more reside than any other city; London ranked second, and Mumbai third, edging out other locales to become Asia’s hub for billionaires.
Overall, the world’s wealthiest made their money in financial services (10%), followed by consumer goods (8%), and food & beverages (7%) and real estate (7%), Hurun said. By sector, it was a “good year” for media and entertainment, which added US$226 billion, outpacing software and services at US$149 billion, financial services at US$118 billion, and retail, at US$104 billion.
Not everyone was a winner. The report said 1,346 billionaires saw their wealth decrease; 278 of them dropped off the list, with 208 of those hailing from China.
“Wealth creation in China has gone through deep changes these last few years, with the wealth of billionaires from real estate and renewables down,” Hoogewerf said in a statement. “Whilst as many as 40% of the Hurun Global Rich List from the high water mark two years ago have lost their billionaire status, China has added 120 new faces to the list.
The report called the latest rankings a “bad year” for healthcare, where billionaires in the field shed US$75 billion; followed by industrial products, declining US$46 billion; food & beverages, losing US$40 billion; and real estate, dropping by US$32 billion.
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Money worries are having a cascading effect on stress levels, conflict and even the rate of ageing
Worrying about the cost of living is causing accelerated ageing, household arguments and creating significant stress, according to new research. More than half of Australians say they have experienced personal setbacks due to financial strain over the past year. Almost 20 percent say that have suffered a stress-related illness, 33 percent have lost sleep and almost one in five are seeing signs of early ageing.
Household hostility is also rising, with 19 percent of Australians admitting they have argued with their partners about money, and a further one in 10 have argued with family and friends.
The Finder survey of 1,070 Australians reveals women are bearing the brunt of financial stress, with 62 percent reporting they have worried about money compared to 42 percent of men.
Younger Australians are struggling the most, with almost 7 in 10 Gen Z respondents reporting financial strain compared to 58 percent of Gen Xers and 24 percent of baby boomers.
The impact of cost-of-living pressures among different age groups and income levels is reflected in new data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). The selected living cost indexes show employee households are under more strain from inflation, with the CPI measure for this population group at 6.5 percent today compared to the official overall CPI figure of just 3.6 percent.
The discrepancy is due to higher mortgage interest payments – which make up a higher proportion of expenditure for employee households — as well as an increase in primary and secondary school fees, and the indexation of tertiary education fees at the start of the year. The official CPI does not include mortgage payments, so the living cost indexes provide a more accurate picture of how rising interest rates are impacting households with mortgages today.
The inflation rate is much lower for older Australians, who have often paid off their mortgages. The inflation rate on living expenses for age pensioner households is below the official CPI level at 3.3 percent, and it’s only slightly higher at 3.4 percent for self-funded retirees.
Graham Cooke, head of consumer research at Finder, said that despite cooling inflation, Australians were still under significant financial pressure.
“This can be seen in Finder’s Cost of Living Pressure Gauge, which has been hovering in the extreme range for the past year and a half,” Mr Cooke said. The gauge returned a reading of 78 percent in March this year compared to 47 percent in March 2021, when inflation was 1.1 percent and the Reserve Bank’s official cash rate was 0.1 percent.
Interestingly, Australians’ cash savings are higher today than they were in 2021, likely reflecting stimulus payments received and saved during the pandemic. The Reserve Bank has cited pandemic savings as a factor in keeping mortgage arrears low despite much higher interest rates. The Finder research shows Australians have an average of $37,206 in cash savings today, up from $24,928 two years ago.
“Money concerns can cause problems in your everyday life and snowball quickly if you don’t get them under control,” Mr Cooke said. “Building financial resilience is as vital as ever as costs continue to rise. Pay close attention to where your money is going so you keep impulse spending to a minimum, and don’t overspend.”
Australians appear to be heeding this advice, with the latest ABS retail figures showing seven straight quarters of declining per capita spending. “Per capita volumes show retail turnover after the effects of inflation and population growth have been accounted for,” explained Ben Dorber, ABS head of retail statistics. “Following an unprecedented seven straight falls, it is very clear how much consumers have pulled back on spending in response to cost of living pressures over the past two years.”
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Consumers are going to gravitate toward applications powered by the buzzy new technology, analyst Michael Wolf predicts