National symbols for the US, China, Russia, India and others
By John Hyatt
Russian oligarchs rebound while American moguls lose $200 billion. Here’s this year’s country-by-country breakdown of the world’s wealthiest people.
The ultra-rich are everywhere. The 2,640 billionaires on Forbes’ 2023 ranking of the world’s wealthiest people hail from 77 countries or territories around the globe, up from 75 last year.
The two new additions are Panama and Armenia, each of which added one billionaire: Stanley Motta, a Panamanian investor whose portfolio of Latin American companies includes Panamanian bank Banco General, joins the list, as does Ruben Vardanyan, an Armenian investment banker and politician who made his fortune in Russia during the 1990s (and who last year renounced his Russian citizenship). He returns after dropping off the 2022 list.
The U.S. again reigns as home to the most billionaire citizens, with 735–the same number as last year. Despite nearly 50 Americans, including Kanye West and Sam Bankman-Fried, dropping from the ranks and another dozen dying, more than 60 U.S. citizens joined the billionaire ranks for the first time this year, including LeBron James and Tiger Woods. The U.S. is no longer home to the richest person in the world–luxury goods tycoon Bernard Arnault, a citizen of France, overtook Elon Musk for the title–but America still claims 17 of the world’s 25 richest people. In all, U.S. billionaires are worth a collective $4.5 trillion, down from $4.7 trillion last year as markets retreated, billion-dollar “unicorn” startups stumbled and rising interest rates haunted investors.
China boasts the second-most billionaires, with 495 (not including citizens of Hong Kong and Macau) who have a combined $1.67 trillion. They, too have, had a down year overall–in 2022, there were 539 Chinese billionaires worth $1.96 trillion. The country’s zero-Covid policies and rocky transition to a post-pandemic economy lowered economic growth and hit stock prices. A crisis in China’s property sector, driven by a glut of real estate after decades of nonstop development, also weighed on China’s economic outlook. So has the Communist Party’s recent crackdown on big tech platforms. Notable Chinese drop-offs include e-cigarette tycoon Xiong Shaoming and Zhao Weiguo, chairman of Tsinghua Unigroup, a Chinese government-backed semiconductor business. Zhao was reported to have “disappeared” from public view in mid-2022, and was charged with corruption in March 2023.
India, which has the third-most billionaires, with 169, had a more mixed year. The country gained three list members, but Indian billionaires as a group–worth $675 billion–are $75 billion poorer than in 2022. The biggest reason for that drop can be traced to one of the greatest wealth crashes in history: Gautam Adani, chairman of the embattled Adani Group conglomerate, plunged from $90 billion in net worth last year to $47.2 billion on Forbes’ 2023 ranking after accusations of massive fraud and stock market manipulation tanked shares of his ten publicly-listed Adani Group companies. (Adani has denied the allegations.) Adani’s nearly $43 billion plummet accounts for more than half of the entire Indian wealth decline since last year.
Germany, meanwhile, once again has the fourth-highest number of billionaires, with 126, down from 134 last year. Notable drop-offs include Joachim Ante, cofounder of gaming company Unity Software, and the three Knauf heirs to building materials giant Knauf Gips KG. Germany’s richest person is Dieter Schwarz (estimated net worth: $42.9 billion), owner of the discounted supermarket giant Schwarz Group, which generates annual sales of over $140 billion.
Despite war and Western sanctions, Russian billionaires outperformed the rest of the world’s richest this year, as the wealthiest in the country mostly recouped the losses they suffered following the invasion of Ukraine. Russia counts 105 billionaires this year with a combined net worth of $474 billion, up from 83 worth a combined $320 billion last year.
Why the big jump? For one, Russian oligarchs have mostly made back their lost wealth. Of the 105 Russian billionaires counted by Forbes, 25 of them are returnees–meaning they missed last year’s list after featuring in a previous year. (In 2021, there were 117 Russian billionaires, worth a collective $584 billion.) That’s because last year, when Forbes finalized its 2022 list, the Russian market was frozen and analysts’ predictions for Russian firms were dire. A year later, Western sanctions have hit Russia’s economy hard, but a global upswing in commodities prices–driven in large part by the invasion and subsequent Western sanctions–have bolstered revenues for some Russian firms. The biggest beneficiary has been Russia’s richest person, fertilizer tycoon Andrey Melnichenko, worth an estimated $25.2 billion fortune–up from $11.1 billion last year–thanks to his fertilizer giant EuroChem and soaring fertilizer prices as a result of the war. Others to recoup their fortunes have included oil tycoon Vagit Alekperov (up $10 billion), steel magnate Alexey Mordashov (up $7.7 billion), and nickel mogul Vladimir Potanin (up $6.4 billion).
John Hyatt is a Forbes Staff who writes about wealth, billionaires and their companies
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