Meet The 195 Billionaire Newcomers Of 2017

Irish brothers Patrick, 28, (left) and John Collison, 26, (right), who cofounded Stripe, are the youngest newcomer billionaires.

Sometimes the road to riches is paved with tequila, hiking gear and children’s toys. Those were among the products that brought riches to195 individuals who make their debuts on the 2017 FORBES World’s Billionaires list. While real estate, finance and technology were the most common paths to the ranks, people made fortunes in plenty of other ways, from launching airlines to creating
temp agencies.
Entrepreneurs dominated the newcomer ranks as three-fourths built their fortunes from scratch. They include Yvon Chouinard, the founder and owner of sportswear firm Patagonia. A rock climber and surfer, he started out selling climbing tools in 1965. Eight years later, he opened Patagonia in Ventura, Calif. to outfit fellow nature lovers with clothing and gear. By 2015, the firm had revenues of $750 million. Chouinard was among 25 newcomers (13%) to come from the U.S. Another 20% were European, including Norwegian Torstein Hagen, who started Viking Cruises in 1997.(Photos: Akio Kon and Aidan Crawley/Bloomberg)

More than 60% of new entrants hailed from Asia or The Pacific. Among them was Manny Stul, whose parents were Holocaust survivors who brought him to an Australian refugee camp when he was an infant. Seventeen years after Stul took over struggling Moose Toys, the company sells popular Shopkins collectibles and other toys in more than 80 countries.Seventy-six new billionaires came from China, more than from any other country. One of them was Lucy Peng, cofounder of ecommerce giant Alibaba Group. She has an estimated 2% stake in the company’s financial services arm, Ant Financial, which raised funds at a reported $60 billion valuation last year. Peng, Ant’s executive chairman, is one of 21 self-made women billionaires in China.

Besides Peng, 24 of the newcomers were women, 9 of whom were also from mainland China. One standout was Vietnam’s Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao, whose fortune soared with the rise of her budget airline, VietJet Air, which went public in February. Another was Yoshiko Shinohara, who in 1973 started a part-time staffing firm in her Tokyo apartment to help women enter the workforce. She became Japan’s first self-made woman billionaire after the stock price of her company, Temp Holdings, jumped 50% in the past year.

The richest of the newcomer women were three American sisters who inherited stakes in Solil Management, a New York real estate firm, from their father. Amy Goldman Fowler, Jane Goldman and Diane Kemper have estimated fortunes of $3 billion each thanks to a real estate empire of at least 400 properties, including a stake in the World Trade Center developments.The youngest of the new bunch were Irish brothers John and Patrick Collison, who cofounded Stripe, a payment processing firm. At age 26 and 28, respectively, they each have an estimated fortune of $1.1 billion thanks to their firm raising money at a $9.2 billion valuation last year. John is now the world’s youngest self-made billionaire. Not far behind was 33-year-old Kevin Systrom, founder of Instagram, who has an estimated fortune of $1.2 billion. Systrom owned 40% of Instagram when Facebook bought it for $1 billion in 2012. He mostly got stock in the deal, the value of which has soared since then.

Mexico’s national liquor fueled the fortune of the richest newcomer, Juan Francisco Beckmann Vidal. At the age of 77, he joined the list with an estimated $5.2 billion net worth after tequila maker Jose Cuervo went public on the Mexican stock exchange in February. The business, centered in the Mexican town of Tequila, has been in his family for 11 generations.

Vidal was among 28 new billionaires who built their wealth by growing companies passed down by their elders. Another 16 inherited their riches yet haven’t done much with them.The average fortune of this year’s newcomers was $1.5 billion, and combined they were worth $302.1 trillion. These values represented a snapshot of wealth based on stock prices and exchange rates from February 17.

sources:Forbes