Five South African billionaires make the Hurun Global Rich list

The Hurun Research Institute has released its US dollar billionaires list for 2023, and five South African men are among 3 112 global moguls.

The Chinese-based research company reports the world lost 269 tycoons in 2022 – five for every week last year.

South Africa’s five richest men

The richest man in South Africa is well-known luxury goods group Richemont founder Johann Rupert, who ranked 187th with a fortune of $11 billion (R199.4 billion).

Heir to the DeBeers diamond fortune, Nicky Oppenheimer came in at 287th place with an amassed fortune of $8.3 billion (R150.4 billion).

Naspers chair Koos Bekker ranked 1 408th on the list with a cool $2.6 billion (R47 billion)

Coming in at 1 682nd is African Minerals Chairperson Patrice Motsepe, whose fortune totals some $2.3 billion (R41.6 billion).

The 2 451st is Capitec Bank CEO Michiel le Roux with $1.6 billion. (R28.9 billion)

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Drop in global wealth

The world’s total wealth dropped by 10% to $13.7 trillion.

China leads the world’s wealthiest with 969 billionaires, followed by the USA at 691, which lost 25 people. Together, billionaires in both countries hold 53% of the world’s money.

At least, 59% of the new faces come from the Asian continent, which holds 57% of the global population and 39% of the world’s wealth.

India came in third place with 187 US-dollar billionaires, while Germany overtook the UK for fourth place with 144 money magnets.

While North America and Europe are home to 15% of the planet’s population, the report found that both continents are home to 46% of billionaires and hold the lion’s share of the world’s wealth with 57%.

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Sources of wealth

Hurun reports consumer goods and financial services are the top two sources of wealth, with healthcare coming in at third place, overtaking demand for retail services.

It’s also been a good year for fertiliser and commodity traders, the iron, steel, oil and gas industries, soft drinks and confectionaries, casinos, hotels, sports goods and luxury purchases.

The technology industry took a knock with decreased demand for semiconductors, cloud solutions, cyber security, payments, e-commerce, batteries, new energy and biotech.

At least 111 billionaires come from ‘old-money’ families maintaining their wealth across four generations or more.

Two-thirds, or 63%, made their money from selling physical products, while 37% sold services.

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Top five richest people in the world

1. Bernard Arnault (74) $202 billion – R3.6 trillion
   Arnault oversees a French multinational holding and conglomerate specialising in luxury goods; LVMH, Moët, Hennessy and Louis Vuitton.
   
2. Elon Musk (52) $157 billion – R2.8 trillion
   South African-born Musk is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX; angel investor, CEO and product architect of Tesla; owner and CEO of Twitter, founder of the Boring Company; co-founder of Neuralink and OpenAI.
   
3. Bertrand Puech (87) $134 billion – R2.4 trillion
   Puech is part of the family-owned French luxury design house Hermès International S.A, specialising in leather goods, lifestyle accessories, home furnishings, perfumery, jewellery, watches and ready-to-wear.
   
4. Jeff Bezos (59) $118 billion – R2.13 trillion
   Bezos is an American business magnate, media proprietor, investor, and commercial astronaut. He is the founder, executive chairman, and former president and CEO of e-commerce giant Amazon.
   
5. Warren Buffet (93) $116 billion – R2.1 trillion
   Buffet is the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, a business magnate, investor, and philanthropist.

See the full report here.