The American business magazine "Forbes" has published its annual list of billionaires.
For the 11th consecutive year, the American Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, remains at the top of the list. His fortune is estimated at over 46 billion dollars.
In third place on the list is Indian steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal, whose wealth is growing fastest among other billionaires. He is estimated to be worth 25 billion dollars.
Currently, according to Forbes, there are 691 billionaires in the world, they come from 27 different countries, most of them are Americans. 68 billionaires are women.
In the Forbes billionaires list, there are three Ukrainians – in 258th place is Rinat Akhmetov, whose fortune is estimated at 2.4 billion dollars. In 507th place is Viktor Pinchuk – with 1.4 billion, and in 620th place – Serhiy Taruta, who has 1 billion dollars.
The average age of billionaires is 64. Only 29 of them are under 40 and 220 billionaires are over 70. Approximately half of the billionaires inherited their money, and half earned it themselves.
Based on materials from the "BBC Ukrainian Service".