Companies

Study to be a Billionaire

Published

2 mins ago

April 18, 2024

Daniel Wanburg

The title is not strictly accurate of course, but if you have ambitions to become a billionaire, you should seriously consider where to study. Authoritative sources state that although there are now well over 1500 billionaires in the world, almost 300 of them, nearly 20%, were educated at just 20 universities. You will not be surprised to learn that only four of these seats of learning are outside of the USA, but there are still one or two surprises on this top 20 list, including the number one.

There is no definitive assessment of why exactly these universities are so relatively proficient in producing such subsequently high-flying graduates; obviously high-level teaching is paramount, as is networking among present and past students; also business schools, especially when adjacent to technology research and development facilities and industries, are likely to produce future high earners. Successful schools attract high-level applicants anyway – an average acceptance rate of just 30% by most noted universities means that incoming students are likely to be smart to begin with.

So the vast majority of these rich and/or influential people are in business, many technology-orientated, or finance, although education doesn’t explain all, especially when one of the richest and youngest billionaires, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, dropped-out of Harvard University without actually graduating – maybe two-thirds of a Harvard degree is worth more than a full degree from most other institutions!? Major investor, shareholder Carl Icahn with over $22 billion actually dropped-out of New York University prior to graduation.

The following is a list of the top 20 billionaire-producing institutions, with notable graduates: the list is open to debate, as many persons’ net worth varies dramatically according to the often day-to-day volatility of the value of shares held.

20. Eth Zurich in Switzerland

Eth Zurich in Switzerland has produced six billionaires to date, including developer of the first micro-chip for computing Philippe Kahn, with an estimated net worth of over $2 billion, but he doesn’t seem to worry too much about his current bank balance!

19. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

It may be surprising that with its reputation for technology education and innovative research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), with just seven billionaires, doesn’t rank higher. However, one graduate does rank in the top 10 richest in the world – chemical engineer David Koch with $42 billion.

17. Brown University

Brown University with eight billionaires is also ranked highly, particularly as one of its graduates is Janet Yellen, not a billionaire, but the first female to head the US Federal Reserve, and ranked as the seventh most influential person – fourth woman – in the world by Forbes magazine. She also has a PhD in economics from Yale! Perhaps not so coincidentally, the current Head of the World Bank – American Jim Yong Kim – is also a Brown graduate, but at the top of the board is John D. Rockefeller, estimated by many to have been one of the three richest persons in history.

17. Columbia University

Joint eighth with eight billionaires is Columbia University. Robert Kraft, chairman and CEO of the Kraft Group and worth over $4 billion, is a graduate, and Warren Buffett – one of the three richest people in the world – obtained a MSc in economics here in 1951.

15. Duke University

Among Duke University’s nine billionaires is Melinda Gates, ($70 billion estimated) while one of its now notorious graduates is ex-US President Richard Nixon. On the other hand, Arkady Dvorkovich, Deputy PM of Russia, is also a PhD graduate from Duke.

15. New York University

Equal fifteenth on the list is New York University, with nine billionaires, among whom are co-founder and CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, and former US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.

12. Michigan University

Michigan University has now produced 10 billionaires, with Google founder Larry Page ($30 billion) being one of them.

12. Dartmouth College

Dartmouth College also has 10 billionaires to its credit, with Leon Black, the founder of Apollo Global Management being among them, currently on $5 billion.

12. University of Texas

Third on 10 is the University of Texas, with Michael Dell, the founder of Dell Computers, perhaps one of the better known and richer billionaires with a fortune approaching $20 billion.

10. Moscow State University

Moscow State University has so far produced 11 billionaires, the most from Russian institutions, although education is perhaps not as important as ‘who you know’ when business success is calculated in that country. One undoubted successful graduate is Margarita Louis-Dreyfus (nee Bogdanova) owner of the French but Amsterdam-based Louis-Dreyfus Group since her husband’s death, with $8.8 billion. She also owns French soccer club Olympique de Marseille, and lives in Switzerland.

10. London School of Economics (LSE)

On the same ranking is the London School of Economics (LSE), with their 11 billionaires including renowned investor George Soros, who currently boasts a fortune of over $25 billion, and the equally world-renowned Mick Jagger, perpetual leader of The Rolling Stones rock group, but with an estimated net worth of ‘only’ $300 million.

8. University of Mumbai

The University of Mumbai has produced 12 billionaires and is clearly the leading educational institution in India. The richest is Yemeni-born Mukesh Ambani, the largest shareholder, chairman and CEO of India’s second most valuable company, Reliance Industries Limited, a Fortune Global 500 company, with over $20 billion in personal assets.

8. University of California, Berkeley

Alongside at 12 billionaires is the University of California, Berkeley, which can be credited with producing both Alphabet/Google CEO Eric Schmidt ($9 billion net worth), and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who perhaps cashed-in his company chips too early.

5. Stanford

There are three universities at 14 billionaires; Stanford from which Phil Knight – who has chaired Nike since founding the company in the mid-60s, and whose fortune now approaches $30 billion – graduated from the School of Business in 1962.

5. Cornell University

Cornell University is the alma mater of Robert D. Ziff, one of the 14 billionaires, who inherited part of the family publishing business in the mid-90s, and has since built his share through investments to a very healthy $5 billion plus.

5. Princeton

The third is Princeton, with Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos being one of the 14 billionaires, now managing a fortune well over $40 billion, putting him close to the top 10 richest people in the world.

4. University of Southern California (USC)

The University of Southern California (USC) has 16 billionaires on its alumni, including leading film director/producer George Lucas, of “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones” fame, whose net worth is over $5 billion.

3. Yale

Unsurprisingly, Yale is in the top three with 20 billionaires, of whom Stephen A. Schwarzman, the global private equity and financial advisory firm Blackstone Group’s chairman and CEO, is probably the richest with over $12 billion.

2. Harvard

Harvard just pips Yale with 22 billionaires, one of whom is Jorge Paulo Leman, the richest Brazilian with $25 billion accumulated partly through investment banking company Banco Garantia.

1. University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania with 25 billionaires is perhaps a surprise in the top spot. Probably the most famous – or infamous – alumni right now is Donald Trump ($4 billion), real estate magnate and would-be US Presidential candidate. However, engineer, inventor, investor South African-born Elon Musk is likely the richest at the moment, with an amount approaching $12 billion.

Daniel Wanburg

As the Managing Editor at Net Worth Post, I lead a talented team in delivering compelling content on the lives and achievements of influential figures. With a keen eye for detail and a passion for storytelling, I oversee the production of insightful biographies that resonate with our audience. My role involves not only managing the editorial process but also conducting research, crafting engaging narratives, and ensuring the accuracy and quality of our publications. At NetWorthPost, we strive to provide our readers with in-depth profiles that offer valuable insights into the worlds of business, entertainment, and beyond. Through meticulous research and captivating storytelling, we bring to light the remarkable journeys and successes of individuals who inspire and captivate us.

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Companies

Net Worth Of The World’s Richest Families

Published

1 min ago

April 18, 2024

Daniel Wanburg

The richest individuals around the world are constantly in the headlines, partly out of fascination for just how much they are worth – amounts unimaginable to the average person, regardless that 80% of ‘the richest’ are actually self-made billionaires. However, during this period of stock markets’ volatility in early 2016, they are just as newsworthy for how much they can lose, or gain, in one day, which can markedly effect their ranking on the ‘richest list’.

Not so well-known are families with accumulated net worth which puts them close to the aforementioned richest individuals, perhaps unsurprisingly if there are three, four or five relatively ‘super-rich’ relatives who pool their energies, business interests and their net worth. Many are indeed consistently linked in a family business or conglomerate, as can be seen in this list which authoritative sources estimate comprise the richest in the world, share markets allowing! Very few are built on ‘new’ money, but mostly the result of steady growth over, in some cases, hundreds of years.

Table of Contents

10. Cox family Net worth: $34.5 billion

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[/one_half][one_half_last]From: USA

James M. Cox was firstly a social reforming politician, being twice elected Governor of Ohio, but also built a considerable business empire in the media and communications industries beginning before the turn of the 20^th century, so now well over100 years old. Now under the control of James’ daughter Anne Cox Chambers and his grandchildren James Cox Kennedy – current chair of Cox Enterprises – and Blair Parry-Okeden who are all heirs to a considerable fortune, the company is now expanding its interests into the automotive industry.[/one_half_last]

9. Bernard Arnault & family Net worth: $37.7 billion

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[/one_half][one_half_last]From: France

World renowned names Moet Hennessy and Louis Vuitton (LVMH) are just two of the business interests of the Arnault family, which also has interests in retail, yachts and web companies as well as in Christian Dior, a prominent fashion brand. CEO and chairman is still Bernard, but Executive VP at LVMH is daughter Delphine, and CEO of Berluti, a subsidiary of LMVH, is his son Antoine. The company made initial inroads into business through real estate, but smart investing saw it reach its current prominent position in several industries.

Bernard Arnault Net Worth

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8. Liliane Bettencourt & family Net worth: $42.7 billion

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[/one_half][one_half_last]From: France

The French are certainly still one of the fore-runners in the world of cosmetics and perfumes, as proven by their leading lengevity in the industry. The world-dominating cosmetic company L’Oreal is now run by Liliane Bettencourt’s daughter Francoise and grandson Jean-Victor Meyers, but she is still the richest woman in the world and principal shareholder of the company her father Eugene founded in 1907. She only retired from active involvement in 2011, aged 89.

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7. Cargill-MacMillan family Net worth: $45 billion

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[/one_half][one_half_last]From: USA

Cargil Inc. outranks Koch enterprises in being the largest private company in the USA, with and 88% of it still owned by family members, in fact currently boasting 14 billionaires. William Wallace Cargill founded the company based on grain storage in 1865, which was split among his four children when he died in 1909. The company’s interests now include trading commodities as well as food products. In-laws the MacMillans are billionaires, the total wealth of the expanded family being an estimate because of the privacy attendant to the conglomerate.[/one_half_last]

6. Carlos Slim Helú & family Net worth $77.1 billion

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[/one_half][one_half_last]From: Mexico

Son Carlos is now the chairman of Grupo Carso, and with three siblings is ready to take over completely the conglomerate built-up by the second richest person in the world. The ‘Warren Buffett of Mexico’, Carlos Slim Helú is so important to Mexico – accounting for 40% of the listings on the Mexican stock exchange – made from scratch largely from his development of telecoms, that there is a strong chance of the Mexican economy collapsing if the stock exchange took a real dive.

Carlos Slim Helu Net Worth

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5. Mars family Net worth: $80 billion

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[/one_half][one_half_last]From: USA

Mars Bars and M & Ms were developed more than 80 years ago, and are still going strong. Franklin Mars obviously knew his candy, and the money to be made out of it. As with other rich families, the family and the business are still private. Franklin founded the business in 1911, and son Forrest Sr. joined the company in 1929; children, Forrest Jr., Jacqueline and John continue to own the whole of Mars Inc., which now also makes pet foods as well as pasta sauces, and which means that they are now worth almost $30 billion each.

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4. Koch family Net worth: $89 billion

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[/one_half][one_half_last]From: USA

In the country with the world’s largest GDP, Koch Industries is now the second-largest privately-held company in the USA. Charles and David Koch had the nous to buy-out their two other brothers in the early 1980s, and now control the oil and refining company founded by their father Fred C. Koch in 1940. Subsidiary interests in finance, manufacturing, trading and real estate have ensured the continued growth of this multinational corporation, with the brothers net worth now approaching $50 billion each.

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3. Walton family Net worth: $152 billion

[one_half]

[/one_half][one_half_last]From: USA

Jim, Rob, and Alice are direct heirs of Sam and James Walton, who had the foresight to establish Walmart in the southern USA in 1962. Christy is the widow of his son John who died in a ‘plane crash in 2005, and with her children the six Waltons control 54% of the shares of the world’s largest retailer. The company’s revenue regularly hits $500 billion, through 11,500 stores in 28 countries, so the present owners sum value is usually over $160 billion – share market machinations permitting!

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2. The House of Saud Net worth: $1.4 trillion

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[/one_half][one_half_last]From: Saudi Arabia

The al-Saud family have been in control of at least part of the Arabian peninsular since the early 1700s, and like the Rothschilds, their wealth is now distributed through so many family members that the total can only be estimated. Saudi Arabia is now run as an absolute monarchy, effectively established under the patronage of the British following the break-up of the Ottoman empire after World War One. Of course their main source of wealth is oil, the price of which has a very significant effect on the al-Saud family wealth, and the budget of the country! Salman bin Abdulaziz al Saud has been king since early 2015.

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1. Rothschild family $350 billion – $700 trillion

[one_half]

[/one_half][one_half_last]From: Germany (originally)

The name itself is fascinating, but more so because the family is now so widespread, with all their wealth effectively ‘private’, so the total of their net worth is always open to conjecture. However, since Mayer Amschel Rothschild established his banking company in Frankfurt, now Germany, in the 1700s, and distributed his five sons to the five centres of European finance, the family has had a finger in virtually every pie – business, industry, enterprise, exploration, war – over the last 250 years. Their influence has been such that descendents have been elevated to royal rank in countries such as Austria and the UK. The family fortune is therefore only an estimate, but even at the lower end it is still extremely impressive!

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Companies

What’s in a Name – Money!

Published

2 mins ago

April 18, 2024

Daniel Wanburg

If marketing experts are correct – and the following list suggests that in many cases they certainly are – the name of a company can make or break it when it comes to marketing, and therefore sales of course. Many companies which are now household names began life under a completely different name, and sometimes logo.

When you read what some of the original names were, it doesn’t take a marketing genius to work-out why the name was changed, but picking the new, current name apparently does take a bit of know-how – judge for yourselves.

BackRub was the original name of the all-powerful search engine now called Google – est 1988 – itself a play on the phonetic word ‘googol’, meaning the number one plus 100 zeros and representing the amount of information available, really meaning infinite. Surely smart thinking?

Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web became the catchy Yahoo! Perhaps self-deprecatingly, founders David Filo and Jerry Yang coined it from Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle, when actually it is anything but, becoming one of the most utilised search engines on the internet.

Firebird wasn’t unique enough, so Mozilla changed the name to Firefox, another word for red panda and which obviously caught the eyes of the IT world as well as the all-important consumer.

The reason why the Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation, founded in 1911, changed its name from that mouthful to International Business Machines – IBM – in 1924 is pretty clear. One of the oldest IT companies is still going strong world-wide after more than 100 years.

Similarly, Quantum Computer Services changing to the simpler America Online and then AOL in 2006 is clear, and certainly worked, especially in the age of increasing use of acronyms.

Apple Computers slimmed down to Apple, Inc. in 2007 simply to describe the far wider products of the company, not only computers. Who is to say that one of the largest and most profitable companies in the world wasn’t correct in this decision?

In marketing to the world, Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo was hardly appropriate, plus the move from only producing transistor radios for the Japanese market to many more products. Sony was adapted in 1958 from a combination of sonus, Latin for sonic meaning sound, and sonny, a youthful boy. The pronunciation is simple and the same in any language, again a smart marketing move.

AuctionWeb‘s change to eBay was actually a fait accompli – the media were already referring to Pierre Omidyar’s company – founded in 1995, and one of four – as ‘eBay‘, so the name was formally adopted in 1997.

Palm Pilot Payment and Cryptography Company was the original name back in 1998, then renamed to Confinity, merging the words confidence and infinity. PayPal came into being in 1999, when a Confinity engineer successfully designed the now widely-used online system allowing consumers to email payments. The company was subsequently bought by eBay for $1.5 billion in July 2002.

Another mouthful – Marafuku Company, Nintendo Playing Card Company, founded in 1889 – was slimmed down to Nintendo when it started manufacturing other games in 1963, as well as playing cards, and is now the champion of video game production.

Starbucks Coffee, Tea and Spice was bought by former employee Howard Schultz in 1987, who had founded Il Giornale Coffee Company, and who simply adopted the simpler, catchier Starbucks – good move Howard!

Brad’s Drink was really a very simplistic American company name when it entered the market in 1893, hardly likely to be noticed around the world. Drink maker Caleb Bradham had the foresight to change the name to Pepsi-Cola, and as the saying goes, the rest is history.

Fred DeLuca opened Pete’s Super Submarines in 1965 in Connecticut, named in recognition of a $1,000 loan from family friend Dr. Peter Buck, with the aim of earning enough to pay college tuition fees, but without success. The two then became partners, and the name was changed to SUBWAY in 1969 – how tasty, and still expanding around the world!

Blue Ribbon Sports was a company marketing Onitsuka Tiger sports shoes in the USA, when Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman decided that they could do better for themselves, and invented their own company using the Greek word for ‘victory’ – Nike. That was in 1964 – now the company is one of the most profitable in the world.

DrivUrSelf was hardly a unique name, so when acquired by Jacob Hertz in 1918 he quickly changed it to Hertz DrivUrSelf, and then when bought by Omnibus corporation from General Motors, it became Hertz Rent-A-Car in 1953, developing into a worldwide known brand, and the largest US car rental company by revenue.

Stag Party may well have been a popular and appropriate name for a magazine when it was first published in 1953 by Hugh Hefner, but it was quickly changed to Playboy, far more accurately reflecting the content and targeted market, such that it is still one of the best-known magazine brands in newsagents and bookstalls around the world today.

Some famous company logos have so much emotional power that they don’t need to spell out their names, as they transcend languages and cultural borders.

Do you know of other businesses that have changed their name, and subsequently become successful? Please let us know and we will endeavour to write about them too.