Meet the five South Africans on the Forbes World Billionaires List
While many faced incredible financial struggles in the past year, the rich seemingly got richer.
It's that time of the year where Forbes magazine releases its annual World Billionaires list.
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While the top of the list doesn't see a lot of change, although Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk seem to be in a constant tug-of-war battle for the number one spot, the lower rankings are full of newly-crowned billionaires and even feature a local, South African name or two, maybe even five.
Along with the list, Forbes also provided some crazy statistics.
2020 might have been a tough year for 99% of people across the world, but it was a successful year for the 1%.
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Forbes found that in the last year, more than 493 new billionaires entered the ranks. That would mean that on average there is a new billionaire popping up every 17 hours.
The annual list consists of 2,755 billionaires and five of them are from South Africa.
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Here, in no particular order, are our very own, local, dollar billionaires:
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1. Michiel Le Roux - $1.2 billion
The founder of Capitec Bank is sitting comfortably at number 2,197. He has also featured on the list before, but this is his first mention in two years.
He started the company in 2001, retired as chairman in 2016, but still sits on the board and owns an 11% stake.
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2. Koos Bekker - $3 billion
Bekker is a founding member of the MTN Group and of the M-Net/MultiChoice pay-television business. He is also the former CEO of Naspers and is now the chair of the both the Naspers and Prosus boards.
He is number 1,016 on the Forbes list.
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3. Patrice Motsepe - more than $3 billion
Motsepe seems to have his finger in almost every pie which has put him at number 1,000 on the list.
The 59-year-old is a former lawyer, is the owner of the Mamelodi Sundowns, the newly appointed president of the Confederation of African Football (CAF), and founded African Rainbow Minerals, a mining company.
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But that's not all! He also established the African Rainbow Capital Investments (ARC Investments). ARC Investments owns the majority stake in TymeBank, so with this extensive list of accomplishments, it doesn't really come as a surprise that his wealth doubled in the last year.
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4. Nicky Oppenheimer (and family) - $8 billion
Taking the number 302 spot on the list is the 75-year-old who is the former chairman of the De Beers diamond mining company and the deputy chairman of Anglo American, which is a company that was founded by his grandfather.
In 2012, the Oppenheimer family sold their 40% stake in De Beers to Anglo for a massive $5.1 billion.
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5. Johann Rupert (and family) - $7.6 billion
His father Anton Rupert established the Remgro group, which today owns brands such as Cartier and Montblanc, while Johann founded his own company Richemont out of the Remgro group. Richemont has stakes in South African companies such as Distell, Mediclinic, and more.
Despite the pandemic's impact on Richemont's sales, Rupert's wealth grew by $2.5 billion within the last year and now he sits at the number 334 spot on the list.
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The list also includes many other familiar names like Bezos and Musk, as well as a bunch of new faces - welcome to the club Kim Kardashian.
It will be interesting to see who will be able to keep their billionaire status for the next 365 days.
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Main image courtesy of @Forbes/Twitter