Karl and Theo Albrecht

Karl Hans Albrecht is the eleventh richest billionaire in the world and also the richest person in Germany, with a net worth close to $27 billion USD. Theodor Paul Albrecht, in turn, is the eighteenth richest billionaire in the world with a net worth racking up to $23 billion USD, who also lives in Germany. The two are brothers, who together co-own the ALDI discount supermarket chain, and Theo additionally owns the Trader Joe’s specialty grocery market chain.

Karl Albrecht was born February 20, 1920, and Theo Albrecht was born March 28, 1922, both in Essen, Germany. Their father was a miner and later worked as a baker, while their mother ran a small grocery store in a suburb of Essen. While Theo completed an apprenticeship in their mother’s store, Karl worked in a delicatessen and later served in the German army during World War II, before joining the family business. The two brother took over their mother’s business in 1946, at some point giving it the “ALDI” name, which originally stood for “ALbrecht DIscount”.

By 1950, the brothers had expanded the store into 13 chain locations in the Ruhr Valley of Germany. The success of the stores were due to the brother’s thriftiness. They would regularly prune their inventory to eliminate low-selling items, decided against stocking fresh fruit because of the cost of maintaining it, and if they had a product that offered a rebate, they’d collect the rebate themselves and offer the product at the lower price rather than making the customer go through this process. They also skimped on paid advertising and ran their stores from the smallest amount of floor space possible.

In 1960, with over 300 stores now in the chain, Karl and Theo Albrecht split the company between them, partly over concerns over what inventory items to stock, but mostly this was a friendly move to give each of them room to expand. The two branches became “Aldi Nord” and “Aldi Süd”, north and south belonging to Theo and Karl, respectively. The two halves of the business quite literally drew a line across Germany and split the territory between them.

Going into international expansion, the Aldi store chain today operates about 7,600 locations worldwide. North Aldi is running the stores in Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, France, Spain, Portugal and Denmark. South Aldi is running the stores in Austria, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the United States, Australia, Switzerland and Slovenia. Both branches of the store chain continue to expand into more countries today, at what is said to be the rate of a new location opening somewhere in the world every week. Germany, with 2,400 stores, has the highest share of stores, while the United States has one of the lowest shares with only about 818.

Management of the stores today continues to follow the thrifty and efficient philosophy of the two brothers. Stores are always located in purpose-built distinctive buildings. The layout is kept consistent, so that even a shopper who travels abroad can go into an Aldi located in any country and find all of the products in the same place. Traditionally, only one or two brands of a product is offered, to allow a wider range of products to be carried in a smaller amount of space. Other cost-cutting measures are charging for shopping bags, requiring a coin deposit for carts, and in most cases not accepting credit cards because of the retailer surcharge upon collection.

The Trader Joe’s market chain, which was founded by Joe Coulombe in Pasadena, California, USA in 1958, was bought by Theo Albrecht in 1979. Theo left the chain of stores largely unchanged from how they were, and only expanded them throughout the United States. Trader Joe’s has a similar philosophy to Aldi’s, in that they each only offer a few brands of each product, have small store layouts, and don’t advertise very much. The Trader Joe’s markets, however, focus very specifically on only carrying products that other stores do not carry, frequently doing so under their own brand name. This is to meet the needs of consumers who are tired of “the usual” and want something different. This strategy is an amazing success in the United States, and Trader Joe’s has built up a very loyal following from customers who can only find certain niche products at the Trader Joe’s chain.

Karl and Theo Albrecht have since basically sold out of the business, each of them retiring and donating most of their fortunes to charity. They remain reclusive and withdrawn to this day, in part because of the famous kidnapping of Theo Albrecht in 1971. Theo was released after payment of the ransom of 7 million DM, and the kidnappers were quickly apprehended by the police. Theo Albrecht, while unharmed, was nevertheless shaken by the ordeal.

The brothers Albrecht have demonstrated unique smarts in running their grocery chain and building their business empire. The Aldi’s retail chain may be seen as another Walmart. Like Walmart, Aldi is another story of home-made success.

Kushal Pal Singh

Kushal Pal Singh is the world’s ninth richest billionaire, with an estimated net worth of $30 billion USD. He is the chairman of DLF Universal Limited, the largest real estate development company in India. He is commonly known to the world as K.P. Singh.

Kushal Pal Singh was born August 15, 1931, in Bulandshahar in Uttar Pradesh. he is the son of Chaudhury Raghuvendra Singh, who founded the DLF Group in 1946. Kushal Pal Singh holds a Science degree from Meerut College, and, unusual for a world-class billionaire, served a nine year tour of duty with a cavalry regiment in the Indian Army, known as The Deccan Horse. It was after this service that he joined the family business.

When DLF Limited was begun, they were involved in the development of some of the first residential colonies in Delhi, India, including Krishna Nagar in East Delhi, which they completed in 1949. They went on to found and develop many other urban colonies, including South Extension, Greater Kailash, Kailash Colony and Hauz Khas. India’s Delhi Development Act of 1955 led to the creation of the Delhi Development Authority, plus India’s newly-won independence, paved the way for Delhi to blossom from a collection of villages and colonies into a modern city. DLF Limited rode this wave forward, continuing to buy and develop land throughout India, especially into the district of Gurgaon in the adjacent state of Haryana.

Their first landmark building development was DLF Qutab Enclave, which is known today as “DLF City”. The development spreads across 3,000 acres in Gurgaon and includes residential, commercial and retail areas along with schools, hospitals, hotels, shopping malls, and a golf course country club. In the process, Gurgaon evolved from a village of farms into a modern metropolis. DLF City today is recognized as Asia’s largest privately-formed township.

Under the guidance of Chaudhury Raghuvendra Singh, and later Kushal Pal Singh after 1961, DLF continued its goal of “building India”, as their logo says, by completing group housing projects, community shopping centers, office buildings, retail complexes, parks, homes, and hotels, and premium residential complexes, taking them into the 21st century.

A large degree of DLF’s success comes from the boom of the Indian market. The significant economic reforms of 1991 have literally given India its rebirth. In just the space of a single generation, India has transformed into one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. It remains to be seen as to whether the significant gains of the region can be maintained, or whether, as some forecasters have predicted, India will inevitably suffer growing pains and slow its economy again.

Lately, the huge building boom in Dubai, UAE, has spun off into more development opportunities for DLF. Not directly, but indirectly through joint ventures and partnerships with many of the real estate developers there, who have proven their track record, to come to India to share the growth. Partners of DLF who are also involved in Dubai development include Nakheel of Dubai, WSP Group Plc, and Hilton Hotels.

Kushal Pal Singh’s share of the family DLF business was $21 billion USD back when the company went public. However, since the stock share price of DLF has soared since this time, coupled with the staggering economic growth of the nation of India, his wealth has matured to push him into the world-class billionaire he is today.

Lakshmi Mittal

Lakshmi Mittal is currently the world’s fourth wealthiest person, with an estimated net worth of $45 billion USD. Hailing from India, he is the most prominent example of the economic miracle that India has experienced in the late 20th and early 21st century.

Lakshmi Mittal was born June 15, 1950, in Sadulpur, Rajasthan, India. As a member of the Agrawal community, the family was of the Vaishya class and hence ranked as merchants, artisans, and cultivators in the Hindu varna system. Lakshmi grew up in a financially poor family home, with dirt floors and rope beds, in a house that was built by his grandfather. He was the grandson and son of industrial manufacturing workers. However, his father, Mohan Mittal, was more successful in business, founding a steel mill and eventually becoming a partner in the steel business. The family moved to Calcutta and prospered, becoming wealthy in the process. In 1969, Lakshmi Mittal graduated from St. Xavier’s College, Calcutta, with a Bachelor of Commerce degree in Business and Accounting.

Having been given this moderate boost from the start, Lakshmi Mittal set to working in the family steel business in India. In 1976, just seven years after graduation, Mittal founded his own company, Mittal Steel. He immediately began making improvements to the steel manufacturing process, including the development of integrated mini-mills and the use of direct reduced iron as a scrap substitute for steel-making. As a result of these improvements, Mittal Steel became the biggest steel company in India.

Mittal is credited with the consolidation of the global steel industry. Throughout the decades from the 1980′s to the 2000′s, he has conducted a number of acquisitions of companies into Mittal Steel. Amongst these are Iron & Steel Company of Trinidad & Tobago, Hamburger Stahlwerke, Inland Steel Company, Unimétal, the International Steel Group, and Kryvorizhstal. The Kryvorizhstal alone cost $4.8 billion, and is considered the landmark acquisition that put Mittal Steel over the tipping point into a global heavyweight.

By the 2000′s, Mittal Steel became the world’s second largest steel company, with over 300,000 employees in more than 60 countries.

However, Mittal was not content with this, and went for an even bigger acquisition in 2006, bidding $23 billion for Arcelor, then the world’s largest steel producer. As can be expected in the case of the world’s first and second largest companies in an industry, there was much controversy over this move. However, Arcelor accepted an even larger bid offer in June of 2006 and a new company formed from the merging of the two, to be called Arcelor-Mittal.

Without question, Arcelor-Mittal is now the largest steel manufacturer in the world. The company leads the industry in the production of steel for every major global market, including automotive, construction, household appliances and packaging. This means that Mittal’s product is most likely a part of every car sold and building constructed.

Historians and biographers cannot help but compare Lakshmi Mittal to Andrew Carnegie, and Time magazine’s list of 100 most influential people goes into this comparison in their article on Lakshmi Mittal at considerable depth. Andrew Carnegie consolidated the United States’ steel market and Mittal consolidated the global steel market. The most striking difference, however, is that Carnegie was the first American company to achieve a $1 billion market capitalization, whereas Mittal broke that record by a magnitude of 100! Seeing as how 40% of the steel produced crosses an international border before it is used, steel is a heavily imported and exported commodity. So with a global market like this which shows no evidence of ever breaking – what could possibly replace steel? – Arcelor-Mittal looks to be in a position to rule the market for a very long time indeed.

Lakshmi Mittal’s story is practically the capitalist dream come true. A boy born in humble circumstances becomes the man who is a self-made billionaire. Lakshmi Mittal will have his place in the history books as the world’s steel tycoon, and is the poster child for aspiring tycoons of any industry.

Larry Ellison

Larry Ellison is currently the fifteenth richest billionaire in the world, with a net worth of $25 billion USD. He is the co-founder and CEO of Oracle Corporation, a computer software company which specializes in developing database management systems and other enterprise software products. If this sounds like a dry and boring way to make your fortune, that business is offset by the colorful and extravagant personality behind it.

Larry Ellison was born August 17, 1944, in Manhattan, New York, USA. As astounding as it is to consider for the world’s fifteenth-richest person, his mother was just nineteen years old and unwed, and to this day his father is not established. At the age of nine months, he was adopted by Lillian and Louis Ellison, who raised him in Chicago’s South Shore as their own. Larry Ellison did not even meet his real mother until the age of 48.

In what is now considered a famous quirk of his, he attended both the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Chicago, without finishing either one and without attaining a degree. At the age of 20, in 1964, he was first exposed to computers and programming, and nothing else would ever again hold his fascination. Thus, he is what is considered an “autodidact” – someone who is self-taught. In the computer programmer culture, an autodidact is actually held in higher esteem than a college-trained professional, in contrast to other industries, since colleges have a hard time keeping up with the changes of the technology industry.

In the 1970′s, Larry Ellison found himself working as a programmer for Ampex, an American electronics company which makes audio and video equipment. During this time, Ampex received the contract to develop a computer database program for the United States Central Intelligence Agency, to be code-named ‘Oracle’, and Ellison got to work on that project. Ellison retained the rights to produce the database software commercially and drew from this and also inspiration from white papers published at the time by Edgar F. Codd. Ellison founded his own software development company, called Software Development Laboratories , in 1977, using only $2000 of his own money to do so.

Software Development Laboratories changed its name to Relational Software Inc., then again to Oracle, after their lead database product. Oracle software charted the course of computing history into the Information Age, first running on VAX machines, then Unix and PDPs, into mainframe servers and desktop microcomputers. Through the decades, Oracle software has been built into a trustworthy and respected brand name. The highly technical nature of developing database software prohibits start-up competitors, and the industry is pretty happy to let it be Oracle’s problem.

Yet another notable trait for a world-class billionaire, Larry Ellison is staunchly supportive of Free and Open Source Software. Oracle’s products have always run across all computer systems and platforms, in stark contrast to other companies in the software industry who choose to lock users into running Microsoft Windows. People who think that Bill Gates is the only billionaire with an operating system will be surprised to learn that Oracle has its own distribution of the Linux operating system. Called Oracle Enterprise Linux but known commonly as “Unbreakable Linux”, it is a security-hardened version of the increasingly-popular GNU/Linux operating system. Even more amazing, Oracle Corporation chooses to give Unbreakable Linux away for free, charging only for support contracts. This is in keeping with the GNU/Linux philosophy.

Finally, there may be people richer than Larry Ellison, but none can be said to enjoy it more. Ellison is active in sports such as yacht racing, he owns a line of exotic cars including the Acura NSX, a McLaren F1, and an Audi R8. He is also a licensed pilot, and owns and flies aircraft regularly. His home in Woodside, California is a $200 million estate that is modeled on feudal Japanese architecture. He has also rivaled the top fifteen world billionaires in charitable donations, and, unlike some other billionaire software moguls who made their fortunes through pillaging the technology community, his donations are never self-serving moves that will go right back into his pocket.

Larry Ellison is a living, breathing anomaly, with far more color to his character than can ever be expressed in this article. He has made his way exclusively on his own, with no help from anyone. He is one of the few world-class billionaires of whom it can be said that he has earned every penny of his fortune – perhaps many times over.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin

Larry Page and Sergey Brin are the billionaire founders of Google, Inc. Sergey Brin’s net worth is $18.7 billion USD, making him the 34th-richest person in the world, and Larry Page’s net worth is $18.6 billion USD, making his the 35th.

Sergey Brin seemed destined to become an engineering prodigy. He was born August 21, 1973, in Moscow, Soviet Union. He is the son of two mathematicians who graduated from Moscow State University, Michael and Evgenia Brin. The family emigrated to the United States and Sergey attended a Montessori gifted-student school in Adelphi, Maryland, and received further tutoring at home from his father, who had become a professor in the department of mathematics at the University of Maryland by this time. Sergey Brin went on to the University of Maryland, where he received his Bachelor of Science degree in May of 1993. He then went on to graduate studies in computer science at Stanford University, where he earned his master’s degree.

Larry Page likewise has a background surprisingly well-suited for a technology prodigy. He was born March 26, 1973, in Lansing, Michigan, and the son of Dr. Carl Victor Page, a professor of computer science and artificial intelligence at Michigan State University, and Gloria Page, a computer programming teacher at Michigan State University. He, too, attended a Montessori gifted-student school in Lansing, Michigan. He went on to the University of Michigan to pick up a Bachelor of Science degree and Stanford University to obtain a Masters degree in Computer Science.

The two met at Stanford University, and both of them had already shown signs of exceptional talent. Sergey Brin had already written a software program to work with the TeX formatting markup language, co-authored various papers on data-mining and pattern extraction, and started a website for film ratings. Larry Page had already written his dissertation on exploring the mathematical properties of the World Wide Web, served as president of the electrical and computer engineering honor society known as “Eta Kappa Nu”(HKN), and, as a stunt, built an inkjet printer out of Lego bricks.

Looking at that background, how could they have helped but create Google? In 1995, the two sat down together to write a paper titled “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine.”, and worked together to create the PageRank algorithm used today to index web content. The first incarnation of Google went online on Stanford University’s web site in 1996. Brin and Page founded Google, Inc. in 1998.

To understand why they were such a smashing success, it is necessary to understand what the World Wide Web was in 1998. The leading search engines of the time were AskJeeves.com, now known as “Ask.com”, and Lycos.com. Lycos was devoted to finding goods to purchase online, nothing more. AskJeeves was also sort of directed towards this, but would occasionally produce informative content and was built to try to use natural language searches phrased as a question. Altavista.com and Yahoo.com were both also making entries into the search market, but both of them were lacking as well. It is not enough to search a web page for words the way you’d search a text file on your desktop; you need some kind of authority to designate that the web page is actually about that topic and not just a dictionary file posted to a spam site. It was this innovation that Google brought to the web.

Today, “google” is actually recognized as a verb meaning “to search the web for information” according to several dictionaries. Google, headquartered today in Mountain View, California, has grown to be the most essential web service known, with revenues of $16.6 billion USD annually. The company has kept a squeaky-clean image with their official corporate motto being “Don’t be evil.” This is reflected in their enthusiastic support of Free and Open Source software, their embracing of cross-platform technology, their use and advocacy of the Linux operating system and GNU software, their “Summer of Code” events, and their bountiful offerings of free services on the Internet which makes access to information an equal opportunity for everyone.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin have earned their success many times over. They have striven against the closed, secretive nature of proprietary technology companies by being refreshingly open and pro-education. The Google office headquarters and Google development labs are the Shangri-La of the IT professional culture, the place where anybody in technology would love to work. The full path of Google, Inc. has yet to be charted, but it has so far grown every year without fail and shows no signs of abating.

Liliane Bettencourt

Liliane Bettencourt is the nineteenth richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $22.9 billion USD. But there are more categories in which to hold a distinction! She is the richest woman in the world, and the second-richest person in France. The world knows her as the non-executive director and major shareholder of L’Oréal, the world’s largest cosmetics company.

Liliane Bettencourt was born October 21, 1922, in Paris, France. She is the only child of Eugène Schueller, the founder of L’Oréal. Tragically, her mother died when she was only five years old. She is a very private person who has been shy about the press, so not much is known of her childhood.

Her father, Eugene Schueller, got his start in the cosmetics business in 1907, when he developed an innovative hair-color formula which he called ‘Auréale’. He started business by selling batches of the formula to local hairdressers. He registered his business in 1909, declaring the purpose to be “research and innovation in the interest of beauty”. The company’s original name was the “Société Française de Teintures Inoffensives pour Cheveux”, later shortened to L’Oréal.

By the 1920′s, the company had employed three chemists full-time, and the number grew to 200 by 1950, 1,000 by 1984, and around 2,000 today. The company has also branched out into other cleansing, cosmetic, and beauty products, eventually expanding into today’s line of over 500 brands and several thousand individual products. L’Oréal sells products both to retailers and to beauty professionals.

Liliane Bettencourt married André Bettencourt, a French politician, in 1950. The couple set up house-keeping in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, where they remained until André’s death in 2007. Now widowed, Liliane Bettencourt has an only child: a daughter named Françoise Bettencourt-Meyers, who now also is a member of L’Oréal’s board of directors.

Liliane Bettencourt inherited both the family company and her father’s fortune as the sole heir in 1957. Today, she controlls just over 27% of the company’s interest, the food company Nestlé controls 25%, and the rest is in publicly traded stock. Her chief usage of her inherited wealth is to found the Bettencourt Schueller Foundation, which awards the “Liliane Bettencourt Prize for Life Sciences” to European researchers annually. Otherwise, her guidance of the company is largely delegated, while she makes sure that things are still run the way her father ran them.

L’Oréal and Nestlé have moved more and more into a partnership in recent years. Laboratoires Inneov, a joint venture between the two companies, is an exploration of the nutritional cosmetics market. Another joint venture between the two companies is Galderma, which deals in dermatology. L’Oréal also has a 10% interest in Sanofi-Aventis, the world’s third-largest and Europe’s largest pharmaceutical company.

L’Oréal throughout the years has become a name synonymous with glamour and fame, in part because of their aggressive marketing campaign employing fashion models, actors, actresses, singers, and sport figures. Their commercial motto “Because you’re worth it.” is instantly recognizable anywhere in the world. However, the company has had many criticisms. Primarily the animal-rights activists have loudly protested the use of animals in research and testing. Also, being heavily involved in the fashion industry, L’Oréal has naturally been the topic of a catty tell-all book or two.
L’Oréal has established itself as a cosmetic brand which is going to be around for quite some time. The success of the company was well-ensured by Eugene Schueller’s dedication to innovation and research. While Liliane Bettencourt’s main “secret to success” appears to be “be born in the right family”, she has nevertheless done an impressive job of maintaining the company for over 50 years, something no mere passive heiress could have done.

Michael Dell

Michael Dell is the 42nd richest person in the world and the founder and CEO of the computer company Dell, Inc. His net worth is $16.4 billion USD.

Michael Dell was born February 23, 1965, in Houston, Texas. His father was an orthodontist. Michael had no formal education beyond high school; however, as a child he showed an unusual aptitude with both computers and entrepreneurship. His first computer experience was when he took apart and reassembled his Apple ][ computer at age 15, just to see if he could do it. As for business, he sold subscriptions to the Houston Post newspaper. Many kids go into the newspaper business; few of them discover an untapped customer base by marketing to newlyweds who are just moving in together and, as a result, earn $18,000 which buy them a BMW and a new computer. Michael Dell had that kind of eye for marketing.

Michael Dell did attend at the University of Texas at Austin, but while there, with just $1000 start-up money he started his own computer business, called “PC’s Limited”, running it literally out of his dorm room. In the year 1984 at age 19, his family extended his $300,000 investment capital and he dropped out of the University to run his computer business full-time, first as PC’s Limited, then as Dell Computer Corporation, and finally as Dell, Inc.

He found that assembling computers and selling them directly to the customer allowed him to be more in touch with the customer’s needs. He allowed customers to check from a list of options and then built the PC custom-made on the spot, a tradition still evident in the practices of the company today. In 1985, Dell launched the first computer of its own design, the Turbo PC, which retailed for under $800 and ran an Intel 8088-compatible processor running at a speed of 8 MHz. They advertised in industry magazines and the Turbo PC became popular for the cheapest possible computer with the most “bang for the buck” at the time. How successful was this strategy? The first year they made $73 million gross.

The company assumed the name of Dell Computer Corporation by 1988. Dell was simply in the right place at the right time when the PC revolution hit, and the business branched out into international markets in just four years. By 1992, Fortune magazine listed Dell in the list of the world’s 500 largest companies. By 1996, Dell was first to tap the Internet commerce sphere by selling computers directly through its website. By 1999, Dell had overtaken Compaq, its chief competitor, to become the leading seller of personal computers in the United States.

In the year 2000, Michael Dell again took the role of the industry’s innovator by doing something first suggested by Ralph Nader: offering PCs with an alternative operating system, specifically the Linux system. This reflected the rise of the people’s open-source OS as the new preferred choice, in what has been a growing demand for Linux ever since.

However, the effort to market Linux quickly folded. It has since come to light that Microsoft, makers of Windows, put pressure on Dell to stop selling Linux, in spite of the anti-trust conviction against Microsoft. According to the case of “Joe Comes, et al vs Microsoft Corporation”, 2006, the testimony of Microsoft executive Joachim Kempin revealed to the public his plan of retaliation and coercion to shut down competition from Linux. He stated that he had thought of “hitting the OEM harder than in the past with anti-Linux actions.” and that he would “further try to restrict source code deliveries where possible and be less gracious when interpreting agreements — again without being obvious about it.”

Since then, Dell, Inc. has made many attempts to market Linux computers without being black-balled out of the market by Microsoft, which abuses its position as a monopoly to threaten to withdraw Microsoft licenses from computer manufacturers. Michael Dell’s preferred Linux system is the popular Ubuntu. His strategy to dodge around Microsoft’s tactics is currently to offer a bare computer without any software and a boxed Linux software kit, after which time the company will send a technician to the customer’s home to install the software. That is how badly Dell wants to give his customers what they want.

Michael Dell today still resides in Austin, Texas with his wife, Susan, and their four children. Dell, Inc., has branched out into other technology products besides computers, but computers are still their main product. Dell’s savvy advertising message, including the “Dude, you’re getting a Dell!” commercials and the ads with the slogan “The computer is personal again.” ensure that they will remain a heavy player in the PC market for some time to come.

Mukesh and Anil Ambani

Mukesh Ambani is the world’s fifth richest person, with an estimated net worth of $43 billion USD. Anil Ambani is the world’s sixth richest person, with an estimated net worth of $42 billion USD. The two are brothers, and if either of them sold out to the other, their combined worth would make that person the richest human on the planet, if not in all of history.

The brother’s father, Dhirajlal Hirachand Ambani, was himself one of India’s greatest business tycoons and the founder of Reliance Industries, India’s largest private sector conglomerate. The father, who was born in relative poverty, then worked his way up and built the business empire, which his sons have since taken over to spur on to even greater success.

Mukesh Ambani was born April 19, 1957, in the colony of Aden, Yemen, as the firstborn of four siblings. Anil Ambani was born June 4, 1959, in Mumbai, India. Although his position as firstborn gave Mukesh “first pick” of the opportunities to inherit from his father, so to speak, the advantage does not seem to have been large over his younger sibling and the two do not appear to rival.

As the family settled down in Mumbai, India, the father, Dhirajlal, tutored his sons well at his side while he built his corporate empire. Beginning in 1962, he founded Reliance Industries with the original aim of importing polyester yarn and exporting spices. By 1966, he had started the company’s first textile mill in Gujarat, India. It’s chief mission was the production of polyester fiber yarn, which was sold under the brand name Vimal, which became a household brand name in India.

Meanwhile, Mukesh Ambani attended school, and graduated from the Mumbai University Institute of Chemical Technology with a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering. He was later to set sail off to America where he attended Stanford business school to obtain a Master of Business Administration degree. Anil also attained a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Mumbai and a Master of Business Administration degree from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. The two sons then joined into the family business.

Reliance Industries, under the guidance of father and both sons Ambani, pursued a strategy of “backward vertical integration” Which is to say that they started in polyester, moved on to fiber intermediates, then plastics, petrochemicals, and petroleum refining, and finally to oil and gas exploration and production. Thus, they asserted themselves in place along the entire materials and energy production chain, from raw resources to finished product.

The primary focus of the company in the 2000′s is petroleum refining and petrochemicals, and Mukesh Ambani started this trend rolling when he created the Reliance oil refinery, in Jamnagar, Gujarat, in 1999. This act, at the time, represented the most ambitious construction project to ever happen in India, at a price tag of $6 billion USD. Meanwhile Anil branched into capitol markets overseas with international public offerings of global depositary receipts, convertibles and bonds. Anil has also served as the Chairman of Board of Governors of DA-IICT, Gandhinagar and a member of the Board of Governors of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

The company has also branched out into other diverse fields. Among them is the telecommunications industry, doing business as Reliance Infocom, later Reliance Communications. This conglomeration did not last long, however, as the brother Anil Ambani took over this wing of the company and now runs it separate from Reliance Industries under the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group. Finally, Reliance Industries has also branched off into retail with the wholly-owned subsidiary Reliance Retail, operating a chain of stores called Delight.

The brothers Mukesh and Anil Ambani have done very much what you would expect in the situation of a father who struggled his way up from poverty to riches and then passed the business on to his sons. Today, they are both somewhat private and reclusive, but happily running their slices of the business empire founded by their family.

Oleg Deripaska

Oleg Deripaska is currently the tenth richest billionaire in the world, with a personal net worth around $28 billion USD and growing fast. Forbes magazine reported in 2008 that his present worth is $11 billion more than it had been the year before. He is also the richest person in all of Russia and the Chairman of the Board – not the CEO – of United Company RusAl (Russian Aluminum), the world’s largest aluminum company.

Oleg Deripaska was born January 2, 1968, in Dzerzhinsk, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Russia. Growing up in Krasnodar Krai, he attended M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, where he graduated with honors in Physics in 1993, and attended Plekhanov Russian Academy of Economics, where he picked up his Economics degree in 1996.

Given the course of studies he pursued, it is no wonder that he put physics and economics together and went into the metals industry. He joined the company Sayanogorsk Smelter, working there until 1997 and attaining the position of general manager. He then attained the position of president of Sibirsky Aluminum, a post he occupied from 1997 until 2001. During this position, he was awarded the “Order of Friendship of Peoples” by Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin.

By an interesting twist of fate, Russia’s second-richest person, billionaire Roman Abramovich, was doing something that would impact Deripaska’s future. Abramovich began acquiring mining and processing facilities, buying up and consolidating metal assets from all around the country, including some from Deripaska. These were eventually merged into RusAl in the year 2000. In 2003, Abramovich then sold his stake in RusAl to Deripaska, making Deripaska the 75% stakeholder and effectively the owner of the company. The remaining 25% stake in the company belonged to Boris Berezovsky and Badri Patarkatsishvili, who sold it to Abramovich in 2004.

Oleg Deripaska entered the 21st century engaged in vigorous trading and dealing in aluminum and other metals, until he had ammassed a small fortune with which to acquire RusAl. He also founded the holding company Basic Element, which now owns RusAl, as well as automobile manufacturer GAZ, aircraft manufacturer Aviacor, and insurance company Ingosstrakh. His past holdings and tradings include the Russian silver mining company Polymetal, the Austrian construction company STRABAG SE, and the German construction company HOCHTIEF. Then, Magna International chairman Frank Stronach made an announcement in 2007 which sealed Deripaska’s status as a tycoon: they were bringing him on as a strategic partner, in part to assist in placing a competitive takeover bid for Chrysler. Yes, the car company!

Additionally, he has now founded “En+ Group”, a company in the production of energy. En+ Group’s holdings include Russian independent energy company EuroSibEnergo, United Oil Group, and the Central European Aluminum Company. En+ Group’s other operations include coal extraction, oil refining, nuclear energy and non-ferrous metals production in Russia and abroad.

At the age of just 40, Oleg Deripaska has amassed a stunning fortune for a completely self-made person. It is perhaps with some resentment on this fact that the news reports that he is married into the family of Boris Yeltsin. There are also numerous allegations and lawsuits pending, with claims that other people should have gotten bigger shares of the business deals he has done over the years.

It cannot be denied, however, that Oleg Deripaska is an extremely shrewd business dealer. Graduating with honors in physics, perhaps, has given him a unique perspective in viewing the world, and especially gives him a deep understanding of the extraction and production of metals. Certainly, his opponents tend to find him unnervingly smart. In any case, with his track record and phenomenal accomplishments so far, it seems that his highest position in the list of billionaires is yet to be seen.

Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud

His full name is “Prince Al-Walid bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud”, and one could imagine that with a name like that, you’d have to be rich. He is the 21st richest person in the world with a current net worth of $21 billion USD, and is the second richest man in royalty next to the Sultan of Brunei. Time magazine has called him the Arabian Warren Buffett.

Prince Al-Walid was born March 7, 1955, in Saudi Arabia. His father is Abdul Aziz Al Saud, the founding King of Saudi Arabia. Abdul Aziz Al Saud, commonly known in the West as Ibn Saud, founded the unified nation of Saudi Arabia in 1932. It was under his reign that petroleum reserves under Saudi Arabia was discovered in 1938, and it was his move to exploit that. His mother is Princess Mona El-Solh, who is the daughter of Riad El-Solh, who was the first Prime Minister of modern day Lebanon and a leader of Lebanese independence. To fill out the royal family tree, his cousin is Prince Moulay Hicham of Morocco.

Some of us might be tempted to laze about the palace eating figs all day if we were born to such circumstances, but Prince Al-Walid has chosen a more involved life. So he is the holder of a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration from Menlo College, earned in 1979, and a Masters in Social Science degree from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University, earned in 1985.

Prince Al-Walid has made a remarkable decision in turning away from politics in his country, choosing instead to show his talent in business. He simply borrowed $30,000 from his father and mortgaged his own home for $300,000, and that was his seed money for starting his business career. He started out being a business broker for firms in Saudi Arabia, and throughout the 1980′s he dropped a few investment dollars into the Saudi banking industry and made a few land deals. He was pacing himself.

In the 1990′s, he made his first big career move when he bought a large portion of shares in Citicorp, the United States banking corporation. This wasn’t just a casual purchase – Citigroup was in danger of collapsing in 1991 due to under-performing American real estate loans. Prince Al-Walid dropped a solid $590 million USD in Citigroup’s lap, earning him an ownership stake of nearly 15% at the time. He has remained Citigroup’s largest shareholder. Citigroup assets and earnings now account for over half his wealth.

Prince Al-Walid has made many other investments which, while not as spectacular, have paid off in kind. These include AOL, Apple Inc., Worldcom, Motorola, News Corporation, Ltd. and many other technology and media companies. His real estate holdings have included the Four Seasons hotel chain, the Plaza Hotel in New York, London’s Savoy Hotel and Monaco’s Monte Carlo Grand Hotel. He also holds a 10% stake in Euro Disney.

All of his business these days is channeled through the Kingdom Holding Company, of Riyadh; it is the largest company in Saudi Arabia. Prince Al-Walid controls over 90% of the shares and sells the rest as stock. The company just describes itself as “a diversified investment company”, which suits his business method nicely. It is an umbrella corporation under which to hold his assets which have spread from banking and real estate to telecommunications, entertainment, computers and electronics, retail, tourism, and even automotive manufacturing.

It is this last that shows his enjoyment of his status. Prince Al-Walid is remarkable for being both a boating and automotive enthusiast. He owns 300 cars, and several luxury-length yachts. He also owns his own private jet, and has ordered an Airbus A380, which is to be delivered in 2010. By the way, when he’s done gallivanting about in these various vehicles, he can always spend some relaxing time at home in his 317-room palace in Riyadh.

Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud has made a bold name for himself in striking out on his own to establish his own credibility. It now seems that he is at last showing some interest in the political governance of his country, and one day may assume duties in running it. But in the meantime, he hasn’t let life just pass him by.