She appears smiling and waving, dressed in canary yellow or lime green so that her people can see her from afar, she accepts flowers and compliments with perfect grace, she prompts admiring comments. And a bit of speculation: what does it all cost? How rich is the royal family? Is she the richest lady in the UK?
Royal Vegas attempts to provide some answers to this natural curiosity, by revealing that, although she would fit into the Forbes Celebrity 100, she is far from the richest person in the UK. She is the 372nd richest UK resident, with wealth calculated at £350m.
UK rich folk
James Dyson, of vacuum-cleaner fame, is worth £16.2bn. A tidy sum, and a worthy product; constant innovative products keep his company in the top bracket.
Another valid product is Tetra Pak, the carton packaging that has replaced the old-fashioned milk bottle, and is used worldwide. The Rausing family, the Tetra Pak manufacturers, is worth £9.606bn.
A UK rich-list would be incomplete without Sir Paul McCartney. Together with his wife, Nancy Shevell, whose family is in the transport business, the McCartney wealth is £800m.
Forbes
The annual list of the world’s super-rich is compiled annually by Forbes. Year by year, it classifies the highly paid and the wealthy. The list is dominated by American high-flying businesses. According to Forbes, there are 2095 billionaires worldwide, with 614 of them in the USA.
The richest in the world
Forbes lists Amazon emperor Jeff Bezos, with his $113 billion, as the wealthiest man in the world for the third year running, while the number two spot is occupied yet again by Microsoft founder, Bill Gates.
After the top-spot American online businesses, the third place is taken by Bernard Arnault, an enterprising Frenchman who deals in luxury goods. His is the name behind many famous brand-names: Christian Dior, Moet e Chandon, Luis Vuitton, and more.
Back to the US and Warren Buffett, whose company, Berkshire Hathaway, is worth $67.5 billion. Following Buffett, at fifth place, we find Larry Ellison, the co-founder of Oracle, with a net worth of $59 billion.
Back to Europe: Amancio Ortega of Spain, co-founder of the Zara international clothing chain, with a current value of $55.1 billion, is in sixth place.
Facebook’s well-known face, Mark Zuckerberg, at position number seven, has a net worth of $54.7 billion.
Positions eight, nine and ten belong to the Walton family, Jim, Alice and Rob, with over $54 billion each. They are the driving force behind the American Walmart supermarket chain.
Celebrities
Whereas Forbes’ rich-list deals with absolute wealth as criteria in its classification, other lists/sites emphasise the celebrity aspect of the rich-list, with most celebrities coming from the world of entertainment and sport. Forbes itself gives us a “Celebrity 100”, described as a “front of the camera” line-up of stars that have earned the most over the last year. Here the amounts are somewhat lower than the dazzling billions listed above, but the high-profile protagonists from the world of music, film and sport are doing nicely.
Forbes’ Celebrity 100
Top position is taken by Kylie Jenner, a famous reality TV star in the US, whose riches amount to $590m. She sold her cosmetics company, Kylie Cosmetics, to Coty, and picked up the tidy sum of $540m.
In second position, with $170m, Kanye West, musician, rapper, designer and expert on sneakers, has made interesting deals with Adidas to promote their Yeezy sneaker brand.
From sneakers to rackets: top tennis-player Roger Federer, thanks to astute and remunerative endorsements, boasts $106m, and is at third place.
Staying in the sports world, Cristiano Ronaldo brings home a hefty $105m, while, just behind, with $104m, is Lionel Messi.
Away from the world of football, at position number six, is producer, director, actor and writer, Tyler Perry, with $97m.
Back to the football pitch! With $95m this year, Neymar is enjoying a profitable contract with Paris-Saint-Germain; he occupies seventh place.
Howard Stern is a famous and highly paid radio host on US radio who is worth $90m and occupies the eighth place on the Celebrity 100 list.
Famous basket-ball player, Lebron James, on a contract with the Los Angeles Lakers, is worth $88m, which puts him in the ninth place.
Curiously, the Celebrity list of glamour and high-profile super-stars is, so far, devoid of actors or film stars. Place number ten finally lists an actor: with a net worth of $87m, action man Dwayne Johnson, otherwise known as “The Rock”, is currently the highest paid actor.
So, the royal family could fit in there somewhere, but they are far from the top of any rich-lists.
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