Forbes Rich List Highlights: Drug Lords, Russian Whores, And Zuckerberg

Forbes has published its annual global rich list, and its blend of schadenfraude and jealousy wrapped up in a satisfying rundown is always worth a look. The big news is that Bill Gates is back at numero uno, knocking The Buffett down to two, and that the average net worth of the world’s billionaires is down by nearly a quarter from last year. How’s that crunch taste, guys?

Cue the cheap soundtrack bed and get Mark Goodier to dust down those creepily boyish tones, because here’s the BAD IDEA billionaire highlights!

- Mikhail Prokhorov, keeper of friends who may or may not be ski-resort whores, is now Russia’s richest man, overtaking Deripaska and Abramovich; Moscow has also lost its crown as world billionaire capital to New York. We saw way back when that he managed to sell off his stake in Norilsk nickel for $13.2bn before it dropped like a stone to less than $4bn – meanwhile his oligarch chums haven’t been so fortunate. He’s single, so any female readers might want to start brushing up on their vacant coked-out stare and feigned interest in Russian basketball.

- Sneaking in at the bottom of the list with $1bn is 5ft tall Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, who is constantly evading the police, changing his mobile phone every day, and having a lot of people killed. There’s a vast repertoire of songs written about him, known as narcocorridos, or “drug ballads” – check one out below:

Can’t really see Moss Side dealers ever having lyrical odes penned to them, and England is poorer for it.

- Rupert Murdoch has lost the title of Australasia’s richest man – that’s now Graeme Hart, “owner of a packaging empire that includes Carter Holt Harvey” (?), whose personal wealth is $4.5bn. Like so many risers in the list, he didn’t go up by doing well last year, only by doing less badly. He lost $600m, rather than Murdoch’s $4.3bn. Strewth!

- As for the Brits, it was equally gloomy. Branson went down from $4.4bn to $2.5bn, or 236 to 261 in Forbes money; high-street tag team Philip and Christina Green dropped just two places but saw their fortune go, with lovely symmetry, from $8.4bn to $4.8bn. Britain’s richest person is still Lakshmi Mittal, at number 8 and living in that Kensington palace that makes prospective first-time buyers cry; highest British-born is the super-plummy Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor, who is at 29 and probably owns the land you’re stood on, would rather you got off it, and is going to call the hounds.

- Finally, Mark Zuckerberg, that little squirt who looks like he should be masturbating in a darkened room surrounded by pizza boxes instead of running the most popular Web 2.0 enterprise out there, has dropped off the list completely after being last year’s youngest self-made billionaire. Maybe time to get a business plan together, hmm?

Posted by Ben Beaumont-Thomas in Hot Money | March 12, 2009 3:47PM |