WOULDN’T it be grand to have a few extra euro put aside so we could all relax and enjoy life a little more.
Unfortunately, the ordinary worker in this land of ours is finding it harder and harder to achieve any financial peace of mind.
This week, we are going to take a look at the world’s five wealthiest people, as confirmed by Forbes magazine on 10 March 2011.
Only one is European, and all are wealthier than Ireland’s GDP, or close enough not to bother counting the change.
Our new government promised a 100-day resurrection and a new, progressive way to run this nation – but little has been delivered.
So much for change, so much for hope, and unless the apples fall into the basket of their own free will, this country is on a slippery slope. More of us will be redundant, more will lose their homes, more will emigrate in order to make a living, and more will die indecently from lack of facilities, which are being slowly wiped out and not being replaced by those who know not what they do, other than collect their pay cheques and their outrageous pensions and live comfortably at the expense of the honest, decent taxpaying workers of Ireland.
But enough of that … I could go on. Now let us take a look at these wealthy men, all multi-billionaires, who honourably earned their wealth.
Number one is Mexican businessman Carlos Slim Helu, who was born on 28 January 1940.
He is not a man I would be familiar with, although I would like to be, as his personal wealth is $74 billion. Married to Soumaya, they have two sons and three daughters.
His father Julian Slim Haddad was of Lebanese descent but left that country at the age of 14, as did many more, to avoid military service in 1902. His mother Linda Helu was also Lebanese.
Carlos is chairman and chief executive of telecommunications company Telmex, which provides services in Mexico, Argentina and Brazil, along with many other countries in Latin America.
The company also provides 90% of Mexico’s landline services and internet access. He holds the same position with America Movil, whose Mexican subsidiary Telcel is the largest mobile operator in that country.
He has many more interests throughout the Latin countries and further afield. He was judged as the world’s richest man in 2007, ’10 and ’11.
In second place is a man we know a lot more about. Born on 28 October 1955, William Henry Gates is better known to anyone who uses a computer of any description as Bill Gates, former chairman and joint founder with Paul Allen of the Microsoft Corporation. Gates was classed as number one in the rich list from 1995 to ’09, with the exception of ’07.
Born in Seattle, his father William senior was a well-known lawyer, while his mother was Mary Maxwell, whose ancestors were Irish, and they worked in banking. Gates has an older sister Kristi and a younger one Libby.
Because there were four Williams in the family, his father was William II and Bill was known as William III or, better still, as “Trey.” His first contact with the IT industry took place when he was 13 years’ old at his school, Lakeside, when the mothers’ club used the proceeds of a jumble sale to purchase a teletypewriter and a block of time on a computer from General Electric.
Gates took an interest in programming the GE system in what is known as Basic, which simply implies beginner’s instruction code.
For this purpose, he was excused maths classes.
When he was 17, Gates, Paul Allen and Paul Gilbert started a venture called Traf-O-Data, which read the data from roadway traffic counters and created reports for traffic engineers.
This venture was only modestly successful but it was this experience that led to the creation of Microsoft a couple of years later. Gates left Lakeside in 1973 and enrolled at Harvard.
He started programming Microsoft and he also met the man who would succeed him in that company, Steve Ballmer, at this time. From here, Gates had only one interest: the development of computer programs.
In 1980, he was approached by IBM to write the Basic interpretation for its soon-to-be-released personal computer. Microsoft launched its first retail version of Windows in November 1985, and despite gaining a reputation for being impossible to contact and never returning phone calls, the cash was rolling in.
Gates married Melinda French on 1 January 1994 and they have two daughters and a son. His wealth is put at $56 billion. Give Bill Gates his due, he has pumped a fair amount of his fortune into charitable causes over the years.
In 2006, he announced that he was handing over the running of Microsoft to Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie in order to allow him pursue other interests.
So to third on the list, and another American. Warren Buffett was born on 30 August 1930. He is chairman and CEO, as well as chief shareholder, of a conglomerate called Berkshire Hathaway, which is based in Omaha, Nebraska, USA. It was founded in 1839 as the Valley Falls Company by a man called Oliver Chance.
The present company employs more than 261,000 workers worldwide and has total assets of $372.229 billion dollars (2010 figures).
Buffett is regarded as the most successful financier ever, particularly for his value investing.
He is also noted for his frugal lifestyle, being economical in his spending, despite his wealth. He will buy prudently and has no time for flash cars or other signs of wealth.
He has pledged 99% of his wealth to the Gates foundation for charitable purposes. His salary is just $100,000 a year but his net worth is $50 billion.
His first wife Susan, whom he married in 1952, died seven years ago from oral cancer. In her own right, she was the world’s 153rd richest person.
They had two sons and one daughter.
Buffett married his second wife Astrid in 2006. Now 81, he is still working.
French businessman Bernard Arnault, with $41 billion, is the richest European and fourth of the top five in the world.
A few others appear in the top ten but we shall leave that for another day. Arnault was born on 5 March 1949 in Roubaix.
He is chairman of Christian Dior, one of the world’s leading fashion houses. This company holds a 42% stake in LVMH, which is responsible for the production of a range of champagnes as well as Hennessy Brandy.
Arnault is also CEO and chairman of this conglomerate, which employs more than 83,000 people. Twice married, he has five children. His present wife Helene Mercier is a well-known pianist from Quebec.
Completing the top five is Larry Ellison who, along with Ed Oates and Bob Miner, founded the Oracle Corporation, a US computer technology company, specialising in developing and marketing all types of computer software and hardware.
Its HQ is based in Redwood Shores, California, where it was founded in 1977, but operates worldwide, employing 108,000 people. Ellison has been CEO throughout its history.
Born in The Bronx on 17 August 1944 to unwed 19-year-old Florence Spellman (No, I could find nothing which would link her with Cardinal Francis Spellman), his father was an Italian US-born American Air Force pilot. Florence realised she could not look after Larry and had him adopted by her aunt and uncle in Chicago.
They did not meet again until Larry was 48. Larry’s practised the Jewish faith, was married four times and was the father of two children, son David and daughter Megan, with his third wife Barbara Booth.
All his marriages ended in divorce, the last to novelist Melanie Craft in September 2010.
On 9 August 2010, Hewlett Packard fired CEO Mark Hurd, Ellison’s close friend, and within a month, he had been hired by Oracle as a co-president. Ellison earned more than $81 million in 2009 and is worth $39.5 billion.
So that is it. Happy or not, these people are recognised as the five wealthiest men on the planet.
Top of the rich list in Ireland is model Hilary Weston, with €3.67 billion, while Denis O’Brien has €2.55 billion and Dermot Desmond has €1.45 billion.
Not bad. If something like that was offered to me, I would probably think about it for a few seconds and turn it down. After all, how could I live without this column?