VOICES: THESE ARE THE RICHEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD – BUT NOT ALL IS AS IT SEEMS

Right now, a team of researchers is putting the finishing touches to Forbes’ annual World’s Billionaires List. When it is published shortly, it will shape our view of who holds the world’s wealth and where it is concentrated.

The ranking and others like it are not presenting anything like the complete picture. By their own admission, they are working on incomplete information. What they are really showing are public filings and whatever people voluntarily disclose. They are also choosing to exclude certain types of people – in Forbes’s case, monarchs, heads of state, dictators.

Most of the Forbes data comes from one place: the US. There, any institutional investment manager with more than $100m (£75m) in qualifying assets must file a Form 13F with the SEC, disclosing their holdings in US-listed equities. Investors who acquire more than 5 per cent of a public company must file a Schedule 13D or 13G, revealing their identity and the size of their position. Anyone is covered, American or not. These filings are public.

Other countries do not have this requirement. Singapore, which hosts more than 2,000 single-family offices, has no equivalent; an investor can manage $10bn via a Singapore-registered vehicle and never appear in any public database. Dubai, Hong Kong, Switzerland, all magnets for the super-rich, are similarly relaxed.

The result is a global wealth map that is overwhelmingly American-flavoured. That is why you could be forgiven for supposing, as Donald Trump likes to tell us, that the US is full to bursting with billionaires – better at wealth generation than anywhere else, in fact.

Vitol, which has its headquarters in Geneva, is the world’s largest independent oil trader. In 2024, the company distributed $10.6bn to its roughly 500 employee-shareholders, which works out at more than $20m per person.

Russell Hardy, Vitol’s chief executive since 2018, is almost certainly a billionaire many times over based on accumulated dividends alone. He’s in Switzerland and has never appeared on any major wealth ranking.

It’s similar with Trafigura, Gunvor and Mercuria, the other Swiss-registered major commodity houses. Jeremy Weir, who became Trafigura’s non-executive chairman in 2025 after a decade as CEO, presides over a firm with equity in the tens of billions. His personal net worth is anybody’s guess.

It’s not only commodities that generate colossal, and hidden, wealth. Gianluigi Aponte, the founder of Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), built the firm from a single vessel in 1970 into the world’s largest container shipping line, with a fleet of more than 800 ships. Aponte also operates MSC Cruises, one of the biggest cruise brands on earth. Forbes estimates his net worth at more than $35bn, but MSC is privately held and centred in Geneva, which means its revenue, profits and ownership are disclosed only to the extent that the family chooses. Aponte rarely gives interviews. His children, Diego and Alexa, hold senior management positions. The real number could be $20bn or $50bn. From outside, there is no way of telling.

The four heirs to the German Reimann family (Matthias Reimann-Andersen, Renate Reimann-Haas, Stefan Reimann-Andersen and Wolfgang Reimann) own 90 per cent of JAB Holding Company, a Luxembourg conglomerate with investments in Krispy Kreme, Pret a Manger, Panera Bread, Keurig Dr Pepper, Peet’s Coffee, Coty and dozens of other consumer brands. Their combined fortune is estimated at $33bn.

Here, keeping wealth private is an active policy. Family members reportedly sign a pledge at 18 to avoid all public attention. There are almost no photographs of the heirs in circulation. They do not give interviews. Hundreds of millions of people purchase JAB-owned brands every day. Almost none of them have heard the name Reimann.

Even in the US, it’s possible to remain hidden. Cargill is the largest privately held company in the US with more than $150bn in annual revenue and operations in more than 70 countries. It processes and trades grain, meat, sugar, oil and metals. The Cargill-MacMillan family owns approximately 90 per cent of the company and has controlled it for six generations, ever since William Wallace Cargill founded a grain storage business in Iowa in 1865.

More than 20 members of the family are billionaires – more than any other family in the world. Many live on ranches in Montana. A former Cargill chief executive said that, before his tenure, the company was “the agricultural industry’s version of the CIA”. Because Cargill has never gone public, there are no quarterly earnings calls, no SEC filings, no analyst reports, nothing. For rich list purposes, their wealth is unknown.

Tang Hao, a Hong Kong-based investor with a background in tech and financial services, held large positions in AppLovin, a mobile tech company and in The Stars Group (parent company of PokerStars) and gaming firm Playtech. His holdings became publicly known only because these companies are listed on exchanges where disclosure rules require it. Forbes valued his stake in the billions. Before the filing, Tang was unknown outside a small professional circle.

Leo Koguan, a Singapore-based entrepreneur who co-founded the IT services firm SHI International, built a position in Tesla through open-market purchases and became the company’s third-largest individual shareholder. His wealth became visible only because Tesla trades in New York.

Neither Forbes nor other rich list publishers claim their output is complete; the problem is that the public treats them as though they are.

The World’s Billionaires List publication is a news event, generating thousands of news stories and column inches that take the rankings at face value. “The world’s 10 richest people” is a phrase that appears constantly, but it carries an implicit claim to precision that the data cannot support. We are basing our understanding of personal financial might on a sample biased toward those who happen to own shares in US public companies.

Different countries make different choices about what must be revealed and what may stay private. There, despite what the US and its president like to proclaim, the money is just as real.

The Independent has always had a global perspective. Built on a firm foundation of superb international reporting and analysis, The Independent now enjoys a reach that was inconceivable when it was launched as an upstart player in the British news industry. For the first time since the end of the Second World War, and across the world, pluralism, reason, a progressive and humanitarian agenda, and internationalism – Independent values – are under threat. Yet we, The Independent, continue to grow.

2026-03-14T06:00:57Z