53 Autumn Special: Mirror, Mirror, on the Net — Who’s the Richest of Them Yet?

Autumn 2022 Special Mirror, Mirror, on the Net — Who’s the Richest of Them Yet?

B

ezos edges to the front, but Musk comes around the outside, this pair fairly flying now, as Gates seems to drop off the pace as they come into the final furlong…

This ongoing fascination with the world’s richest people: Are we watching a keenly fought race to the pinnacle of human financial achievement, or an obscene farce played out against a backdrop of drought, disaster, and rising international poverty?

It's a tough question, and one perhaps best not examined too closely. We all know the field, though, stamping and puffing to get out of the starting gate and romp to the next billion. So let’s start there. Gates. Bezos. Musk. Buffett. Arnault. We feel we almost know these people as the media keep us abreast of their antics, gambits, affairs, and burgeoning bank accounts. We’re even starting to wonder if the world’s first trillionaire is about the break cover, perhaps even now raking in the final few bucks, bonds, and credit notes to crack the once unimaginable target.

Forbes has its finger on the pulse, as always, and while the numbers change with each deal, transaction, project, or initiative, let’s get the Top 10 list out there right away. No real surprises:

1. Elon Musk: $219bn 2. Jeff Bezos: $171bn 3. Bernard Arnault & family: $158bn 4. Bill Gates: $129bn 5. Warren Buffet: $118bn 6. Larry Page: $111bn 7. Sergey Brin: $107bn 8. Larry Ellison: $106bn 9. Steve Ballmer: $91.4bn 10. Mukesh Ambani: $90.7bn

The Forbes list is much, much longer; it runs into the thousands. But these are the smart primates living high in the canopy of the financial jungle. Their innate smarts are the equivalent of opposable thumbs and tool use, while the rest of us scurry and bumble along the forest floor, chewing on stuff and avoiding predators.

One of the first to ascend to those top twigs was the Oracle of Omaha himself: Warren Buffett. His almost supernatural prescience and nous have spawned a million imitators, some of whom got rich by simply asking themselves “What would Warren do?” — and acting on the answer. Buffett has made no secret of his successful tactics; he buys oil and other blue chips that benefit the shareholders. In the first quarter of 2022, his Berkshire Hathaway empire ploughed some $41bn of its $147bn cash pile — mostly insurance float — into the stock market.

If he can do it, goes the thinking, so can we. And, of course, we can; the difference is in the size of the stake, and the ability to absorb any unforeseen losses. (This, if you hadn’t twigged it yet, is why the rich get richer.) Buffett’s company upped its stake in energy company Chevron to $25.9bn and purchased 121 million shares of printer manufacturer HP; $4.2bn, please. In March, Berkshire Hathaway popped a quick $11.6bn into the takeover of Alleghany, the conglomerate built on insurance and reinsurance businesses with a dazzling array of add-on manufacturing pursuits.

But Berkshire Hathaway has struggled to find opportunities just recently. Its most recent grand takeover — the $37bn buyout of Portland-based metal components manufacturer Precision Castparts Corp in 2016 — resulted in a $9.8bn write-down. It was a knock that prompted the Oracle to drop back from Wall Street and major acquisitions. Even the very rich must sometimes exercise caution.

And, before we form the impression that the wealthy lists are a blokey preserve, a quick aside to address noteworthy women like Australian mining magnate Gina Rinehart, and Russian model Natalia Vodianova. No, Vodianova’s not on the billionaires list — but she is one of the world’s top-earning models (her face has graced the cover of Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire and Vogue, her name linked with Gucci, Calvin Klein et al). The daughter of a Russian fruitseller is married to one of those who is in the Forbes club: Antoine Arnault, CEO of Berluti footwear and son of luxury goods purveyor Bernard Arnault. Heard of him? Founder of the Luis Vuitton / Moët Hennessy (LVMH) conglomerate? Bernard’s third of the Top 10.

Like some of the others mentioned here, Vodianova tempers her lavish lifestyle with philanthropy. In 2004, she founded the Naked Heart Foundation to help disadvantaged children in her native Russia.

And if we’re talking about philanthropy, we have to go back to number four on the richest list. The Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, launched in 2000, is the world’s secondlargest charitable foundation, holding $49.8bn in assets. The stated goals are to enhance healthcare, reduce extreme poverty across the world, and expand educational opportunities. Bill and Melinda were joined in that generous venture by number five on the list, Warren Buffett, as well as Mark Suzman and Michael Larson. Gates has said he personally intends to fly the rich list by eventually giving all his money to the foundation.

Which brings us back to the top of the list: Elon Musk, enigmatic genius, alien imposter, or crackpot, depending on your point of view. He, too, has a philanthropic bent, albeit a more modest and controlling one. He donated $6bn to the UN World Food Programme to fight world hunger (with a list of conditions to ensure he had a detailed plan on how the money would be spent). He also donated $5.7bn of Tesla shares to charity last year — and, to his credit, no public announcement was made. The donation came to light through a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. So, some kudos to the king of the rich list.

The pandemic, a blight for so many, was in many ways the making of Jeff Bezos. Well, in terms of making him richer than ever, anyway. Home confinement, boredom, travel restrictions and lockdowns made online shopping a no-brainer, and Bezos simply had to keep his pockets open and listen to the kaching-kaching-kaching of virtual cash registers.

Bezos has made a few $100m donations — peanuts, really — and one of those went to former president Barack Obama's Foundation. Others went to World Central Kitchen's chef José Andrés and non-profit founder Van Jones for charitable use.

So: heroes or greedy buggers who wallow in obscene wealth? Does it really matter? They’re all, each and every one, an inspiration. What they encourage us to aspire to is a question we can only answer individually. i

ABIGAIL JOHNSON CEO FIDELITY INVESTMENTS

Quiet, Unassuming, Modest — and One of the World’s Most Powerful Women

Despite being one of the world’s wealthiest women, Abigail Johnson cuts an unobtrusive figure on the streets of her native Boston. She is rarely recognised, even by fellow New Englanders.

“I often can’t get a table, so I don’t eat out that much,” she joked during a recent interview. But beneath the modest façade lies resolute determination. Johnson has been president and CEO of Boston-based investment management giant Fidelity Investments (FMR), and chair of Fidelity International (FIL) since 2014.

Asked what advice she’d give her younger self, she is emphatic: “Don’t doubt yourself — keep at it, stay looking ahead, stay committed, and stay true to yourself.” She may well have heeded her own wisdom: her personal wealth is estimated to be more than $22bn.

The 59-year-old is the product of an old Massachusetts family. Her grandfather, Edward Johnson II, founded Fidelity in 1946 with just one employee. Her father, Edward “Ned” Johnson III, who died aged 91 in March, grew the family firm before passing the reins to Abigail.

Today, Fidelity is an international business with 45,000 employees worldwide. The company’s philosophy is to make investment accessible, and affordable, to ordinary families. Abby Johnson, as she is known to her staff, abides by that — but she has her own ideas on how to take the company forward (while still following her father’s advice): “Always strive to be better. No matter how well you might seem to be doing, your job is never done.”

Part of her strategy has been to focus on millennial and female investors. Her first job at Fidelity, while she was still at high school, was fielding phone calls. This exposure gave her an understanding of the importance of customer service, and today she applies technology and personal understanding to help investors engage with the business.

“Don’t assume the answers are already out there,” she says. “The answer might not be something that’s been done before. Trust your instincts.” Johnson’s aim is to keep the company vibrant and proactive, especially in its contact with a new generation of customers. She believes women have an important role to play in Fidelity’s future — as investment managers, as well as customers.

“Asset management is a great career for women,” she says. “We have a real need right now to recruit more women, because when women customers come into our branches very often the first thing they say is ‘I want to work with a woman’. We don’t have enough women who are customer-facing.

“Women as customers are really quite different. They tend to under-rate their abilities as stewards of their own financial situations. They describe themselves as beginners, even though they know more than they give themselves credit for, and they tend to be more methodical.”

In 2015, Abigail Johnson set up Fidelity’s Boundless programme — specifically designed to encourage more young women to consider careers in the financial services. She has commissioned teams to study how the sector is perceived across genders.

Johnson holds a BA in Art History in 1984 and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She started her career with management and IT consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, where she met her husband, the entrepreneur Christopher J McKown, with whom she has two adult daughters.

Johnson worked in the family firm for 26 years, in a succession of obscure positions, but gradually began taking on more prominent roles. She developed a thorough knowledge of company dynamics before landing the top job at the age of 52. Since 2014, she’s put her own stamp on the business, moving the headquarters from sedate Devonshire Street offices to Boston’s go-ahead Seaport tech district.

Ranked sixth in the Forbes’ list of the world’s most powerful women, Abigail Johnson remains down-to-earth. She takes commercial flights and queues at the car-hire desk like everyone else; she supports arts projects and charities, including a young people’s club, a public radio and television station, and a Boston homeless shelter. She even serves meals there, on occasion — the Johnson family name is known for philanthropy, as well as business expertise.

> GAUTAM ADANI BUSINESSMAN, NEGOTIATOR, AND SURVIVOR OF TWO KIDNAPPINGS AND A TERROR ATTACK

A Winner, All the Way

Infrastructure tycoon Gautam Adani, founder of the Adani Group, has created ports, infrastructure, and thousands of jobs. He’s also been kidnapped by bandits and twice held for ransom; it hasn’t slowed him down…

Life at the top of the India’s commercial food chain may be rewarding — Adani Group founder Gautam Adani’s personal wealth is estimated to be in the region of $118.3bn — but it comes with certain setbacks.

The billionaire was kidnapped by bandits in 1997, and when terrorists attacked Mumbai 11 years later, Adani was among the hostages held at the seafront Taj Hotel. It’s not known what, if any, ransom was paid in either incident, but Adani appears to have taken it all in his stride. He remains one of the country’s, and the world’s, most prominent and successful businessmen.

Last April, with domestic and national economies flailing, writhing, and wilting under pandemic woes, and business titans worldwide tied to the metaphorical mast, India’s Adani Group was doing very nicely, thank you. In the middle of the most disruptive financial crisis in recent years, it became the third Indian conglomerate to cross $100bn in market capitalisation.

The wind was still filling the Adani sails exactly one year later. This April, the Ahmedabad headquartered multinational doubled that 2021 figure, and comfortably crossed market capitalisation of $200bn. It was just the third Indian conglomerate — after Tata Group and Reliance Industries — to achieve that.

Gautam Adani was born in the western state of Gujarat; he dropped out of college and moved to Mumbai as a teenager, working for a while as a diamond sorter in the gem trade. He returned to Gujarat and began his business empire by importing PVC for his brother Mahasukhbhai’s plastic business. Adani Enterprises was created to import and export commodities.

Adani created his eponymous group as a commodity trading company in 1988. Today, it has an annual revenue of over $20bn, with operations in 50 countries including port management, power generation and transmission, renewable energy, mining, airport operations, natural gas, food processing, and infrastructure. The flagship, Adani Enterprises, is a standalone holding company. It began as an import-export firm, but now focuses on mining and the trading of coal and iron ore. Adani Wilmar (food processing), Adani Airport Holdings, and Adani Road Transport. Other subsidiaries are diverse: defence and aerospace, rail and metro infrastructure, solar PV module manufacturing, oil exploration, petrochemicals, water infrastructure, data collection, agricultural storage and distribution, bunkering, real estate, financial services, and cement.

There’s not much consolation for those seeking environmental awareness in the current portfolio, but Gautam Adani intends to become the world's largest producer of green energy — and has vowed to invest as much as $70bn in renewable energy projects.

There’s a Monopoly flavour to Gautam Adani’s game plan. He controls India's largest port, Mundra, in Gujarat, and he’s the country's biggest airport operator. He acquired a 74 percent stake in Mumbai International Airport, in 2020. In May this year, he acquired Swiss giant Holcim's cement business in India with the investment of a cool $10.5bn.

Gautam Adani doesn’t leave much to chance — and he thinks big. The first-generation entrepreneur is driven by the motto of “Growth with Goodness” and the desire to build worldclass infrastructure capabilities for India. He has transformed the country’s coastline by building ports and logistics hubs, creating thousands of jobs, and bringing in expertise via partnerships with international companies. The bulk of his fortune comes from public stakes held by the Adani Group: 75 percent of Adani Enterprises, Adani Power and Adani Transmissions, 37 percent of Adani Total Gas, 65 percent of Adani Ports & Special Economic Zone and 61 percent of Adani Green Energy. Shares are held by promoter groups, including Adani family members and holding companies.

Adani is a hands-on honcho unfazed by challenge; he was personally involved in negotiation with 500 private landowners across India in 1994 while setting up the harbour facility at Mundra Port. The hard work paid off; Mundra became a special economic zone in 2007, and with a huge investment in infrastructure, another arrow was added to the Adani quiver.

Gautam Adani is no shrinking violet when it comes to flashing the cash. He owns not one, but three private jets, including his personal favourite, a UK-produced Hawker Beechcraft 850XP. He around-towner is a BMW 7-series, with a Rolls-Royce Ghost and a Ferrari California set aside for sunny Sunday jaunts. His pad is the modestly titled Adani House, a luxurious hideaway — if such a thing is possible in New Delhi, where he lives — with 3.4 acres of land in the densely populated metropolis.

He has created an almost unimaginable lifestyle for himself, but Gautam Adani has also boosted his country’s profile, economy, and prestige. A winner, all the way.

EIKE BATISTA BRAZILIAN ENTREPRENEUR

Mining Disaster that Played Out Above Ground — and Brought Down ‘King Midas’

“The richest man in Brazil” was a title that business magnate Eike Batista didn’t particularly care for. It didn’t do justice to the scope and scale of his wealth, he felt; he was aiming for something more along the lines of “the richest man in the world”.

And for a while, it didn’t seem an unreasonable ambition. The multi-billionaire had, after all, created a mining and business empire, eloped with a top model, raced wildly expensive speedboats at world champion level, once sold a minor stake in his EBX Group to an Abu Dhabi investment fund for $2bn (and another to US conglomerate GE for $300m), and earned himself the nickname of “King Midas”. He claimed his oilfields were worth a trillion dollars (spoiler: they weren’t), and his personal wealth and backing helped Rio de Janeiro win the bid to host the 2016 Olympics.

This is no rags-to-riches tale, but it isn’t quite a riches-to-rags one, either. Batista famously lost $35bn in just two years, and yes, he’s serving a 30-year sentence (under house arrest at present, pending appeal) for paying bribes to secure state government contracts. But according to a July 2022 report in People With Money magazine, Batista is somehow on the rebound, with an estimated personal worth of somewhere between €96m and €275m, including direct earnings, advertising partnerships, royalties, and investments.

Eike Batista was born in 1956 in the state of Minas Gerais, in the country’s south-east. His mother was German, his father Brazilian — the Minister of Mines and Energy, no less — and Batista has joint Brazilian-German nationality. He was one of seven children and grew up in well-to-do towns that date back to, and reflect, Brazil’s 18th-Century gold rush. Minas Gerais is a huge area that may be home to Rio and São Paulo’s impoverished barrios, but it also has its share of opulent mansions, and tasteful baroque churches decorated by the celebrated sculptor Aleijadinho.

After metallurgy studies in Europe (which he didn’t complete — something which was to prove important), the young Eike set out on the yellow brick road. Back in Brazil at the age of 23, he launched his own company, mining and trading gold. Natural resources were always his focus; the fortune he made (and lost) came from mining and oil and gas exploration.

His ventures in the 1980s were wildly successful, and over the next 20 years, Batista expanded his empire. At 29, he became CEO of TVX Gold, which listed on the Montreal Stock Exchange, and from 1980 to 2000 he operated eight gold mines in Brazil and Canada and a silver mine in Chile. He invested in energy, fossil fuels, logistics, shipbuilding, real estate; by 2010, he had a collection of corporations under the umbrella of the EBX Group. (Each company had an X in its title; Batista saw it as a symbol for the multiplication of wealth. It worked — for a while.) He founded oil and gas company OGX and lashed out $1bn on licenses for exploration off the Brazilian coast. Batista made Forbes magazine’s billionaire list, and by 2010 was one of the world’s 10 wealthiest people.

But there were rumblings of discontent and mismanagement. His mining company, MMX, ran into trouble for failing to follow environmental regulations. In 2008, the Tupí-Guaraní tribe accused Batista’s logistics company, LLX, of forcing them off their land on Brazil’s Atlantic coast. In 2008, police raided his offices. While the tycoon was cleared of wrongdoing, clouds were building on the horizon.

By 2012, Eike Batista’s personal fortune was sitting at a comfortable $34.5bn. Then came falling petroleum prices in an increasingly flaky domestic economy, the inability of OGX oilfields to meet production promises (they maxed-out at one percent of the goal) and calls for repayment of the bond debt he accrued for those exploration and production licences. In October 2013, Batista defaulted on a $45m interest payment. Yes, interest payment. The empire was tilting, if not toppling.

That “richest man in Brazil” title was lost in the avalanche as prices on five of his six publicly traded holdings plummeted. The main disaster was at oil and gas driller OGX Petroleo e Gas, which filed for bankruptcy — one of the biggest default applications in Latin American history. Eike Batista went on trial for insider trading (the case was suspended after the judge was caught hooning around in one of the defendant’s luxury cars), and by 2015, he was $1bn in debt. In January 2017, he was arrested for paying bribes connected with the Petrobras scandal.

Remember the young man’s aborted metallurgy studies in Germany? Batista dropped-out before graduating — and under Brazilian law, a university degree would have meant a comfier life in a special prison wing. The lazy student ended up sharing a Bangu penitentiary cell with six other inmates.

In 2017, he was released and placed under house arrest. Later that year he was fined $6.3m for insider trading. In 2018, he was found guilty of bribery and sentenced to 30 years. In 2019, he faced further charges of money laundering and insider trading. Batista was declared a fugitive when police raided his estate in Rio de Janeiro and found he had flown to New York just hours before.

The tycoon voluntarily returned to Brazil — “a Brazilian doing my duty” — and handed himself in to the authorities. He was taken to the Ary Franco prison for processing before being transferred to Bangu on the outskirts of the city. He is currently under house arrest, awaiting that appeal.

What about that return to wealth that People With Money mentioned? It comes, says the article, from “judicious stock market investments”, an impressive real estate portfolio, an advertising contract with a cosmetics firm and other business ventures. Batista has offered to personally help authorities tackle corruption in Brazil. He claims to have put almost all his money back into the companies he ran, showed some serious ambition, and borrowed against his investments.

AMANCIO ORTEGA THE MAN BEHIND THE ZARA BRAND

Modest, Frugal, Retiring, and Famous for Being Anonymous

When the famously private Spanish entrepreneur Amancio Ortega finally gave his consent to a biography, he had one simple request: “Don’t just put in the good parts.”

Ortega, the 86-year-old founder of the Zara fashion brand and the multinational clothing group Inditex, has built a business which has dominated high street fashion for decades. He remains the driving force of his empire, and with a fortune estimated to be in the region of $72.8bn — making him the wealthiest individual in Europe.

The contrast to his early life is stark. He was born in north-western Spain, the youngest of three children, just as the civil war broke out. His father, an itinerant railway worker, had to travel to find employment, which is why the young Ortega left school at 14 to start work in a shirt-making shop.

“My ambition was born of poverty,” he once told a journalist. “I still remember that day when a shopkeeper turned my mother away. It didn’t take much for me to realise that every penny counts. I try to be as grounded as possible, and it is not something to brag about. It’s just the way I am.”

Despite the trappings of wealth — the yachts, the private jets, the desirable properties around the world — Ortega lives modestly with his second wife, Flora Perez, spending most of his time in a simple apartment overlooking the harbour in A Coruña on Spain’s Atlantic coast. He uses an unremarkable car to take the short drive to the vast Inditex complex in nearby Arteixo.

In her book, The Man from Zara: The Story of the Genius Behind the Inditex Group, published in 2012, journalist and close friend, Covadonga O’Shea, says that Ortega’s desire for anonymity is legendary. She spent many years, she says, trying to persuade him to tell his story. She describes him as “a man lacking in sophistication, with a passion and capacity for work, simplicity, and a vision of the future”. “Because of his passion for anonymity,” she writes, “he has unintentionally become an almost mythical figure in the world of business.” His relaxed management style is influenced by his lack of formal education, say observers. Despite the international nature of the fashion business, Ortega has never learned to speak English. He prefers to communicate inperson rather than electronically, and he listens rather more than he speaks. He eats in the general canteen with his workers, and tends to shun invitations to speak at industry events. Rosalia Mera, at the relatively late age of 37. They created simple bathrobes in their living room; before long they needed to employ a seamstress.

In 1975 he opened his first store, Zorba, named after the title character in the 1964 film Zorba the Greek. Following complaints from a nearby restaurant, also named Zorba, Ortega changed the shop’s name to Zara.

From the beginning, the company’s USP was producing good quality, fashionable clothing at a low price. Before long, Ortega was opening Zara stores throughout Spain and Portugal. In 1988, he created Inditex, which today operates numerous global fashion brands, including Zara, Pull & Bear, Massimo Dutti, and Bershka, among others. Inditex is now the world’s number one clothing retailer, with more than 7,300 retail outlets in 94 countries, employing 150,000 staff.

Ortega’s business is still driven by a basic mantra: Give the customers what they want, as quickly as possible. He eschews traditional advertising. The company has practically no marketing budget, relying on reputation and location for sales — though it helps that the Duchess of Cambridge is regularly photographed in Zara creations.

He still protects his privacy, though. “The only people I want to recognise me in the street are my family, friends and workmates,” he says. “I’m trying to live a quiet life, be just another person, able to go where I want, have a coffee on the terrace, or take a stroll along the promenade without everybody knowing who I am.”

CARLOS SLIM FOUNDER, GRUPO CARSO

Rich Pickings for Carlos Slim, a Financial Prodigy who Started Young — and Kept on Going

Wealth and status mean little to the frugal business magnate who allows himself the occasional indulgence of a fine cigar…

Depending on the state of the world’s stock markets and which wealth-list you consult, Carlos Slim is one of the richest men in the world — though the Mexican industrialist and businessman claims to be indifferent to such rankings.

Carlos Slim is the founder of Grupo Carso, a business empire is so sprawling it is sometimes referred to as “Slimlandia”. Despite his $78bn fortune, this self-made man leads a frugal lifestyle: he has lived in the same house in Mexico City for 40 years. The one luxury he allows himself is an indulgence in Cuban cigars.

As the founder of one of the largest conglomerates in Latin America, he is aware that fortunes can plummet just as quickly as they can soar. Faster, even: it’s said that he lost some nine percent of his wealth when Donald Trump was elected in 2016. The former president’s bellicose rants caused a sudden fall in value of the Mexican peso. In the closing days of Trump’s presidential campaign, he even singled out Slim as part of a globalist cabal intent on snuffing out his populist candidacy.

Within weeks, Carlos Slim was dining with the president-elect at his Palm Beach estate. Such were his charisma and political nous that Trump emerged beaming from the meeting with the words: “A lovely dinner with a wonderful man.” Carlos Slim was born in Mexico City in 1940 to Julián Slim Haddad (born Khalil Salim Haddad Aglamaz) and Linda Helú Atta, Maronite Christians from Lebanon. Khalil was a successful local businessman, who imparted a love of mathematics and economics to his son. At age 11, the young Carlos invested his pocket money in a government bond, keeping details of his financial endeavours in a hand-written ledger — which he still owns.

In his teenage years, Slim continued to dabble in stocks — under his father’s guidance. He was just 13 when Khalil died, and he inherited the small family business. Within a few years, he was confidently investing growing profits in a range of sectors.

Carlos Slim studied civil engineering at university in Mexico City, and is still referred to in the Mexican press as “el Ingeniero” (“The Engineer”). But his interests include such diverse areas as telecoms, education, healthcare, manufacturing, transport, real estate, media, energy, hospitality, entertainment, technology, retail, sports, and financial services. His businesses account for 40 percent of the listings on the Mexican Stock Exchange, and his net worth is equivalent to six percent of Mexico’s GDP.

Slim was married for 32 years to Soumaya Domit Gemayel, who died in 1990. The couple had six children, most of whom work in their father’s businesses. An interest in art led to Slim to fund the establishment of a non-profit museum in the city, named in honour of his wife. He has said he has no plans to remarry, but there were rumours in 2009 that he was romantically involved with the widowed Queen Noor of Jordan.

In recent years, Carlos Slim has been gradually handing the empire’s reins to his children, stepping back from day-to-day involvement — but retaining ultimate control. He prefers to concentrate on philanthropic endeavours, nowadays, but every week he has dinner with his children and their families to discuss business affairs.

There are several biographies, in Spanish and English, of Carlos Slim. Most are unauthorised and concentrate on his business acumen, his mathematical brain, and his proclivity for acquiring businesses during periods of recession, at knock-down prices. In his 2019 biography Carlos Slim: The Power, Money and Morality of One of the World’s Richest Men, author Diego Osorno advanced another theory for his stellar career.

After a series of one-on-one interviews with the great man, conducted over a period of years, Osorno concluded that it was Slim’s ability to navigate politics that was the cornerstone of his success. He wrote: “It has been his loyalty to the political system that has helped him to consolidate a personal empire unimaginable in a country with more than 52 million people in poverty.”

REED HASTINGS CEO OF NETFLIX

The Enigmatic Genius Behind Netflix Who Aims to Change US Education

The quirky ‘saviour of cinema’ is a philanthropist with his eyes on a bigger and more mysterious prize…

If you’ve seen a TV show recently, chances are you watched it on Netflix. The company is worth $95bn — but it all began 25 years ago with a $40 late fee.

That’s if you believe co-founder Reed Hastings, who says he came up with the idea for the company after forgetting to return a rental VHS cassette. His fellow co-founder, Marc Randolph, disagrees with that recollection; he remembers a shared light-bulb moment when they were in a car somewhere.

Whichever version you believe, Netflix is recognised across the world as “the original” online streaming service. But aside from Stranger Things and Squid Game, CEO Reed Hastings’ 2009 127-page slideshow — dubbed the Netflix Culture Deck — is by far the company’s most famous, or infamous, output. CEO of Meta Platforms (Facebook), Sheryl Sandberg, once described it as “the most important document ever to come out of Silicon Valley”. Culture Deck documents the key principles of Netflix company culture. Hastings believes that as long as employees are performing, they can do whatever they want. They make deals without sign-off, claim expenses on anything, and are encouraged to offer recruiters better packages.

All they have to do in return is make money: “adequate performance gets a generous severance” is one of the Culture Deck rules.

Hastings himself refuses to use an office, or even a cubicle. Everything, he believes, should be out in the open. Criticism is encouraged, and failure to speak up if you disagree with something is “tantamount to being disloyal to the company”. If an employee’s idea fails, they submit a comprehensive assessment of what went wrong. This is a process Hastings calls “sunshining”. Netflix doesn't want good employees; it wants great ones.

Does the system work? Each Netflix employee generates an average of $2.6m in annual revenue — three times more than their counterpart at Google. The company that once mailed-out rental DVDs now boasts 193 million members across 190 countries. Netflix has been touted as everything from “the death of Hollywood” to “the saviour of cinema”.

Reed Hastings may have helped to reinvent Hollywood, but he is no typical mogul. The selfdescribed “math wonk” trained in the Marine Corps and served in the Peace Corps. He taught mathematics in Swaziland and received an Mscs (Master’s in computer science) degree, specialising in AI, from Stanford University in 1988.

His first business venture — a foot-operated computer mouse — was a failure. Hastings once told reporters: “I’ll never be Steve Jobs, the creative, brilliant person,” and said Elon Musk was “100 times more interesting a person” than he’d ever be.

But perhaps his ultra-ordinary life informs his most extraordinary ideas. His mother, he has said, hated high society and taught her children disdain for elitism and pretension. His father, a lawyer for the Nixon administration, rarely discussed emotions. Hastings decided radical transparency was the way forward, even in business.

His brief career as a high school maths teacher influenced some of his more radical projects. Now 61, with a net worth of $3.6bn, Hastings is a prominent philanthropist — and a proponent of educational reform.

He served on the California State Board of Education from 2000 to 2004. He is currently on the board of several educational organisations, including The City Fund, KIPP, and the Pahara Institute. In 2016, he created a $100m fund at the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. He has donated $120m to fund scholarships at two colleges and donated to the United Negro College Fund.

A recent investigation found that Hastings was the man behind a mysterious 2,100-acre luxury retreat for teachers in the foothills of rural Colorado. It will apparently operate as a training ground for American public-school teachers aligned with the education-reform movement.

But if you ask Reed Hastings why his next project is radically transforming the education system, don’t expect a radical answer.

“I had a bunch of money,” he once told a reporter “and I didn’t really want to buy yachts.”

PHIL KNIGHT NIKE FOUNDER

Add a Swoosh, Some Sweat, and Serious Business Nous — You have Victory on Your Side

There’s nothing like a bit of history to bolster a brand. A mental association with an elite figure or personage doesn’t hurt; add a snappy name, and that’s the trifecta right there. American billionaire Phil Knight, co-founder and chairman emeritus of sportswear giant Nike, is the guy with the winning ticket.

History and a link with high-fliers? Check and check. The eponymous Nike is the mythical Greek goddess of victory, so she goes waaay back. She’s bang in the centre of the VIP section, too, as a winged attendant to the gods Zeus and Athena; so, yeah. Cool name? Check again. Nike was a title just begging for appropriation — and the addition of an elegant logo.

The trouble with Phil Knight is knowing what to focus on, but let’s stick with Nike and the athletics link for a moment. The businessman ran track during his time at the University of Oregon, coached by Bill Bowerman, who later became one of Nike’s co-founders. He and Bowerman each chipped-in $500 to start the company, such as it was.

And Knight was a runner to his bones. His personal best was a 4m 13s mile — not far off Roger Bannister’s earth-shattering 3m 59.4s record in 1954. A great athlete, then; but perhaps we’re giving Knight too much credit when it comes to titles and branding.

His vigour lent him respect and his business acumen was beyond reproach — he started selling low-cost Japanese running shoes from the back of a Plymouth car at the track events where his own athletic performances shone. But before Nike was Nike, it went under the more prosaic name of Blue Ribbon Sports. Employee Jeff Johnson (the company’s first) suggested the Nike moniker to Knight. Boom. Sure-fire winner.

The famous swoosh logo wasn’t Knight’s brainchild, either; it was commissioned in 1971 — for $35! — from a graphic design student named Carolyn Davidson; we hope she gets some royalties. Knight apparently didn’t much care the graceful curve at first, but — again showing prescience and business nous — decided that it would grow on him. It did. Boom again.

Phil Knight — who retired as CEO in 2004 and company chairman in 2016 — has a track record for picking winners. Two years ago, in July 2020, he was ranked by Forbes as the 24th richest person in the world with a fortune of $54.5bn. He’ll have slipped a little in the rankings — at the most recent tally this July he has a mere $40bn to his name — but he won’t be sweating over the missing beans. His name and status may be linked to the godly sportswear company, but lay out a selection of pies and you’ll find Knight’s fingers in a few of them.

Seen the animated kiddie chiller Coraline? Knight, again. He owns the stop-motion film production company Laika — another cracking title, this time the Russian equivalent of Fido, and the name of the first dog in space. The company was previously Will Vinton Studios, an up-and-coming animation outfit looking for investors. Knight took a 15 percent stake in 1998, and his son Travis — a failed rapper — joined the operation as an animator.

But Will Vinton Studios didn’t meet with the high standards of Knight senior, a Stanford School of Business graduate. He bought the company and assumed control, because that’s how he rolls. Travis was swiftly elevated to the board and dad rebranded the company. And that’s Laika. Knight ploughed in $180m, and its first feature film, Coraline, was released in 2009. Instant success. Travis Knight became president and CEO of Laika. Knight had another son, Matthew, who died in a diving accident at the age of 34. Laika Studio's 2005 short film Moongirl was dedicated to him.

If the nepotism hinted at in the previous paragraphs turns you off a little, bear in mind that Knight was himself no recipient of family favours. His father, William W, owner of the now-defunct Oregon Journal newspaper, denied Phil a summer job when he was a student. Let him find work for himself, was Knight the elder’s philosophy. One hopes he was impressed when his son took up a post on a rival paper, The Oregonian, tabulating sports scores — running seven miles there and back each day.

Also in the plus column against Knight’s name are philanthropic endeavours. The Portland native has donated millions to his alma mater universities, Oregon and Stanford, as well as the Oregon Health and Science University. He was in the military, worked as a certified public accountant (first with Coopers & Lybrand, then with Price Waterhouse). He even worked as an accounting professor at Portland State University for a time.

These events and career paths may all have shaped the man, but the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Whichever way you look at it, Phil Knight created a company that has become a household name and brings in nearly $45bn in annual revenues.

> > GINA RINEHART CHAIR, HANCOCK PROSPECTING

Climate Sceptic, Mining Champion, Sworn Enemy of Green Policies

The Thatcher fan and chair of Hancock Prospecting has little sympathy for the Left, green policies, or the Channel Nine TV station…

Gina Rinehart has the power to move mountains — literally — and the chair of Australian mining giant Hancock Prospecting has turned an arid corner of Western Australia into one of the world’s most productive sources of iron ore and minerals.

The mining industry is Australia’s biggest producer of revenue. The country’s abundant natural resources of iron ore, coal, natural gas and rare minerals make up 10 percent of economic output. And Gina Rinehart is vocal in urging for the relaxation of what she sees as “red tape”. In 2010 she took a leading role in the fight against the Labour government’s plans to introduce a super-profits tax on minerals, funding a massive publicity campaign. The-then prime minister Kevin Rudd was deposed and replaced by Julia Gillard, who watered-down the legislation.

Over the course of her career, the Perth native is said to have become the richest woman on the planet (subject to the fluctuation of global commodities prices, of course). Rinehart bristles at the label “mining heiress”. While it is true that she inherited the business from her father, Lang Hancock, in 1992, she says it was in a desperate condition when she took over. “I became executive chair of Hancock Prospecting when our company had extensive liabilities,” she moaned, before self-directing some praise at the company. “After decades of stress and hard work we are now the leading private mining company in Australia.”

The 68-year-old is mistrustful of the media and rarely gives interviews. In a country as legendarily egalitarian as Australia, those with great wealth are a source of public fascination. Rinehart family strife is regular fodder for gossip. When she does speak publicly, her messages are not always well received. She champions her industry and claims that humans do not cause global warming.

She warns against heeding climate change “propaganda”. In a 2020 video address to an Australian business group, she brusquely headed-off any incipient environmental criticism: ““Before the iron ore industry, Western Australia was a hand-out state.” She is notorious for her environmental views, and blames green policies for helping to cause global destabilisation. Her beliefs put her at odds with environmental organisations such as Friends of the Earth. drama called House of Hancock, starring Sam Neill in a fictionalised account of the fallout from her aged father’s marriage to his Filipina housekeeper, Rose Porteous. Rinehart described the film adaptation as “disgraceful and false”. The channel issued an apology and a pledge not to air the show again, sell it overseas, or release it on DVD.

But these are sideshows for Gina Rinehart as she leads Hancock Prospecting into a new era. The company has projects in sites around the globe: new mines in Australia, a coking coal project in Canada, copper mining in Ecuador, and investment in a natural fertiliser project in North Yorkshire.

Despite her wealth, Rinehart is far from flamboyant, and dedicates herself to business 24/7. Her work-rate is legendary, and she is an admirer of strong women, most notably Margaret Thatcher. “I’m not saying I’m like this outstanding lady,” she said, “but I too think sometimes women have a beneficial trait. We’re not as guided, or misguided, by ego.”

Gina Rinehart was born an only child in Perth, Western Australia. She spent her early years “onstation” in the scorching Pilbara region where her father — who discovered the world’s largest iron ore deposit in 1952 — constructed the township of Wittenoom. The deposit was so vast that it was estimated at the time to be enough for the world’s entire iron ore needs.

Rinehart attended the University of Sydney, but (according to her biographers) became disillusioned with “left-wing professors” and dropped out after a year. She married twice, bearing two children from each union. Her second husband, American lawyer Frank Rinehart, died in 1990.

Photo: Bloomberg

> MICHAEL SAYLOR EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN AND A CO-FOUNDER OF MicroStrategy

Go Ahead and Bet the Farm on Bitcoin, says ‘Country Boy’ Saylor

‘We should not allow ourselves to be hijacked by a small goal, or a pedestrian thought…’

Michael Saylor says he became a Bitcoin legend by chance: “I kind of fell off the turnip truck and hit my head on a pot of gold.”

The 57-year-old founder and CEO of MicroStrategy, a business analytics software firm based on the outskirts of Washington, DC, appreciates farming analogies. He often refers to ownership of Bitcoin as “the family farm” — something you should never sell.

He was born in the heart of the mid-west, in the prairie state of Nebraska. His father was a master sergeant in the US Air Force, so the young Saylor spent his early years in military air bases around the world before the family finally settled in Fairborn, Ohio. In his final year at high school, Saylor was named the student most likely to succeed — but succeed at what? “I wanted to be a rock’n’roll star,” he says. “When I was in college, I wanted to be a fighter pilot, but those hopes were dashed. My third idea was to be a professor.”

His ambitions to fly jets or become an astronaut were scuppered when he was diagnosed with a benign heart murmur. At that time, he was an MIT student on an air force scholarship, gaining a double major in aeronautics and astronautics. Needing money to pursue that third ambition of professorship, Saylor got a job building computer simulations for biotech giant DuPont. When he handed in his resignation to return to MIT, his bosses begged him to stay. to stay and be a corporate bureaucrat.” DuPont offered him a pay rise, but Saylor told them he’d rather be the CEO of his own company. On his promise to complete his DuPont projects, the company helped him set up his own business, and MicroStrategy was born.

Within a few years, riding the dot-com bubble, Saylor was a billionaire. When the bubble burst in the late 1990s, his fortunes were dashed. But the company survived, and he regained billionaire status — thanks largely to timely Bitcoin investments; he bought 17,732 coins for $175m. That’s worth $356,365,054 today. Over the following years, he steered MicroStrategy’s coffers towards Bitcoin, and helped trigger the institutional boom. In 2020, MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin ownership crossed the $1bn milestone.

The cryptocurrency market suffered what observers called a “meltdown” in May 2022. The start of a “crypto winter” was blamed on macroeconomic and geopolitical turmoil, but Saylor was typically blunt about those who rushed to sell.

In a television interview earlier this year, he said: “Do not sell your Bitcoin.” One of his biggest regrets as an investor, he said, was “finding a really good idea and under-investing in it”.

He added: “A digital monopoly that changes the world is a good idea. But people panic — and sell. When you do that, you regret it.” Saylor urged investors to remember the words of Douglas Adams on the back cover of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — “Don’t panic”.

“Bitcoin is something you can trust,” he said, “across borders, across time, across cultures. And that is such a precious thing. It is a paradigm shift, neutral, ethically sound, non-sovereign — a technically secure monetary network which allows no one to victimise anyone else. It is also functional and progressive.”

Saylor, who has never married, lives alone in Vienna, Virginia. He has said he may step down as CEO after 30 years leading the business, but would remain as executive chairman and continue to serve on the global Bitcoin Mining Council.

A schoolfriend remembers Saylor as a young man buzzing with ideas, but essentially “just a quiet mid-western guy”. He has always been a voracious reader, fascinated by scientific advances that changed the world: the printing press, railways, the telephone, genetics, antibiotics. “The impact of all these things changed the paradigms of society,” he says. “People are capable of accomplishing great things if they set their minds to it. We should not allow ourselves to be hijacked by a small goal, or a pedestrian thought.”

DAVID THOMSON CHAIRMAN, THOMSON REUTERS

Grit, Loyalty and Optimism are the Baron’s True North

David Thomson, quite possibly the richest man in Canada, finds value in art — and ice hockey.

When the fans of the Winnipeg Jets ice hockey team sing the O Canada anthem before a game, the line “…with glowing hearts we see thee rise, the True North, strong and free”, the words “True North” get a deafening roar.

And with that, David Thomson — aka Baron Thomson of Fleet, reputedly the richest man in Canada — may feel a glow of satisfaction. The fans are showing reverence for True North Sports and Entertainment Ltd, the company Thomson founded with businessman Mark Chipman

Chapman, who had revived the team in 2011, paired well with the polymath Thomson, media mogul and chairman of Thomson Reuters. Baron Thomson of Fleet, to use that alluring and imperious title in context, heads a vast international empire that inherited from his father Kenneth (the second baronet, who died in 2006). Thomson junior is a renowned patron of the arts, a collector with a passion for ice hockey. He owns and runs a major real estate business, and thrives on competition. As he once put it: “I’m a very competitive individual and I play a part in a very large picture — and hopefully add value to people’s lives.”

The people of the prairie city of Winnipeg, despite being starved of sporting success for decades, continue to bellow their gratitude at home games in the 15,000-seat stadium and sports complex built on Thomson-owned land in the heart of the city.

At the age of 65, David Thomson remains a private individual who rarely gives interviews. When he and Chipman announced the revival of the Jets and the National Hockey League (NHL) franchise award, he was cornered by a Winnipeg Sun reporter hoping for a scoop. The tall and reclusive Thomson was courteous but typically taciturn. He was finally drawn to observe: “When you do things for the right reasons, everything else seems to flow.

“The best thing in life is that things evolve, and who would have imagined a confluence of circumstances that suddenly there’s an opportunity, and it makes sense? It’s the right thing to do. I’m just delighted to play a part.”

David Thomson was born in Toronto in 1957, the eldest of Kenneth and Marilyn Thomson’s three children. He and his family lived in London during the Swinging Sixties. At his mother’s funeral in Toronto in 2017, Thomson recalled kite-flying kites in Hyde Park and excursions to Portobello market. He returned to England after his schooling in Toronto, earning an MA from Cambridge University.

He was always aware of his responsibility to the family newspaper business, founded by grandfather Roy, on whose shoulders the hereditary peerage was lain. David worked in junior positions before taking a managerial role at the familyowned Hudson Bay Company. He was appointed chairman of the Thomson Corporation in 2002.

Thomson inherited a love of art from his father, and has a 2,000-piece private collection, including works by Picasso, Rembrandt, Turner, Constable and Rubens. It also features mediaeval sculpture and Inuit art, some of which is displayed at the Art Gallery of Ontario. He has donated more than $276m for the gallery’s renovation.

David Thomson has six children from four partners but lives alone in Toronto; he still owns properties in London. According to Forbes — on whose billionaires list he ranks 26th — his net worth is around $50bn.

The Thomson Reuters media conglomerate was formed when the Thomson Corporation acquired British news group Reuters in 2008. David Thomson maintains active involvement, and even writes the occasional piece for the Toronto-based Globe and Mail.

Competitive he may be, but loyalty and optimism are perhaps stronger driving forces for Thomson. Reflecting on his passion for ice hockey, he recalled a game he watched with his father. Their team was 6-0 down in the third quarter and fans were leaving, but the Thomsons stayed to the bitter end. “I sat there looking at him, and not the game,” David recalled, “realising I had to be the luckiest human being on earth.”

> > DAN GILBERT AMERICAN BUSINESSMAN

Born for Business, Ready for Any Challenge

American businessman Dan Gilbert has always had a vision to improve whatever he touches — and the courage to challenge the status quo.

Gilbert comes from a proud line of Jewish businessmen. His dad had a bar in Detroit and his grandfather a car wash. “I used to love going down to their businesses and just watching all the action. I got hooked,” he said. “For me it was just the energy and the environment. Even a car wash has good energy if you just lay back and look at everything going on.”

While in college he earned a real estate agent’s licence, and while in law school he worked parttime at his parents’ Century 21 Real Estate agency. By the age of 23, Gilbert was “hustling mortgages as a broker out of my car, running from bank to bank, begging them to approve the loans”.

In 1985, he launched a brick-and-mortar mortgage company with Ron Berman, Lindsay Gross, and his younger brother Gary Gilbert. Rocket Mortgage caught several lucky breaks in its early days. In 1996, a mail-in mortgage application was introduced; it closed loans worth $35m over the next two months.

At the time, most mortgage applications required numerous in-person visits, so this was revolutionary. Gilbert recognised the power of technology to simplify the mortgage process. Rocket Mortgage, then called Quicken Loans, launched an early-adopter internet strategy in the late 1990s. It became one of the country’s first online direct mortgage lenders. It’s now the largest provider of FHA mortgages in the US — a distinction it has held since 2014.

Rocket has grown into a $27bn holding company that includes Rocket Mortgage, title company Amrock, home-search platform Rocket Homes, personal loans provider Rocket Loans, and call centre Rock Connections.

Today, the company is grappling with big tech changes — AI, data analytics and blockchain — and gearing up for more tech disruptions. Amid stiffer competition with the rise of start-ups like Better.com, Blend and Divvy Homes, Rocket has expanded to other markets, including auto loans, solar panels and personal finance. It just acquired Truebill, a personal financial management app.

Mortgages remain at the core of the business, which is dominant in the space. It closed $320bn in mortgage volume in 2020 and has processed more than $1tn in mortgages since it launched in 1985. It has 26,000 employees.

Dan Gilbert believes that business sustainability is rooted in better customer experiences. “We’re in the get-rich-slow business.”

SPORTS FRANCHISES

Gilbert became majority owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team in March 2005. He undertook a complete overhaul of the front office, coaching staff, player personnel and game presentation. Two years later, he bought the dormant Utah Grizzlies American hockey league franchise, moved it to Cleveland, and renamed it the Cleveland Monsters. He also purchased, relocated and rebranded an NBA G-League team now known as the Cleveland Charge.

Consistent wins from Gilbert’s sports teams — particularly the Cavaliers, where LeBron James was a star player — convinced fans that Cleveland’s 52year “sports curse” had ended. But Gilbert clashed with James when he decided to leave the Cavaliers to join the Miami Heat as a free agent in 2010. James announced his decision in a TV special called The Decision. Gilbert responded with The Letter, criticising Cleveland’s homegrown hero for abandoning fans and turning his announcement into a “narcissistic, self-promotional build-up”.

The NBA Commissioner fined Gilbert $100,000 for his remarks. Four years later, when James opted out of his contract with Miami, the two met privately and acknowledged that mistakes had been made on both sides. James returned to Cleveland in free agency — and led the team to its first championship victory — but the wound never fully healed. In 2017 interviews, James said he felt the letter had racial overtones and was disrespectful. In 2018, he left the Cavaliers to sign with the Lakers.

BILLIONAIRE’S CLUB

Gilbert enjoyed a brief spell as the world’s 10th richest person in March 2021. Rocket companies’ shares rose 71 percent in March, following a GameStop-like squeeze of the firm’s heavilyshorted stock. Gilbert’s net worth jumped almost $33bn — but the very next day his fortune plunged by $25.4bn. Despite the sharp decline, the stock ended up 30 percent higher than the previous week — and Gilbert was almost $10bn richer.

Under Gilbert’s watch, Quicken Loans/Rocket Mortgage became a 16-time winner of JD Power’s Highest Customer Satisfaction Award (10 in the primary mortgage origination category, six for mortgage servicing). The company also ranked in Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For from 2005 through 2017. In 2016, the Cleveland Cavaliers won the NBA championship and the best team award from ESPY, while the Cleveland Monsters claimed the Calder Cup.

Gilbert ranks number 63 on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index, with a net worth of $20.8bn as of August 2022. He owns 100 buildings in downtown Detroit.

MONEY FOR MEDICAL RESEARCH, URBAN REJUVENATION AND COMMUNITY SUPPORT

In September 2012, the Detroit native and his wife, Jennifer, joined The Giving Pledge, committing to giving half their wealth to philanthropic causes during their time on Earth. They sold a chunk of their Rocket Companies stock in April 2021 to support Detroit’s neighbourhoods. The transaction involved 20.2 million shares of Rocket Companies’ class A common stock. Following the sale, the Gilberts still had a 93 percent interest in Rocket Companies.

The Rocket Community Fund (RCF) was established in April 2021, amid a carefully orchestrated media rollout that involved exclusives to The New York Times and CBS programme This Morning. The initiative will distribute funds over a 10-year period.

The first $15m instalment went to cover lowincome residents’ delinquent property taxes. Bloomberg reports on a nationwide property tax debt scheme allowing municipal authorities to collect hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue beyond actual tax debts. In Wayne County, Michigan, where Detroit is located, more than 100,000 homes have been auctioned-off over the past decade. Since 2005, county officials have used the debts to back roughly $3.5bn in bond sales — securities that pay high yields to investors and are funded by penalties, fines, and foreclosure sales.

Flawed tax assessments have systematically inflated tax bills for the lowest-priced homes. Some municipalities’ efforts to securitise or sell the debts have led to a broad, upward transfer of wealth rooted in unfair tax systems.

Gilbert wants to pay the property tax debts, allowing the municipalities to focus on other responsibilities. “Removing this tax burden will build a stronger foundation for Detroit families

to thrive,” he said, adding: “Everyone deserves to achieve the American dream of home-ownership, which includes the ability to sustainably and permanently enjoy the home you make for yourself, your family, and your loved ones.”

By the end of 2021, only $40m of the promised $500m had been allocated. The $15m Detroit Tax Relief Fund has helped about 2,500 homeowners, with another 4,000 cases in progress and an ongoing information campaign to encourage others to apply. The other $25m includes funding to revive Detroit’s dormant historically Black college or university (HBCU), the Pensole Lewis College of Business and Design, as well as a programme called Neighbour to Neighbour, in which people go door-to-door throughout the city assessing what unaffordable home repairs residents need.

This April, the RCF committed another $10m to help Detroit contractors grow their businesses. “Development continues to exponentially increase across our city, which will catalyse economic impact, and it is critical that Detroit-based contractors are well positioned to be a part of that growth,” says Laura Grannemann, vice-president of the RCF, which is investing the first $1m into programme administration and operations. “Detroit-based contractors have historically been overlooked, but the Motor City Contractor Fund will increase access to financing for local contractors, empowering them to grow their business and create more jobs for Detroiters.”

Jennifer Gilbert runs the family foundation. When the Gilberts’ eldest son, Nick, was diagnosed with neurofibromatosis, his parents launched a non-profit that has since raised around $40m for research into the rare genetic disorder.

CRITICISM

The family has come under fire, with some saying that it has donated just a fraction of the enormous wealth acquired through tax breaks and the city’s willingness to virtually give-away real estate to Gilbert for redevelopment. The billionaire entrepreneur has redeveloped so much of Motor City real estate that downtown Detroit is known as “Gilbertville”.

The Detroit City Council approved a $60m tax abatement for Gilbert’s Hudson’s site project in July. The tax abatement plan passed 5-4 after three postponements. It will provide Bedrock — Gilbert’s real estate arm — with the 10-year tax break that the company says is necessary to finish the skyscraper.

Gilbert described the Hudson’s site construction as “our most exciting project on the board right now”. It will be the tallest building in Detroit, around 70 storeys high.

The Gilberts, unlike many megadonors, are not plastering their names on anything, other than their foundation. “None of what we do is for accolades and ego,” Jennifer said. “Ultimately, if putting our name on something exponentially grows the impact, we will consider doing it. But if it’s for the sake of having our name up somewhere, we’re not interested in that. That’s not our goal.”

However, when the Gilberts sold company shares to fund their philanthropic mission, they did so just months before publicly disclosing that the company’s gain-on-sale margin declined. Rocket stock dropped when the news broke, prompting investors to file lawsuits against Gilbert for insider trading. The first, filed by a Detroit pension fund and a family trust, was dropped. The second was filed this February.

Rocket and its management face a securities class action in Michigan that accuses them of concealing rising competition and other factors that caused the key financial metric to contract.

Photo: Tony Dejak/Associated Press

HEALTH SCARE AND DELEGATING RESPONSIBILITIES

Gilbert made an appearance at Forbes’ Under-30 Summit in October 2021, where he opened up about the stroke he suffered in 2019. “It was a big shot out of nowhere,” he said. “They usually are that way.”

The Rocket Companies chairman uses a wheelchair and a service dog to help navigate this new phase of his life. He spends three or four hours a day working with physical therapists. In his first interview since the stroke, Gilbert told Crain’s Detroit Business: “When you have a stroke, here’s the problem: Everything is hard. Everything. Like you wake up, getting out of bed is hard, going to the bathroom is hard, and sitting down and eating at a table is hard. You name it. You don’t get a break. You’re like trapped in your own body.”

Gilbert couldn’t be prouder of Jennifer, who he says has come into her own in the wake of his illness. “I couldn’t ask for a better soundingboard, partner, and confidante. She’s especially done a remarkable job in the last couple years with the businesses and Gilbert Family Foundation — I’m going to have to take notes from her.”

Jennifer was a stay-at-home mum for 15 years — a role she chose and loved — before getting more deeply involved with the family business and philanthropy. She started by contributing towards the design of the buildings, and now runs two design studios.

Gilbert’s son, Grant, insists that he’s not preparing to take over his father’s responsibilities. But he is becoming “the face” of the Gilbert family, particularly on the sports side. Early this year, he told Sports Business Journal: “In terms of staying engaged and helping impact and being involved (with the Cleveland Cavaliers), that’s something I want to do for the rest of my life.”