From the Facebook executive who told women to “lean in” to get ahead at work, to a Nigerian oil tycoon and a British online gambling entrepreneur, a record number of women have entered the global club of billionaires.
A total of 172 women, up 25% on 2013, have made Forbes' 28th annual billionaires' list. Women now make up 10% of the global super-rich.
Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, with a personal fortune worth more than $1bn (£600m), becomes one of the highest-profile new entrants to the Forbes list, joining Meg Whitman of Hewlett-Packard as the only other female tech billionaire.
Nigeria's first female billionaire, businesswoman Folorunsho Alakija, is also making her Forbes debut. Born into a wealthy family, she studied fashion in London before going into the oil business in 1993. Her stake in Famfa Oil provides the bulk of her $2.5bn fortune.
According to Forbes, a record number of 42 women broke into the list for the first time, although only 32 female billionaires (1.9% of the total) built their own fortune, rather than inheriting it from a parent or husband.
The world's richest woman is Christy Walton, who shares a $36.7bn chunk of the Walmart fortune, edging out one of L'Oréal's principal shareholders, Liliane Bettencourt.
One of the top UK entrants is Denise Coates, the British online gambling queen who, along with her brother, owns Bet365. Coates was at school when she started working as a cashier in her father's betting shops and has amassed $1.6bn in personal wealth.
Fiercely private, she has escaped almost all press attention in the UK despite Bet365 taking almost £20bn in bets and making £150m in profits in the year to March 2013.
In a rare interview two years ago, Coates told the Guardian how she has, on occasion, had to correct some people who had assumed that her father, a well-known businessman, ran the company.
Her business, which employs 2,500 workers, mostly in Stoke-on-Trent, made a £150m profit last year, even after swallowing £31m of losses from Bet365's controlling interest in Stoke City football club
Coates, who owns half the business, received pay and bonuses of £5.4m, as well as her share of £15m in dividends. Even after these payouts the company had a further £430m in cash reserves on the balance sheet. In the past five years, Bet365 has paid out dividends totalling £130m.
A total of nine women feature in the top 85 – two having joined since Oxfam analysis in January showed that the world's richest 85 people have $1 trillion – as much as the poorest half of the world's 7 billion population.
Bill Gates reclaimed his crown as the world's richest man, after a surge in the value of Microsoft shares increased his wealth by $9bn to $76bn. Mexican telecoms mogul Carlos Slim, who held the title for the previous four years, was nudged into second place with a fortune of $72bn. The Spanish clothing tycoon Amancio Ortega, behind fast fashion chain Zara, stayed in third place, extending his lead over investor Warren Buffett at four.
The biggest riser was Facebook's founder, Mark Zuckerberg, whose fortune almost doubled to $28.bn, as shares in the social network soared. He is joined by other tech wizards, with Dropbox chief executive, Drew Houston, and WhatsApp founders, Jan Koum and Brian Acton, making the list for the first time. The last-minute entry for Koum and Acton comes after Facebook announced it would pay $19bn for the messaging app – a sweet deal for Acton, who was rejected for a job with Facebook in 2009.
The richest Briton remains the Duke of Westminster, whose Grosvenor property company owns a swathe of Belgravia and Knightsbridge, as well as tens of thousands of acres in Cambridge, Liverpool and Scotland. London's surging property market also boosted the fortunes of the billionaire Reuben brothers – the second richest Britons – and the fourth richest, Charles Cadogan, a former banker who inherited his family's centuries-old holdings in Knightsbridge and Chelsea. Shopping was one of the other mainsprings of UK wealth: Mike Ashley, the reclusive founder of Sports Direct, is Britain's fifth richest person, with clothing tycoon Sir Philip Green and his wife Cristina, not far behind in seventh.
The US has by far the largest number of billionaires, with China in second place with a record 152, up from 122 last year. China's richest man Wang Jianlin, who grew up in poverty during the Cultural Revolution to amass a fortune in department stores, cinemas and five-star hotels, is now extending his interests in the UK with the recent acquisition of luxury Sunseeker yachts.
But other emerging economies, buffeted by turbulence on currency markets, saw their super-wealthy fall out of the Forbes list. Turkey lost 19 billionaires to inflation and the falling value of its stock market, while Indonesia saw eight of its wealthy drop out of the list, after its currency plummeted 20% against the dollar. But 2013 will be remembered as a good year for the world's super-rich, who now have collective wealth of $6.4tn, up from $5.4 tn the previous year.
This article originally appeared on guardian.co.uk
