In India's largest city stands the most expensive private building in the world - the Antilia Tower. It cost $1 billion to build and is the residence of Asia's richest man, Mukesh Ambani. In July, he surpassed Jack Ma, the creator of the online hypermarket Alibaba, in the Bloomberg ranking by $6 billion. Ambani's net worth is $48 billion. He is 61 years old, lives with his family in Mumbai and loves Bollywood films. His own life could become the plot of an Indian melodrama, because it contains an inheritance, a big quarrel with his brother, love, deceit and reconciliation.

Family traditions

Father, Dhiburhai Ambani, worked for many years as a secretary in a British port, was able to save a small capital and open his own business. He started out trading spices and wool and later founded Reliance Industries in 1966 and started manufacturing textiles and other fabrics. After 11 years, the factory became so large that it went public, and in the late 70s it began producing polyester, a synthetic material obtained by refining petroleum products.

Things continued to go uphill. In the early 80s, Mukesh Ambani, the eldest son in the family, joined his father and began working in the family company. By that time, he had completed his studies at the university, received a degree in chemistry and began an MBA at Stanford, but did not finish - he returned to India to help run the family business. An energetic young man persuaded his father to invest in the promising telecommunications market and build his own oil refinery.

Antilia Tower

In 2002, Ambani Sr. died without leaving a will. And then Mukesh’s younger brother Anil appeared on the stage.

Feuds

Anil Ambani also worked in the family business. Together with Mukesh, they carried the coffin with their father's body. After the funeral, the eldest son became chairman of the board of directors, and Anil received the position of vice president.

The brothers have always been very different. Mukesh is economical, secretive, conservative, and early married a schoolteacher whom his father looked after for him. Anil is an outgoing, open-minded Westerner with an interest in new technologies. Until 1983, Anil studied at the Wharton School of Business in Pennsylvania, and in 1991 he married the famous Bollywood actress Tina Munim, the bride was three years older than the groom.

Anil was always in the public eye, interacted a lot with journalists and received the title of “Businessman of the Year” from the influential Indian magazine Business India in 1998, two years earlier than his older brother. While their father was alive, the brothers worked together, but after his death, instead of successfully complementing each other by running the company, they began to quarrel.

Anil Ambani

Mukesh is a person who strives to keep everything under personal control. This is what colleagues and partners say about him. He slowly began to remove Anil from his duties. During his father’s lifetime, Anil was the treasurer of the company and was involved in investments, but the board of directors under the leadership of his older brother deprived him of these functions, and in 2004 transferred the rights to manage all finances personally to Mukesh. Then Anil wrote a four-page open letter, the essence of which was that Mukesh was destroying the corporate culture and the special spirit of the company.

In general, Ambani's father really favored his eldest son more than his youngest. In 1999, when Reliance Industries launched telecom operator Reliance Infocomm, there was no photo or mention of its younger brother in the brochure dedicated to the launch of the ambitious project. Anil was probably offended - for example, he didn’t come to that presentation, but he didn’t challenge his brother’s authority. Sources close to him told India Today that the younger brother was ready to play a second role and had no intention of encroaching on the elder brother’s leadership. But when they began to move him from his position, he became indignant. Moreover, in Mukesh’s circle there were immediately cousins ​​and nephews who wanted to become his right and left hands.

The brothers stopped communicating, Anil’s corporate phone was turned off, rumors and details of family squabbles began to leak into the press, and the company’s stock quotes began to fall. At that time, 13.48% was traded on the open market, 46.67% belonged to the Ambani family, the rest was in the hands of foreign investors. All this time, by the way, the brothers lived under the same roof in the 14-story Sea Breeze mansion. There was a special staff in the house who made sure that Mukesh and Anil did not accidentally meet, for example, in the elevator.

Finally, in 2005, the mother of the quarreling heirs convinced them to split the company. Mukesh took over the management of the oil refining and petrochemical industries, as well as textile production. Anil has bagged projects related to telecom and power generation. For several more years, the brothers, by inertia, sued each other for certain projects, but in 2010 they finally separated completely - each took his part of the company in his own direction.

New projects of the elder Ambani

Mukesh continues to be involved in oil production and oil refining: he built a network of gas stations and brought it to the stock exchange, sold a stake in one of the fields to British BP. The value of the giant Reliance Industries exceeded $100 billion.

In 2014, Mukesh became interested in the idea of ​​making good internet in India accessible to everyone. He invested $33 million in the new company Reliance Jio and launched a free 4G network in 2015. And a year later he introduced the world to his own smartphone LYF - the device quickly, in just a few months, became the best-selling in India.

Here is a person whose opinion is worth listening to - Li Ka-shing.

Lee is widely reported to be Asia's richest man (and one of the world's richest). He is worth about $30 billion, and he made most of it by investing in Hong Kong real estate, back when the island was just a backwater of the British Empire.

Li Ka-shing began investing in mainland China later, in the early 90s, but long before it became fashionable. And now Li is leaving China. and goes away completely.

Since August last year, he has sold billions of dollars of his Chinese assets. And the most recent deal is the sale of the Pacific Palace shopping center, which took place just a few days ago. Once this transaction is fully consummated, Li will no longer have any global interests in mainland Chinese real estate.

I would like to point out that Lee is not at all the kind of person who made his money by rushing from one investment to another. Rather, he has always been a long-term investor. So what does Lee know that others don't?

Just. China's credit crisis.

The multi-year unprecedented increase in the money supply has already put the country's economy in a difficult situation, and now the Chinese government is carefully trying to limit the growth of the credit supply. The country's shadow banking system alone now accounts for 84% of annual GDP, according to JP Morgan.

According to the IMF, total personal credit in China (in simpler terms, all loans, mortgages, etc. taken out by the Chinese) is 230% of GDP, and this is a 100% increase over the past few years. According to history, such indicators are almost always accompanied by serious financial crises. And Chinese leaders understand this and are doing everything possible to ensure a “soft landing.” If they succeed, the world will only see a significant decline in economic growth, stock indices, real estate prices and raw materials. If they fail, it could result in a crisis similar to the one that began in 2008.

What's happening in China today isn't just about Asian tycoons like Li Ka-shing. Even if you cannot distinguish Guangzhou from Hangzhou from Quanzhou, this will still most likely affect you. Chile, where I spend most of my time, is a perfect example. Chile is one of the world's main producers of copper, and China is among its main consumers. Since China's recession began, copper prices have also fallen significantly. Consequently, the entire Chilean economy also slowed down. The peso has fallen nearly 10% against the US dollar in recent months, and Chile's central bank is now trying to boost economic growth in the country. And similar scenarios are happening all over the world.

On top of that, China is generally able to bring the entire global financial system to its knees by only selling part of its US Treasury securities (Treasuries) in order to support the yuan.

And it would seem that the potentially fatal credit crisis in the world's second-largest economy should not fade from the front pages. But this doesn't happen.

Most investors have no idea what's going on in China right now. And they have no idea that what is happening there could have much greater consequences for their investment portfolios than the actions of Obama and Putin combined. Well, those who are conservative today and have already gone into cash, after some time will be able to take advantage of the crisis and start buying assets at the moment when “blood flows through the streets.” This famous statement about when exactly to buy something was said by Baron Rothschild in the 18th century. Moscow real estate and Gazprom shares in 1998 immediately after the crisis are an excellent example of when “blood flowed through the streets” of Russia, of course in a figurative sense. And those who in 1999 had the courage to buy a Moscow small car for 20 thousand dollars, 10 years later could sell it for 200.

Again, using Chile as an example, I'm already starting to see that some landowners, having borrowed too much money at one time, are entering the market in droves and are ready to make deals. And this is great news for me, because today I can buy much more land and real estate for the same amount of US dollars than six months ago. I expect this trend to only increase as China is only at the very beginning of its process.

The Chinese word for crisis is said to be a combination of two characters: danger and opportunity. But this is not entirely accurate. The second hieroglyph in the word ‘weiji’ can have several meanings, and perhaps the word crisis would be better translated as a combination of the words “danger” and “critical moment”.

And today, quite possibly, the very critical moment has come - the time to look at your finances and think about selling everything you don’t need. Asia's richest man is certainly doing just that.

Stay with us,

Simon Black

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Simon Black is an international investor, entrepreneur, perpetual traveler, free spirit, creator of the Sovereign Man. In his free daily messages, he shares his life experiences to help you achieve greater freedom, financial and personal.

Li Ka-shing, Asia's richest man, is 83 years old, but he manages to get more done before lunch than people half his age get done in an entire day. By the time we met, he had finished his usual breakfast of rice and vegetables, studied international news, and played golf. Nestled in his office in central Hong Kong on the top floor of the Cheung Kong headquarters, which boasts a swimming pool and one of the world's fastest elevators (70 floors in 45 seconds), Li Ka-Shing exudes wisdom and calm. “A person who invests in the development of technology feels younger,” he says, smiling.

For a quarter of a century, Lee has controlled a huge part of Hong Kong, seething below with a population of seven million. His companies have built one in seven apartments here, handle 70% of Hong Kong port traffic and control significant shares of the electricity and mobile communications markets. Its successes in mainland China - especially in retail and real estate - are no less impressive. And despite his age, in recent years Lee has become famous for his investments in the IT sector - so successful that the figure of the Hong Kong elder found himself among visionaries like the Russian Yuri Milner, whose mere participation in the project is considered a guarantee of the success of any startup.

It turned out that this man, in his late 90s, has a fantastic instinct for everything that has potential in the digital world. In December 2007, it took him no more than five minutes to decide to invest in Facebook, despite the practically non-existent profitability at that time and the rather high estimated value for a young company - $15 billion. This chance presented itself to Lee thanks to Solina Zhou - to his longtime colleague, who heads Horizons Ventures, Lee's high-tech investment firm. Lee took note of Facebook's growing following and its prospects in mobile services and quickly approved a $120 million investment in exchange for a 0.8% stake. Since then, he has acquired another number of shares - the exact figure is not disclosed. With the company expected to be worth at least $100 billion following its upcoming IPO, Lee will undoubtedly add another billion or more to his fortune.

Lee's luck with Facebook is just the most high-profile episode in what has begun to be a streak of luck for him. In 2005, Horizons invested in then-unprofitable Skype, a year before eBay bought it for $2.5 billion. Another Lee-backed company, Siri, was bought by Apple in 2010 after Lee invested the year before. it includes $7.5 million. Most recently, he added shares to his portfolio of music site Spotify, crowdsourced car navigation service Waze and developer of innovative waterproof coatings HzO.

“The most amazing thing about him and his team is that they have their own vision of where the world is going,” says Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, who, at 29, is old enough to be Lee’s grandson. “From the moment he invested in our company, he made sure Spotify was put in his car. This was in 2009, before Spotify became a mobile app. He said, “When are we going to stand in all the other cars?” He doesn’t pay attention to the limitations of technological capabilities, he sees the world as it should be.”

Horizons, with its extensive connections in Asia, is a magnet for young companies looking to break into the Chinese market. “I heard about them in connection with their investments in Facebook and Skype, but that’s about it,” says Noam Bardin, head of Waze, an Israeli-American firm that received a $30 million joint investment from Horizons and Kleiner Perkins last year. However, Bardeen was quickly able to appreciate Lee's ability to have a global vision, quick decision-making, and his long list of Asian business contacts. “They have deep roots in China,” adds Yahal Zilka, co-founder of Waze’s original investor, Israeli firm Magma Ventures.

Lee's intuition helps him not only invest successfully, but also quickly fill a niche that is emerging in the United States due to the widening gap between projects that receive initial financial support from angel investors and projects that can only count on investments at the next stage. “Valley of Death” is what Norman Winarski, vice president of SRI International, a company that once spun off from Stanford University, with whose support the Siri program was created, calls this abyss.

“Making money on investments is not the most important thing for us,” Lee says of his innovative portfolio. “It’s much more important that we gain a lot of new knowledge.” This is how, for example, INQ, Lee's company, which develops an interface for mobile phones, was one of the first to start working with devices that have access to Skype, Facebook and Spotify.

Lately, Lee has been particularly drawn to the potential of artificial intelligence technologies across all areas of his business interests. In addition to the $7.5 million he spent on Siri, the virtual assistant now ubiquitous on iPhones, last December he invested $300,000 in a 16-year-old startup called Summly, which uses artificial intelligence in its note-taking search engine. Most of all, Lee believes, artificial intelligence technologies will affect education, where optimized learning will be “woven” into individual devices. “The development of artificial intelligence has reached a turning point,” he says. “Combined with high-speed mobile networks, disruption in some industries is inevitable.”

Coming from the bottom

Lee's persistent and sincere interest in the topic of education becomes clear if you look at the first steps of his career - representatives of the Chinese diaspora around the world are no less familiar with these details of his biography than Americans are with the young years of Lincoln the Lumberjack. Born in 1928 in Chaozhou, in Guangdong province, Li and his family moved to neighboring Hong Kong after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War. “I was in elementary school when the Japanese began bombing Chaozhou,” he recalls. Soon after the move, Li's father, who served as an elementary school principal in China, died of tuberculosis. “The worst experience of my childhood,” Lee says. “The bitter burden of poverty and a special feeling of helplessness forever imprinted on my heart the worries that drive me to this day. How realistic is it to change your destiny? And can you improve your chances of success through careful planning?”

At the age of 12, Lee dropped out of school and began working as an apprentice in a factory making watch straps. By the age of 14, he was already working full time at a company that sold plastic products to help support his family. In 1950, Lee left to start his own production of plastic toys and household goods. Having read in a trade magazine about the popularity of plastic flowers in Italy, he converted his factory to focus exclusively on them, deciding that such specialization was more promising in terms of business growth. He named his first company Cheung Kong, which is the name for the Yangtze River in Hong Kong dialect.

In the 1960s, during a period of tension in Hong Kong marked by protests and terrorist attacks by Maoist radicals, Lee, using profits from the plastics industry, began buying up residential and factory buildings throughout the city - this brought him huge profits when the market returned to normal. In 1979, he became the first Chinese to acquire a controlling stake in one of the oldest British trading houses in Hong Kong, Hutchison Whampoa, then struggling to make ends meet. In 1987, when his name appeared on the very first Forbes global list of billionaires, Lee and his associates paid $500 million for about half a stake in the then unprofitable Canadian company Husky Oil - Lee still personally owns more than $8 billion in its shares. Having successfully and generously invested in the explosive growth of mainland China, he earned additional capital in its rapidly growing construction and consumer markets. His total fortune now stands at $25.5 billion.

Like any great empire builder, Lee continues to expand into new territories around the world. In 2010, Cheung Kong made the largest acquisition in its history, shelling out $9.1 billion for energy distribution company U.K. Power Networks - today it serves approximately 8 million Britons. Less than a year later he bought Northumbrian Water, which provides water services to 4.5 million people in England. Hutchison Whampoa, one of Europe's largest mobile networks, added Austria's third-largest mobile operator to its assets in February at a cost of $1.7 billion.

“Business people should not allow themselves to have too narrow a view of their field of activity,” he explains, explaining his interest in Europe at a time when others see only clouds gathering over it.

This is partly why, even now, Lee tries to read books on science, economics, politics and philosophy every day. In February, Li was intently studying the biography of Zhan Zhouzhen, an influential Ming-era political figure. His curiosity and openness to the world are conveyed by the hieroglyphs inscribed on the calligraphy canvas above his desk: “Set high goals, make friends among unlike people, take comfort in simple pleasures. Stand on high, sit on level ground, walk in space.”

Philanthropist, but not a pensioner

The success of his core companies explains why Lee can treat his investments in Western innovation projects as an expensive hobby. True to this approach, Lee does not intend to personally profit from Facebook and other successful acquisitions in the same field. He invests his private capital through Horizons. If the business fails, he transfers the received shares and profits to his Li Ka Shing Foundation, which he calls his “third son” - he has two real sons.

Today, his foundation's endowment totals $1.6 billion, and its current assets are worth $8.3 billion. Much of this money is invested in education. Li contributed $690 million to create Shantou University, named after his hometown. In California, Berkeley, with a donation of $40 million from Lee, a new biomedical research center was opened, named after him. (Medical sciences are another area of ​​keen interest to Lee. His father died relatively young, and in 1990 his wife died of a heart attack at age 56—he never remarried.) An appreciation dinner hosted by Berkeley University drew 300 people who wanted to meet him.

But the powerful incentive that once sent thousands of Hong Kong investors queuing outside for a chance to buy shares newly issued by Li's companies has waned. Li's conglomerate subsidiaries have recently failed to live up to expectations, including Tom Group, his first foray into an online business, which has lost more than 90% of its share price since its Hong Kong IPO in 2000. (Lee claims that the Tom Group's disastrous experience turned his attention to the mobile technology revolution, from which he subsequently made good money.) One can also recall the wave of public discontent over the growing wealth divide in Hong Kong - although Lee's large-scale donations have so far carried him away from criticism.

Some people are already wondering what will happen to Li's empire when he finally retires. In the companies he controlled, Lee appointed his 48-year-old eldest son Victor as his heir. Already, Victor holds the position of Deputy Chairman of the Board of Directors and Managing Director of Cheung Kong and Deputy Chairman of Hutchison Whampoa. “If I went on a two-month vacation and told Victor two minutes before leaving, I would have no doubt that the company would continue to operate as usual,” says Lee. “From childhood, I taught him by example what it means to lead.”

Richard, Lee's younger and better-known son, has his share in the family business, but is primarily involved in managing his own telecom empire. He says he lives by his father's two business rules. First: in any transactions, “leave something on the table for counterparties”, because in the future it will bring new transactions. Second: success is the sum of planning, studying risks and careful implementation.

For his part, Lee Sr. assured me that plans for a leadership transition should not be taken as a sign of his resignation in the near future. “I don’t mean that I have a retirement date set—I’m perfectly healthy,” he tells me before parting. And even if he retires, he adds, he will not leave his foundation and will maintain a youthful spirit, constantly monitoring the development of innovations and technologies of the future.

According to Forbes magazine, the US has as many billionaires as China. Russia also appears frequently on the latest list of billionaires—Russian oligarchs own a total of $6.4 trillion. But even if you can’t become the richest person in the world, you can become one in your own country. Many billionaires have held their own for years, but there are still a few newcomers on this year's list.

1. New Zealand: Graham Hart

Net worth: $7 billion
Place in the Forbes list - 191

Hart's fortune has increased by $2 billion since last year. His company, Reynolds Group Holdings, produces packaging materials and generates annual revenues of $14 billion. Hart also owns Carter Holt Harvey, a paper, packaging and supplies company in Oceania.

2. South Africa: Johan Rupert and his family

Net worth: $7.6 billion
Place in the Forbes list - 173

Rupert made his fortune from luxury goods. He owns the Swiss-based company Compagnie Financiere Richemont, which includes brands such as Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels, Jaeger-LeCoultre and Montblanc. Rupert also earned $4 million last year from buffaloes - he bred them in private reserves.

3. Austria: Dietrich Mateschitz

Net worth: $9.2 billion
Place on the Forbes list - 136

Mateschitz is the creator of Red Bull, the world famous energy drink. Over the past two years, energy drink sales have increased by 16%. Mateschitz also owns shares in two football teams, a Formula 1 racing team and a luxury resort in Fiji.

4. Denmark: Kield Kirk Christiansen

Net worth: $10.2 billion
Place on the Forbes list - 119

Christiansen is the grandson of the inventor of the Lego children's construction set and ran the company for 25 years until his retirement in 2004. He now owns a controlling stake in the company and is deputy chairman of the board. Christiansen is also investing in Merlin Entertainments, which went public last year. He also owns a number of entertainment establishments such as Madame Tussauds Wax Museum.

5. Netherlands: Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken

Net worth: $10.4 billion
Place on the Forbes list - 113

Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken took over the leadership of the Heineken beer company after the death of her father, Henry Heineken, inheriting his entire fortune. Carvalho-Heineken lives modestly. Unlike her father, who loved fame, the businesswoman prefers to live a quiet, peaceful life with her husband and five children.

6. Singapore: Robert and Philip Ng

Net worth: $11 billion

The Ng brothers inherited a business called Far East Organization from their father. The company owns more than 700 hotels, shopping centers and apartments in Singapore and Hong Kong. The total value of real estate is $6 billion. Last year the company acquired a lot of real estate in Australia.

7. Czech Republic: Petr Kellner

Net worth: $11 billion
Place in the Forbes list - 106

Petr Kellner founded an investment fund for loans to start a business. Through the fund, he acquired a controlling stake in the insurance company and privatized it. He recently announced that he had sold his stake in the insurance company for $3.6 billion. This year, Kellner also bought Spanish giant Telefónica's Czech for $3.2 billion.

8. South Korea: Lee Kun-Hee

Net worth: $11.1 billion|
Place in the Forbes list - 102

Lee Kun-Hee is the chairman of Samsung, which accounts for about 20% of Korea's GDP. In 2008, he resigned as chairman due to charges of tax evasion and breach of trust. He was later acquitted and returned to his post in March 2010. Samsung Electronics shares rose in January 2013, further increasing his net worth.

9. Philippines: Henry Sy and his family

Net worth: $11.4 billion
Place in the Forbes list - 97

Xi owns a large holding company that recently merged with entertainment industry SM Prime Holdings, making the company worth $9.3 billion. Shares in his holding company SM Investments fell 30% last year, but he signed a contract for $1.2 billion and regained land in Manila.

10. Thailand: Dhanin Chearavanont and his family

Net worth: $11.4 billion
Place in the Forbes list - 97

Chearavanont was involved in more than half of the business deals concluded in Thailand in 2013, worth a total of $31 billion. He expanded the conglomerate of Charoen Pokphand's core businesses into food processing, telecommunications and retail.

11. Malaysia: Robert Kuok

Net worth: $11.5 billion
Place in the Forbes list - 95

Kuok made his fortune producing palm oil and harvesting sugarcane fields in Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia. Shares in his company, Kerry Properties, fell in 2013, but his biggest source of wealth remains Wilmar, the world's largest palm oil company.

12. Switzerland: Ernesto Bertarelli

Net worth: $12 billion
Place in the Forbes list - 92

Ernesto Bertarelli inherited his father Serono's company SA, which produces a drug to combat multiple sclerosis. His family sold the company in 2007 for $9 billion. Today he invests in Kedge Capital and Ares Life Sciences, and is also co-chairman of the Bertarelli Foundation, whose main activities are marine conservation and research to improve quality life.

13. Ukraine: Rinat Akhmetov

Net worth: $12.5 billion
Place in the Forbes list - 88

Akhmetov owns the energy company DTEK and the steel production company Metinvest. His wealth has been declining recently due to weak demand and falling prices for steel and iron ore assets. Akhmetov also once called former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych an ally, which caused a certain decline in his business.

14. Great Britain: Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor

Net worth: $13 billion
Place in the Forbes list - 81

Grosvenor's wealth is concentrated in the Grosvenor Property Group. Its real estate division has assets on five continents. Cavendish is also the sixth Duke of Westminster. He owns 190 acres of land in the Belgravia area near Buckingham Palace. In addition, his family owns 96,000 acres of land in Scotland, 32,000 acres in Spain and thousands of other places in England.

15. Cyprus: John Fredriksen

Net worth: $13.6 billion
Place on the Forbes list - 76

John Fredricksen is an oil tycoon and owner of Frontline Ltd. In 2005, he invested in the deep-sea drilling business Seadrill, from which he receives $400 million in dividends annually. He is also involved in fish farming.

16. Colombia: Luis Carlos Sarmiento

Net worth: $14.2 billion
Place on the Forbes list - 72

Sarmiento began working in the construction industry and then expanded his empire into financial services. His company, Grupo Aval, which he still heads at 81, now controls a third of all Colombian banks.

17. China: Wang Jianlin

Net worth: $15.1 billion
Place on the Forbes list - 64

Jianlin owns 75 department stores, 85 shopping malls and 51 five-star hotels. In 2012, he bought the American movie theater chain AMC and listed shares on the New York Stock Exchange at the end of last year.

18. Chile: Iris Fontbon

Net worth: $15.5 billion
Place on the Forbes list - 58

Iris Fontbona and her sons inherited one of the largest copper mining companies, Antofagasta. It also owns resorts and invests in energy, transportation and port services.

19. Australia: Gina Rinehart

Net worth: $17.7 billion
Place on the Forbes list - 46

Rinehart inherited her wealth from her father through his mining interests. She is the executive chairman of Hancock Prospecting. This year it expects to complete development of one of the world's largest iron ore mines. The firm is also involved in oil and gas.

20. Japan: Masayoshi San

Net worth: $18.4 billion
Place on the Forbes list - 42

Masayoshi San founded Softbank, Asia's largest Internet service provider. Last year, he also acquired a 72% stake in Sprint for about $21.6 billion and invested $1.26 billion in mobile phone distributor Brightstar. Softbank also bought a controlling stake in the Finnish computer games company SuperCell for $1.5 billion.

21. Russia: Alisher Usmanov

Net worth: $18.6 billion
Place on the Forbes list - 40

Usmanov made his fortune in steel and iron, but has since increased his assets significantly. He has a stake in one of the largest mobile operators in Russia, startups in Silicon Valley and even a large stake in Facebook.

22. India: Mukesh Ambani

Net worth: $18.6 billion
Place on the Forbes list - 40

Ambani is the head of India's largest company, Reliance Industries. Although the exit from the KG-D6 offshore field has depressed the company's share price, causing it to lose $2.9 billion last year, Ambani plans to invest $25 billion in his businesses over the next two years.

23. Brazil: Jorge Paulo Lehmann

Net worth: $19.7 billion
Place on the Forbes list - 34

Lehmann founded Banco Garantia in 1971 and sold it in 1998 for $675 million. He now owns part of the world's largest beer company, Anheuser-Busch InBev. His private equity firm 3G Capital also recently bought Heinz.

24. Saudi Arabia: Prince Al-Walid bin Talal Alsaud

Net worth: $20.4 billion
Place on the Forbes list - 30

The prince became chairman of his own company at the age of 14. Bin Talal owns interests in private and public companies in the United States, Europe and the Middle East, mainly through Kingdom Holding Co. Forbes estimates the prince's net worth based on the value of assets owned by Kingdom Holding, since there is no publicly available analytical data. Last year, the prince filed a lawsuit against the publication of an assessment of his wealth.

25. Canada: David Thomson

Net worth: $22.6 billion
Place on the Forbes list - 27

David Thomson is chairman of the media and publishing company Thomson Reuters. His grandfather Roy founded the company in 1934. The family's business is managed by the private holding Woodbridge, which owns 55% of the shares.

26. Nigeria: Aliko Dangote

Net worth: $25 billion
Place on the Forbes list - 23

Dangote has risen 20 places in the rankings - last year he was ranked 43rd among the richest people in the world. He added $9 billion to his fortune when he announced in April that he would enter the oil industry and take financing from local and international lenders to build a private petrochemical complex in Nigeria. Dangote made a name for himself as a businessman whose interests were in sugar, flour, salt and cement.

27. Germany: Karl Albrecht

Net worth: $25 billion
Place on the Forbes list - 23

Karl Albrecht served in the German army during World War II, and then, together with his brother, built the successful Aldi Sud company, a chain of cheap supermarkets. It currently has 4,800 grocery stores in nine countries, including 1,300 stores in the United States. Its approximate revenue in 2013 was $50.54 billion. The network will continue to expand in the United States and Australia.

28. Italy: Michel Ferrero

Net worth: $26.5 billion
Place on the Forbes list - 22

Michelle Ferrero owns the European chocolate company Ferrero. They were the ones who created Tic-Tacs, Kinder, Nutella, and, of course, Ferrero Rocher. Unlike most Italian billionaires, Ferrero prefers to remain in the shadows and simply loves making chocolate.

29. Hong Kong: Li Ka Shing

Net worth: $31 billion
Place on the Forbes list - 20

Li-Ka-Shing is the richest man in Asia. He owns one of the largest companies in the world, which began as a manufacturer of plastic toys and flowers. Now it employs 260,000 employees in 52 countries. His shares in Hutchinson Whampoa, Cheung Kong and Husky Energy have earned him $1.7 billion in dividends over the past two years.

30. Sweden: Stefan Persson

Net worth: $34.4 billion
Place on the Forbes list - 12

Persson is the chairman of the H&M chain of discount retailers, which operate in Europe and the United States. H&M was founded in 1947 by his father. Persson increased his wealth by purchasing land in England. He also received 25% of the value of H&M shares last year.

31. France: Liliane Bettencourt

Net worth: $34.5 billion
Place on the Forbes list - 11

Liliane Bettencourt and her family became richer this year thanks to a 9% rise in shares of the L'Oreal cosmetics empire. Now Bettencourt is no longer involved in the management of the company founded by her father. But her grandson has a seat on the board and the family will increase its stake in the company to 33% with a planned purchase of an 8% stake in Nestle later this year.

32. Spain: Amancio Ortega

Net worth: $64 billion
Place on the Forbes list - 3

Amancio Ortega, the world's richest retailer, began his career as a manager in a sewing workshop. He recently stepped down as chairman of Inditex, best known for its lucrative Zara brand, which sells low-priced clothing. But Ortega still owns 60% of the shares and has begun building a real estate portfolio with an estimated value of $5 billion.

33. Mexico: Carlos Slim Helu

Net worth: $72 billion
Place on the Forbes list - 2

Carlos Slim was the richest man for four years in a row until Bill Gates finally overtook him this year. His fortune diminished when shares of Minera Frisco, his mining company, fell 50% last year, along with the value of gold and copper. America Movil, Slim's largest asset, has also fallen since its last valuation of $36.3 billion.

34. USA: Bill Gates

Net worth: $76 billion
Place in the Forbes list - 1

The richest man in the world didn't even graduate from college. Gates dropped out of Harvard University during his junior year when he came up with the idea to create Microsoft. He stepped down as Microsoft chairman in February when new CEO Satya Nadella took over. Gates is committed to philanthropy through funds like the Giving Pledge, and some of the world's billionaires have pledged to donate at least half of their net worth to the fund.

Asia is the largest part of the world and is home to many billionaires. And in this article we tried to tell as much as possible about the wealthiest people in Asia.

Li Ka-shing is the richest man in Asia, born on July 29, 1928 in Chauzhou. He is a business tycoon, investor and philanthropist. According to Forbes magazine, he ranks 18th among the richest people in the world.

Ka-Shing is currently Chairman of CK Hutchison Holdings, making him a leading port investor, developer and largest beauty and health retailer in Asia and Europe. Lee is one of the most influential entrepreneurs in Asia. He heads a business empire with a diverse portfolio of assets and projects, including transport, real estate, retail and energy. The company's conglomerate influences many sectors of the Hong Kong economy and accounts for 4% of the total market capitalization of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

Li Ka-shing is the richest man in Asia

Despite his reputation as a billionaire, Lee cultivated a modest lifestyle, without unnecessary expenses. He is known to wear simple black shoes and an inexpensive watch. He continues to live in the same house in which he lived for several decades.

Li Ka-Shing is considered one of Asia's most generous philanthropists, having donated more than $2.56 billion to charitable causes.

He was given the nickname "Superman of Hong Kong" due to his business reputation and good deeds.

Li was born in Guangdong Province in China. Due to the early death of his father, he was forced to leave school at age 15 and take a job at a plastics trading company, where he worked 16 hours a day. In 1950, he founded his own company, Cheung Kong Industries. In 1971, Lee's company was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and acquired the status of an investment company.

Li Ka-Shing is famous for his extensive charitable activities. For example, in 1981, thanks to his contribution, the Medical University was created. One of the research centers at the University of Cambridge was named after him. The successful businessman has quite a lot of merit, as he tries to donate money to the development of science, education and medicine.

He has two sons, Victor Lee and Richard Lee. Victor Li works with his father as managing director and vice chairman. Richard Lee heads the largest telecommunications company in Hong Kong. Both sons are Canadian citizens.

Jack Ma. Net worth: $28.2 billion

Ma was born in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, China. Ma's path to success began with learning English, which he practiced by talking with English-speaking guests at a hotel located 40 minutes from his home. He became friends with several foreigners and continued to communicate with them by correspondence; they nicknamed him Jack, since it was difficult for them to pronounce his name.

Ma graduated from Hangzhou Normal University and became a teacher of English and international trade. However, his salary was only 10-12 dollars a month.

Ma's early career did not go well. He tried to get a job in thirty different companies, but was rejected everywhere. He even wanted to get a job at KFC, where 23 out of 24 people were hired, and he was the only one who wasn’t hired. In 1994, Ma heard about the Internet and at the beginning of 1995 he went to the United States, where he mastered the use of the World Wide Web. The first thing Ma came up with was to create a low-budget website about China, as he discovered that the Internet did not provide any information when asked about his country. After creating the site, within a few hours, Ma began receiving emails from Chinese people who were interested in him. After that, he realized that you can make a career on the Internet and make good money.

Watch the video: Jack Ma's success story

In April 1995, Ma began seeking $20,000 to open his first company, which would create websites for organizations and businesses. Within three years, the newly formed company earned $800,000.

In 1999, Ma and his team of 18 people founded Alibaba. It is noteworthy that the Chinese market business center was founded in his apartment and the initial capital was only 500,000 yuan. In 2000, about $25 million of foreign capital was invested in Alibaba in the expectation that the program would improve the e-commerce market. Taobao, Alipay, Ali Mama and Lynx were founded in 2003. After the explosive success of the companies, eBay came out with a proposal to acquire Chinese marketplaces, however, Ma refused and found investor Jerry Yang, who invested $1 billion in the company.

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By 2014, Alibaba had raised more than $24 billion in an initial public offering on the US stock exchange. The company has since become one of the most valuable technology companies in the world.

Jack Ma is married to Zhang Ying. They have two children, a son and a daughter. Ma is interested in martial arts, in particular tai chi, and studied for some time with the famous trainer Wang Xian.

Jack Ma's wife - Zhang Ying

Mukesh Ambani. Net worth: $21 billion

Mukesh Ambani is a business tycoon, the head and shareholder of the large company Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) and the second most important company in India Fortune Global 500. RIL's main focus is the processing of petrochemical and oil and gas raw materials.

In 2016, Mukesh was ranked 38th on the Forbes list. He is the only businessman from India to be included in the list of the most influential people on the planet. Ambani has held the title of India's richest man numerous times consecutively. He also owns the Indian Premier League franchise, making him one of the richest sports investors.

Ambani lives in the Antilia building, which is considered one of the most expensive private houses in the world. The cost of the building is estimated at $1 billion. According to a Chinese research institute, he was ranked 5th among Indian philanthropists in 2015. He served on the Board of Directors of Bank of America in the role of International Relations Advisor. He was also the Chairman of the Institute of Management in India.

Mukesh Ambani grew up in a humble family. He spent his childhood in a two-room apartment. He studied at Hill Grange High School in Mumbai. He received his higher education at the Institute of Chemical Technologies in the city of Matunga. Later he entered an MBA at Stanford University, however, he dropped out and began helping his father develop what was then a small enterprise, Relianc.

Mukesh Ambani made an important contribution to the creation of the family business and can rightfully be called its founder. He changed the policy of the enterprise and gave a development direction towards polyester fibers and the petrochemical industry. He created a subsidiary whose activities were focused on information and communication technologies. Ambani oversaw and led the construction of the world's largest oil refinery at Jamnagar, which in 2010 could produce 660,000 barrels per day.

Ambani is married and has two sons and a daughter. They live in a private 27-storey building in Mumbai. They are actively involved in social activities and charity work.

This is what Mukesh Ambani's house looks like