Joining Ranks of Billionaires : Newcomers to Fortune magazine’s list include junk bond king Milken and an ex-fruit peddler.
A man who once peddled fruit and another who made his money selling junk bonds are among the newest members of the world’s billionaires club, according to estimates released Tuesday by Fortune magazine.
Taiwanese tycoon Tsai Wan-Lin, 64, whose holdings include insurance, hotels and soy-sauce makers, and U.S. financier Michael Milken are among 32 newcomers to Fortune’s 1989 list of the world’s billionaires. Tsai once peddled fruit.
Meanwhile, the same five individuals or families who topped last year’s list also led the 1989 ranking, the magazine reports in its Sept. 11 edition due on newsstands today.
The Sultan of Brunei, who presides over the small oil-rich nation near the South China Sea, is still the world’s wealthiest man with an estimated fortune of $25 billion, the magazine said.
King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and his family are next with $18 billion, followed by Forrest E. Mars Sr. and the Mars candy bar clan, which is estimated to be worth $12.5 billion.
The World’s Richest Woman
The son of a poor Taiwanese rice farmer, Tsai and his family now are ranked sixth on Fortune’s list with estimated wealth of $9 billion. Tsai owns 65% of Cathay Life Insurance, which Fortune describes as one of the highest-flying stocks in the inflated Taipei stock market.
Milken, 43, the former head of Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc.’s junk bond operation, is worth an estimated $1.2 billion, Fortune says. But even the wealth of Milken, who is awaiting trial on federal charges of racketeering and securities fraud, only got him ranked 125th on the list.
Ranked fourth after the Mars family was the world’s richest woman, Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, who is worth an estimated $10.9 billion compared to $8.7 billion last year, Fortune reported.
Fifth on the list were New York-based publishing magnates Samuel I. Newhouse Jr. and Donald E. Newhouse, worth an estimated $10 billion.
Wal-Mart Stores mogul Sam Moore Walton, of Bentonville, Ark., was seventh with $8.9 billion; the Reichmann brothers--Albert, Paul and Ralph--whose Ontario-based Olympia & York is the largest owner of New York City commercial real estate, are eighth with $8.4 billion; British real estate tycoon Gerald Grosvenor is ninth with $6.9 billion, and Kenneth Roy Thomson, who controls Canada’s Thomson Newspapers Ltd., was ranked No. 10 with estimated wealth of $6.9 billion.
