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American Morning
'Forbes' Names World's Richest People
Aired June 22, 2001 - 09:37 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Well, are you one of them? If you are, you're very lucky.
"Forbes" magazine has released its new list of the world's richest people and, as you might suspect, Microsoft's Bill Gates still at the top of the list with $58.7 billion in net worth. Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway is second now with $32.3 billion. They're followed by Microsoft's co-founder, Paul Allen, Oracle's Larry Ellison, retailers Theo and Karl Albrecht of Germany. And rounding out the top 10, we have members of the Sam Walton family of Wal-Mart fame. All of those are just in the $18 billion bracket.
A lot of these billionaires are not in the same shape as in past years. Let's find out why. We'll talk to Luisa Kroll, who is an associate editor of "Forbes" magazine that does the rankings. Good to have you with us, Luisa.
LUISA KROLL, "FORBES" MAGAZINE: Hi, Miles. Thanks for having me with you.
O'BRIEN: All right, well, I guess perhaps the lead story in all of this is that poor Larry Ellison is no longer number two, and I'm sure he's crying in his soup on his Gulf Stream somewhere.
KROLL: Sure. Sure. For the past couple of years, we've been having a great time watching for who was going to overtake Bill Gates and last year we were all betting on Larry Ellison, who was very close at $58 billion, to Bill Gates' $63 billion. But boy, this has not been his year. He's fallen out of the number two spot all the way down to number four and is worth a mere $26 billion. We've got to feel sorry for him.
O'BRIEN: I don't know, how do you make ends meet these days?
KROLL: It's tough.
O'BRIEN: I guess this is obviously reflective of what's gone on in Silicon Valley...
KROLL: Yes.
O'BRIEN: ... and I guess the sort of the counterpoint as an investor to this whole dot.com boom has been Warren Buffett, who has stayed the course all throughout this time and just quietly finds himself in second place. What does that tell you?
KROLL: Well, Warren Buffett is up $4 billion since our last counts and again it's back to basics. He exemplifies a trend that you see throughout the billionaires issue. We had 46 U.S. billionaires drop off and 43 non-U.S. Most of those were all tech people. J. Walker of Priceline fell off the list. Tim Koogle from Yahoo! is no longer on the list. Masayoshi Son, the founder of Softbank, again, very close to Gates a couple of years ago, he's now worth a mere $5.6 billion and ranks number five...
O'BRIEN: You know, you can't...
KROLL: On the...
O'BRIEN: I'm sorry, go ahead. Continue.
KROLL: I was going to say on the flip side, you actually see some new billionaires coming from retail, shipping, a lot of oil and gas. Last year we had zero Russians on the list. This year we have four returnees and four new Russian billionaires, almost all of whom are getting their money from oil and energy.
O'BRIEN: All right, it's sort of reminiscent of a tortoise and hare plot, I suppose.
KROLL: Sure.
O'BRIEN: With a little bit of money thrown in there. Before you get away, I've got to ask you, I know this is a controversial list. At times "Forbes" has taken some heat for publishing net worths.
KROLL: Yes.
O'BRIEN: First of all, just respond to that criticism. Secondly, do you think secretly these billionaires are, you know, grabbing the publication as quickly as they can to find out where they rank?
KROLL: Funny that you say that because already by nine this morning some billionaire was calling up about his photo. So definitely people are paying attention and it hasn't been up for too long. So it's definitely controversial. But clearly these people are taking precautions anyway. Somebody that's worth $5 billion in a country outside of the U.S. is already protecting themselves. Most of these people have bodyguards and we are very respectful of not naming their children, not getting into too much specifics. But, you know, these people are in the public eye and have built up great fortunes so we feel very comfortable going ahead with the research we do.
O'BRIEN: It's hard to keep things private when you've got billions in the bank, I guess.
KROLL: It's true. It's true.
O'BRIEN: Luisa Kroll, who tells it all in "Forbes" magazine this month. The latest list of the richest people in the world. Thanks for being with us on CNN THIS MORNING, Luisa.
KROLL: Thanks, Miles.
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