A Look at How Much Richer the Richest in America Are After 1 Year

Well, the new Forbes “400 Richest Americans” has been published. I found it interesting to compare last years list with this years. Here are some changes I’ve noted:

#1 Bill Gates, the richest man in America has remained at top. He has increased his wealth by about 11% in the last year, going from $53 Billion to $59 Billion. A $6 Billion increase in a year, not half bad.

#2 Mr. Warren Buffett remains as #2 as well. Buffett, the investing guru, increased his wealth by 13% in one year, moving from $46 Billion to $52 Billion. Also a $6 Billion increase like Gates had.

#3 Sheldon Adelson also kept his #3 spot this year. The casino owner increased his wealth by 27%, going from $20.5 Billion to $28 Billion in just one year.

#4 Larry Ellison, the Oracle founder is still listed at #4. He has increased his wealth by a very healthy 33%, moving from a net worth of $19.5 Billion all the way up to $26 Billion this year.

#5 and #6 The Google Guys. Sergey Brin, and Larry Page have leapfrogged over 7 billionaires ahead of them last year, to land the number 5 and 6 positions. The 34 year old friends both jumped 25% going from $14 billion to $18.5 billion in one year.

#7 Kirk Kerkorian was the biggest winner out of them all. In just one years, the 90 year old investor, jumped 19 positions going from #26 to #7. He increased his net worth by 100% by going from $9 billion last year to an impressive $18 billion this year, helped by selling his stake in City Center to MGM in AUgust.

#8 Michael Dell remained pretty steady. He moved up one slot from #9 last year and increased his wealth by $1.7 Billion, a gain of about 11%.

#9 and #10 Charles and David Koch moved up quite a bit themselves. The oil Investors moved up 9 positions each from #19 and #20. Their wealth each went up by $5 billion, an inpressive 41% gain.

Who moved down? Well the the Walmart, Walton family took a plunge. Four of them cracked the top 10 last year, while this year not one of them made it.

Just thought this would give you an interesting idea of how much richer the richest people in America are getting, and how the landscape is slowly changing.