Recent research by Forbes has found that all current billionaires under 30 inherited their fortune, an indication that the era of Mark Zuckerberg and self-made super wealth at a young age seems to have ended.
The Facebook founder made nine figures aged 23 in 2007. It took Google’s Larry Page until 30 to do likewise, while Snapchat creator Evan Spiegel did it aged 25. Bill Gates was a comparative late bloomer, making his first billion aged 31.
However, it seems that times have changed. Forbes research showed that none of the world’s 15 billionaires under 30 had created their huge wealth but had benefited from inheritance.
The list includes Firoz Mistry, 27, and his brother Zahan, 25, who have £3.8 billion from Tata Sons after their father died.
Three children of Leonardo Del Vecchio, the founder of the luxury sunglasses company Luxottica, became billionaires after he died in 2022.
The Guardian reported that Leonardo Maria, 28, Luca, 22, and Clemente Del Vecchio, 19, each inherited a 12.5 per cent stake in the family’s Luxembourg-based holding company Delfin. This owns nearly a third of EssilorLuxottica, the company behind Ray-Ban and Oakley. The siblings are worth an estimated $4.7bn (£3.7bn) each.
The youngster on the list is Livia Voigt, 19, who has a stake in WEG Industries, a Brazilian electrical equipment producer co-founded by her grandfather Werner Ricardo.
There are 2,781 billionaires worldwide and the number will grow when the wealthiest die and share their empire among their offspring.
Kylie Jenner, 26, was proclaimed by Forbes in 2019 to be the world’s youngest self-made billionaire. But the magazine retracted this statement when it was shown her cosmetics empire was not worth this much, while others took issue with the “self-made” status.
Swiss bank UBS said of the list: “Looking to the longer term, the exceptional wealth resulting from the boom in entrepreneurial activity since the 1990s has established a foundation for future generations of billionaire families.”
The data came from the Forbes World’s Billionaire list. This shows that Bernard Arnault is the wealthiest person on the planet while Taylor Swift made the list for the first time.
