Making it rain may be the hobby of flash millionaires with more dollars than sense, but there’s a more exclusive club of names that you might not have heard, even though they have much more to celebrate.
The “Three Comma Club” is the name given to money-centric publisher Forbes’ annual list of ultra-rich bastards (and bastardettes) who can claim to have more than a billion bucks in the bank (or, rather, to their name. Being that rich is complicated.) The list for 2018, released yesterday, is remarkable for a few key reasons.
Starting at the top, we have Jeff Bezos, the only person on the list with a whopping twelve figures to his name. At $112 billion, his fortune increased by almost $40 billion during the last twelve months, cementing at the top, well above Microsoft mogul and number two Bill Gates, who’s fortune sits at $90 billion, and number three, the “Oracle of Omaha” Warren Buffett, at $84 billion.
The list is an amalgamation of well-known rich folks and those who prefer to remain as anonymous as possible, but with 2,208 entries on the ledger, is the highest number of billionaires ever, with a reflective 18% increase in wealth from last year’s list.
With a total net worth of $9.1 trillion and an average net worth of $4.1 billion, there is, for lack of a better phrase, an epic shit-tonne of money in this elite circle. There’s also an interesting spread of wealth between the different parts of the world–seven of the top ten are from the US, and given recent turnoil in the region, all Saudia Arabians from last year’s list have been bumped off. The 43 Australian entries included the Reinharts, (Bianca Reinhart is a new entry at $1.3 billion), James Packer at $4.1 billion, and Atlassian co-founders Scott Farquhar and Michael Cannon-Brookes, with around $4.3 billion each.
You can read the full list below, and if you’re now inspired enough to one day make the Three Comma Club yourself… Buy us a beer?
