Leon Black
Net Worth: $8.5 billion
Leon Black graduated with a BA in Philosophy and History from Dartmouth College in 1973 and an MBA from Harvard University in 1975. Black started as an accountant in Peat Marwick after graduating. He then worked for the investment bank, Drexel Burnham Lambert, as its managing directors from 1977 to 1990 heading up its Mergers and Acquisitions Group and also being the co-head of the Corporate Finance department.
Black was the right-hand man of “junk bond king” Michael Milken at Drexel. In 1990, Black founded the private equity firm Apollo Global Management with a group of illustrious people, most of whom were colleagues from Drexel after Drexel filed for bankruptcy.
As of 2023, Apollo manages over $400 billion in assets. Leon Black is placed at number 224 in Forbes’ list of billionaires in 2020, and as of 2023, he has an estimated net worth of $8.5 billion.
Leon Black is chair of New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
Different industries have different risks and growth rates and volatility.
Leon Black
Jamie Dimon
Net Worth: $1.4 billion
Jamie Dimon is chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase and was previously on the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Dimon graduated from Tufts University with a major in psychology and economics and did his graduate work at Harvard Business School where he graduated with an MBA in 1982.
His first job was in management consulting before Harvard. After gaining his MBA, instead of joining the likes of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Lehman Brothers, Dimon joined Sandy Weill of Citigroup at American Express.
They founded Citigroup in 1998 and in the same year, Dimon left Citigroup to join Bank One, where he became CEO in March 2000. When JPMorgan Chase acquired Bank One in July 2004, Dimon became the CEO of the combined bank.
Dimon was instrumental in overseeing the transfer of $25 billion in funds from the US Treasury Department under the Troubled Asset Relief Program during the Global Financial Crisis of 2008/2009.
Dimon is placed 1730 on Forbes’ list of billionaires in 2020. As of 2023, he is reported to have a personal fortune of $1.4 billion.
No one can forecast the economy with certainty.
Jamie Dimon
Sergio Ermotti
Net Worth: $1 billion
Sergio Ermottie is a Swiss investment banker and former stock trader. He has been the chief executive officer (CEO) of UBS Group AG since November 2011.
Ermotti is expected to succeed Walter Kielholz in 2021 as the incoming chairman of Swiss Re, Switzerland’s largest reinsurance company. He previously served as the deputy chief executive for Italian bank UniCredit, from 2007 to 2010.
Leading UBS, Ermotti denounced the 2011 rogue trader scandal, implementing strict corporate policies governing community standards and initiated a major restructuring of the bank around private banking and limited its sell-side operations.
Having lead the firm for nearly a decade, he is the longest-serving head of UBS.
Ermotti completed his apprenticeship with the Corner Bank in Lugano, and although Ermotti did not go on to attend university, he received a Swiss Federal banking expert diploma and attended the Advanced Management Program at Oxford University.
During his career, Ermotti has been with Citibank and Merrill Lunch In Zurich, and also with Italian bank UniCredit, among other banking institutions.
As of 2023, Sergio Ermotti is reported to have a personal wealth of $1 billion.
Today’s investors want to see a positive impact on society and the environment as well as solid financial returns.
Sergio Ermotti
Jim Simons
Net Worth: $25 billion
Jim Simons is a mathematician, a hedge fund manager, and philanthropist. He is the founder of Renaissance Technologies a hedge fund based in New York. Owing to his mathematical mind, Simons is known to make investments using mathematical models and algorithms.
Jim Simons graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1958 with a degree in mathematics and later a PhD in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley.
Renaissance Technologies is well known for its Medallion Fund, a $10 billion black-box strategy that is only open to Renaissance’s owners and employees. A black-box strategy is fully automated method of trading in the financial market, using proprietary systems and algorithms.
He is placed by Forbes at number 36 in their list of billionaires in 2020, and as of 2023, he commands a personal fortune of $25 billion.
God gave me a tail to keep off the flies.
Jim Simons
Ray Dalio
Net Worth: $22 billion
A graduate of Long Island University, Dalio received his MBA from Harvard Business School in 1973.
He established Bridgewater Associates in 1975 in his apartment. By 2013, Bridgewater was listed as one of the largest hedge funds in the world. Ray Dalio is also the author of the book Principles: Life & Work published in 2017 which was a New York Times bestseller and Amazon number one business book in 2017.
Bridgewater has under its management approximately $140 billion in assets.
Dalio is placed number 46 in Forbes’ list of billionaires in 2020 and as of 2023, he is worth $22 billion.
In 2019, Dalio called for reform of capitalism and said that wealth inequality was a national emergency.
Treat your life like a game.
Ray Dalio
John Paulson
Net Worth: $3.8 billion
John Paulson heads Paulson & Co., a New York-based investment management firm he founded in 1994.
Paulson graduated from New York University in 1976 in finance and went on to Harvard Business School on a scholarship to earn an MBA in 1980. He graduated in the top 5% of his class.
Paulson started at the Boston Consulting Group in 1980 and moved to Bear Stearns later, in their mergers and acquisitions department.
In 2007, Paulson became famous globally by shorting the US housing market when he saw the mortgage crisis coming and bet against mortgaged back securities by investing in credit default swaps. He made $4 billion alone on that trade.
He is placed at number 426 on Forbes’ list of billionaires in 2020. As of 2023, he is estimated to have a net worth of $3.8 billion.
The important thing in investing is to be true to your compass.
John Paulson
Timothy J. Sloan
Net Worth: $500 million
Timothy J. Sloan started as a bank teller with the Standard Federal Savings and Loan Association in Ann Arbor back when he was a student. He later joined Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust in 1984, and in 1987, he joined Wells Fargo and rose in ranks to become COO and president in November of 2015.
He resigned from Wells in March 2019. Sloan studied economics and history and obtained an MBA, both from the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor.
As of 2023, Timothy Sloan is estimated to have a personal net worth of some $500 million.
Bill McNabb
Net Worth: $350 million
F. William McNabb III is the former chairman and chief executive officer of Vanguard, having joined Vanguard in 1986. In 2008, he became chief executive officer, and in 2010, he became chairman of the board of directors and the board of trustees.
He stepped down as chief executive officer at the end of 2017 and as chairman at the end of 2018. Earlier in his career, he led each of Vanguard’s client-facing business divisions.
McNabb is active in the investment management industry and served as the chairman of the Investment Company Institute’s board of governors from 2013 to 2016.
William McNabb graduated from Dartmouth College and has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
As of 2023, he is thought to be worth $350 million.
Successful leaders must continue to challenge themselves, get out of their comfort zone, and grow.
Bill McNabb
Laurence D. Fink
Net Worth: $1 billion
Laurence Fink is the chairman and CEO of BlackRock, an American investment management corporation. BlackRock has $6.5 trillion in assets under its management and is by far the largest money-management firm in the world.
Fink graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a BA in Political Science, and received his MBA in Real Estate from the UCLA Anderson Graduate School of Management in 1976.
He started his banking life at First Boston, climbing his way up to Managing Director and co-head of Taxable Fixed Income Division and later the head of the Mortgage and Real Estate Products Group.
As of 2023, Laurence Fink has an estimated net worth of about $1 billion. Although he’s not been listed by Forbes on its billionaire list of 2020, Fink was ranked number 28 by Forbes on its list of The World’s Most Powerful People in 2018.
One of the key elements of human behavior is, humans have a greater fear of loss than enjoyment of success.
Laurence D. Fink
Anshu Jain
Net Worth: $60 million
Anshuman Jain is the current president of American financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald. He was the former co-CEO of Deutsche Bank from 2012 to 2015. Prior to be appointed CEO, he was head of its corporate and investment bank, with global responsibilities for the bank’s corporate finance, sales and trading, and transaction banking business.
Jain studied economics at the Shri Ram College of Commerce at the University of Dehli, graduating with a BA in economics in 1983.
He then moved to the US at the age of 19 and went to Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts Amherst where he gained his MBA.
Anshu Jain started on Wall Street as a derivative research analyst at Kidder Peabody & Co. from 1985 to 1988. He then worked for Merrill Lynch and joined Deutsche Bank in 1995 till 2016 when he left, although he had been an unpaid advisor from 2015 to 2016.
In 2016, Anshu became an advisor to SoFi, a fintech firm based in San Francisco. In January 2017, he became president of Cantor Fitzgerald, a mid-sized, private New York-based firm, headed by Howard Lutnick, which offers investment banking and other financial services. Jain also stepped down from his role at SoFi. At Cantor Fitzgerald he works alongside Lutnick and directs strategy, vision, and operational foundation across the firm’s businesses.
As of 2023, Anshu Jain is thought to have built up a personal fortune of $60 million.
The shadow banking sector has played an important role in cleaning up toxic assets.
Anshu Jain
Gary Cohn
Net Worth: $250 million
The former Chief Operating Officer of Goldman Sachs for over 25 years, and director of the National Economic Council, Gary Cohn was economic advisor to President Trump from 2017 to 2018. He currently serves on the Board of Advisors for Hoyos Integrity, a start-up company employing biometric blockchain technology for secure communications and digital payments.
Cohn attended American University’s Kogod School of Business where he majored in Finance, Real Estate, and Urban Development, and graduated within three years on 16 May 1982 with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration.
Gary Cohn started his career working at the US Steel home products division in Cleveland Ohio, and left shortly to be an options dealer with the New York Mercantile Exchange. He was recruited by Goldman Sachs in 1990 and made partner by 1994.
He took up office as director of the National Economic Council in 2017. He resigned on April 2, 2018.
As of 2023, Gary Cohn is estimated to have a net worth of $250 million.
You’ve got to be motivated, you’ve got to wake up every day and understand what that day is about.
Gary Cohn
Roger Altman
Net Worth: $250 million
Roger Altman is an investment banker, the founder, and senior chairman of Evercore, and a former Democratic politician. He served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Carter administration from January 1977 until January 1981 and as Deputy Secretary of the Treasury in the Clinton administration from January 1993 until he resigned in August 1994, amid the Whitewater controversy which was a controversy into the real estate investments of President Bill Clinton and his wife Hilary Clinton.
Roger Altman went to Georgetown University and graduated with a BA in 1967. He then went to the Chicago Booth School of Business and graduated with an MBA in 1969. It was in Georgetown that Roger Altman met Bill Clinton.
Altman started by working at Lehman Brothers in 1969. He was made up by 1974, at the age of 28. Throughout his career, Roger Altman has been in both private and public sectors, having worked also at the Blackstone Group in its mergers and acquisitions department.
In 1995, Altman co-established Evercore, which is an independent investment banking institution. Evercore has transacted more than $14 billion in value of deals, which includes assets under management. The investment banking advisory arm of the firm boasts of total announced transactions amounting to $1.5 trillion.
As of 2023, Roger Altman is thought to have a personal fortune of $250 million.
Mergers generate substantial synergies.
Roger Altman
James B. Lee
Net Worth: $185 million
James Lee Jr. was notable for his role in the development of the leveraged finance markets in the U.S. in the 1980s. He is widely credited to be the architect of the modern-day syndicated loan market. At the time of his death, Lee was vice chairman of JPMorgan Chase & Co. and a member of the bank’s executive committee. He was also Co-Chairman of JPMorgan’s investment bank.
Lee went to Williams College and graduated with a BA in Economics and Art History. Lee’s first foray into the banking world was with the Chemical Bank in 1975. He founded the bank’s merchant bank in Australia in 1980. Lee started the bank’s syndicated leveraged finance group which later became the Chase Manhattan Bank which later merged with J.P. Morgan & Co. in 2011.
Lee’s most notably led the J.P. Morgan teams in executing Alibaba’s $25 billion IPO, which is still the largest IPO on record. Lee was also involved in the IPOs of The Carlyle Group and Facebook.
As of 2023, James Baingbridge Lee, Jr was thought to be worth some $185 million at his death in 2015.
Petr Kellner
Net Worth: $16 billion
Petr Kellner was a Czech businessman. He was the richest in the Czech Republic, founder and majority shareholder (98.93 %) of the PPF Group. The PPF group was very successful, investing in more than 200 corporations. The PPF Group also owns a controlling stake in the largest insurance company in the Czech Republic. Through the PPF Group, he also bought a majority interest in Komercini banka. Kellner has focused on high-value transactions.
Kellner’s other assets include a stake in listed telecom firm O2 Czech Republic, PPF Bank, and commercial real estate holdings.
Kellner graduated from the University of Economics Prague in 1986.
Forbes had placed Petr Kellner in number 68 of its list of billionaires in 2020. At the time of his death in 2021, he is estimated to have had a net worth of $16 billion.
Joseph Safra
Net Worth: $22.4 billion
Joseph Safra is a Swiss-based banker and billionaire businessman who runs the Brazilian banking and investment empire, Safra Group. He is the chairman of all Safra companies, among them Safra National Bank of New York and Banco Safra headquartered in São Paulo, Brazil.
Joseph Safra was born in Beirut Lebanon and moved to Brazil with his family in 1952. His older brother went to New York in 1995 and founded the Republic National Bank of New York which was sold to HSBC in 1999.
Joseph Safra got his start in finance working with his older brother Edmond and his dad Jacob financing assets in Brazil. In 1955, Joseph Safra founded Banco Safra in Brazil, and it is today the 6th largest private bank in Brazil.
In 2013, Joseph Safra’s family acquired more than a dozen properties in the US, primarily in New York City. They also own a portfolio of commercial real estate in Brazil. In 2014, Safra paid more than £700 million to buy The Gherkin, one of the most distinctive towers in the City of London.
Forbes has placed Safra as number 39 on its 2020 list of billionaires. At the time of his death in 2020, Joseph Safra’s net worth is estimated to have been US$22.4 billion.
Jorge Paulo Lemann
Net Worth: $14.5 billion
Jorge Paulo Lemann obtained a BA in economics from Harvard University in 1961. Upon graduation, Lemann worked at Credit Suisse in Geneva as a trainee for about a year. In 1971, Lemann and two other associates founded Banco Garantia, a Brazilian investment bank.
Despite early challenges including a market crash when Garantia was formed, Lemann eventually built it up to become Brazil’s most prestigious and innovative investment banks. Banco Garantia was sold Credit Suisse First Boston in 1998 for about $675 million.
Lemann then got into the beverage business and purchased two Brazilian breweries which became AmBev. AmBev merged with Interbrew of Belgium in 2004, and later the combined company, AmBev, acquired American brewer Anheuser-Busch in 2008, which made the three combined companies the world’s largest brewer.
Jorge Paulo Lemann is placed 129 on the list of Forbes 2020 billionaires. As of 2023, Lemann is thought to be worth about $14.5 billion.
In day-to-day life, you have stimulus to behave unethically, but in the long term, it always pays off to be ethical.
Jorge Paulo Lemann
Andre Esteves
Net Worth: $4.5 billion
After graduating from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, André Esteves joined BTG Pactual, and very shortly after, he was managing IPOs and M&A deals. In 1992, Esteves made partner for helping the bank post a 59 percent return on capital. In 2006, UBS purchased Pactual, and in June 2008, Esteves left the bank along with key Brazilian partners to create BTG, a global investment company. In April 2009, Esteves, along with other partners, purchased Pactual back from UBS for $2.5 billion.
Among Brazilian billionaires, Esteves is ranked 6th with an estimated net worth of R$20.75 billion, according to Forbes business magazine.
In their 2020 list of billionaires, Forbes listed Esteves as number 712. As of 2023, he is said to have a fortune of $4.5 billion.
Ihor Kolomoyskyi
Net Worth: $900 million
Kolomoyskyi is the co-founder of the PrivatBank and was appointed chairman of its board of directors in 1997. Through PrivatBank, he controlled three airlines: Aerosvit Airlines, Dniproavia, and Donbassaero.
Through the asset management company Mansvell Enterprises Limited owned by Privatbank, he controlled Skyways Express, City Airline, and Cimber Sterling aviation companies. He also has media interests in the 1+1 Media Group, which operates eight Ukrainian TV channels.
In the Forbes’ list of billionaires 2020, he is placed number 1990, and as of 2023, Iho Kolomoyskyi is estimated to have about $900 million in personal wealth, no doubt owing to the fact that the sharp decline in the Ukrainian currency.
Ken Griffin
Net Worth: $25 billion
Kenneth C. Griffin is a hedge fund manager, entrepreneur, and investor who is the majority owner of Citadel, an investment firm which boasts $36 billion in investment funds. The company has more than 1,400 employees, with headquarters in Chicago, and offices throughout North America, Asia and Europe. Its associated firm Citadel Securities handles 2 out of 5 stock trades in the US.
Griffin started trading even when he was in Harvard University in 1987. He traded convertible bonds in his dorm. After graduating from Harvard with a degree in economics, Griffin joined Glenwood Partners, a hedge fund.
In 1990, Griffin founded Citadel, which grew quickly to employ more than 100 peopled and $1 billion in investment capital. Through the global financial crisis in 2008, Citadel’s Kensington and Wellington Funds lost about 55 percent of their value.
However, in 2012, these funds turned around and crossed their high watermark owing to the leadership of Griffin.
On the Forbes list of 2020 billionaires, Kenneth Griffin is placed number 34. As of 2023, he is estimated to have a net worth of $25 billion.
Business is business. I don’t manufacture cars, but we do manufacture money.
Kenneth C. Griffin
Nathaniel Rothschild and family
Net Worth: $200 billion
The name Rothschild is synonymous with banking. The Rothschild family traces its history back to the 1700s in Germany and they’ve been involved largely in the banking industry.
Nathaniel was educated Eton College, Wadham College, Oxford University where he read history graduating with a second upper. He completed an MSc degree in Addiction Studies at the Institute of Psychiatry in 2013.
After graduating, Rothschild joined fund manager Lazard Ltd, then went to work at Gleacher, the corporate finance firm now owned by NatWest. In 2000, he occupied a variety of positions and holds a 50%, in NR Atticus, Atticus Management, and Atticus Capital, a hedge fund, which controls funds approaching £312m.
He became an alternate director of RIT Capital Partners plc in March 2000, and a full non-executive director in 2004 until 2010 when he stepped down from the RIT board. He remains a substantial direct shareholder of RIT and a 35% beneficial shareholder of Five Arrows Limited, a Rothschild holding company whose major asset is shares in RIT.
Besides banking and finance, Rothschild has been involved in mineral mining companies such as coal producers in Indonesia and Vallares which in the field of oil and gas.
Nathaniel Rothschild is thought to be worth between $1 to $3 billion dollars, although the Rothschild family is estimated to be worth about $200 billion.
