For most people, becoming a millionaire by 30 is not an easy task. However, it can be done with the right mindset. Here are 5 tips from people who became millionaires at a young age, as well as those who have studied hundreds of self-made millionaires.
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A policy of nationalizing chunks of an economy inevitably creates oligarchs who skim profits off the country’s natural resources.
As such, you won’t be surprised to learn that the largest energy companies in the world are owned and operated by governments, and they include: Saudi Aramco, Russian Gazprom, China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), National Iranian Oil Co., Petroleos de Venezuela, Brazil’s Petrobras and Malaysia’s Petronas. How they’re run varies wildly—as does where their wealth goes.
While we’ve all been inundated with the massive amount of press on the scandals engulfing Brazil’s Petrobras, there are a few that stand out for creating and maintaining some of the world’s most interesting and colorful political leaders, who have grown their wealth through holdings in state-run oil and gas in some cases, and through more direct means in other cases.
Four state-run oil wealth stories stand out in today’s world: Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Angola and Brunei.
Vladimir Putin, Russia
Estimates of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s wealth only comes in ranges because most of his wealth is hidden through offshore companies or under clandestine financial devices.
The lower end of the range sits at US$40 billion – a 2007 figure based on research by mid-level Kremlin advisor Stanislav Belkovsky, which he later said had grown to US$70 billion. At this level, Putin already stands among Forbes’ Top 10 rankings of the world’s richest billionaires, though the magazine commented in 2015 that it could not verify enough of his assets to put him on the list.
Earlier this week, the International Business Times said Putin's fortune could be as much as $200 billion.
The majority of Putin’s wealth comes from his stakes in the oil sector. He is said to own 37 percent of Surgutneftegaz, 4.5 percent of Gazprom.
"At least $40 billion,” Belkovsy told the Guardian in 2007. “Maximum we cannot know. I suspect there are some businesses I know nothing about."
Putin’s trophies of wealth are far from subtle. His $1 billion palace on the Black Sea features “a magnificent columned façade reminiscent of the country palaces Russian tsars built in the 18th century,” according to the BBC, which also procured evidence that a secret slush fund had been created by a group of oligarchs to build the estate for Putin, personally.
It’s definitely not a lifestyle one can afford on a declared annual salary of around US$140,000.
In a 2012 dossier, Former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov (later murdered) claimed that the Russian president owns a total of 20 palaces, four yachts and 58 aircraft.
“In a country where 20 million people can barely make ends meet, the luxurious life of the president is a brazen and cynical challenge to society from a high-handed potentate,” he said, according to the Telegraph.
But according to Putin himself, his wealth is not measured in money. In Steven Lee Myers’ book The New Tsar, Putin is quoted as saying: "I am the wealthiest man not just in Europe but in the whole world: I collect emotions.”
"I am wealthy in that the people of Russia have twice entrusted me with the leadership of a great nation such as Russia. I believe that is my greatest wealth."
Azerbaijan
In 2003, Ilham Aliyev became the newly elected president of Azerbaijan. Thirteen years later, his name appeared in the Panama Papers – a massive leak of financial documents from the Panama-based law firm Mossack Fonseca, which revealed the shady financial dealings of some of the world’s most powerful political figures.
A second entity – this time a foundation – called UF Universe holds more assets, but Panamanian laws regarding the confidentiality of foundations are strict, which makes uncovering dollar amounts difficult.
Aliyev’s two daughters and wife also have links to offshore companies managed by Mossack Fonsenca. Incidentally, Aliyev just named his wife Vice-President of Azerbaijan.
How much is the First Oil Family worth these days? No one really knows, but enough to make it onto this list.
Kazakhstan
Kazakh President-for-life Nursultan Nazarbayev was also named in the Panama Papers as a tax haven owner. He had two companies registered in the British Virgin Islands, which he used to operate a bank account with an unknown amount of funds, and a luxury yacht.
The revelations were particularly loaded with hypocrisy because of Nazarbayev’s push to encourage his country’s wealthy to repatriate funds from abroad in order to make them taxable.
“We’ve raised many rich people: billionaires, millionaires,” he said, when oil prices tanked in 2014 and the government began using sovereign wealth funds to fund operations. “They are showing off; (their) pictures in Forbes… They look good, with makeup, well-groomed, well-dressed. But it is Kazakhstan that enabled you to earn all this money… Bring the money here. We’ll forgive you.”
Angola
Things here may be about to change, because President Jose Eduardo dos Santos has said he plans to step down after decades in power, and won’t be running in August’s presidential elections, but still plans to control the ruling party. Here, wealth is all about Sonangol, which has been marred in controversy since the president last year named his daughter as the head of the state-run oil company.
The president’s daughter, worth an estimated US$3.4 billion before she took over the state-run oil company, has been described by Forbes as Africa’s richest woman.
Brunei
And here’s one that’s probably not even on your radar, but it will be—sooner rather than later.
Vast reserves of oil and natural gas have made Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah of Brunei one of the richest leaders in the world. The Sultan is believed to be worth US$40 billion at the low end, and while ‘his’ holdings officially belong to Brunei, in reality they belong to the royal family.
Brunei is the third-largest oil producer in Southeast Asia, and pumps out, on average, 180,000 barrels per day. The royal family has controlled everything to do with oil and gas since the 1970s, and the line here between royal family assets and national assets is exceedingly blurry.
Vulnerable or Not?
The thing about these political oil leaders is that they’re not really vulnerable—yet. It would take an event such as that which brought down Gaddafi (said to secretly be worth US$200 billion) in Libya to change this.
In Brunei, things may be about to change, and the Sultan may find his wealth considerably downsized. Oil production is down 40 percent since 2006, and what’s left has lost a great deal of value due to low oil prices. Nearly 96 percent of Brunei’s exports are oil, gas and related products—that tops even Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE. Brunei could run out of oil in just over 20 years, but then again, the Sultan is said to have massive real estate holdings to tide him over.
Angola’s president is stepping down and the oil price crisis has hit him hard, but he’ll still control the ruling party and a new president will defer to him (and his daughter).
In Kazakhstan, Nazarbayev is president for life. In Azerbaijan, the family elite is as strong as ever and will continue to be so through any means necessary. In Russia, sanctions simply haven’t worked because they are designed to target those around Putin, and Putin appears to have designed it so they are always vulnerable to him first and foremost.
As Russian businessman and former Putin friend Sergei Pugachev notes to the Guardian, and as reported by U.S. News and World Report: "Everything that belongs to the territory of the Russian Federation Putin considers to be his. Everything – Gazprom, Rosneft, private companies. Any attempt to calculate it won't succeed. … He's the richest person in the world until he leaves power."
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There are an estimated 1,810 people who have achieved the status of being a billionaire. Here's how many billionaires live in each country.
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At least 70% of billionaires have a bachelor's degree, according to Wealth-X, and 22% have a master's degree. While the path to riches may not be paved in college degrees, it certainly helps.
Based on data from Wealth-X, we compiled a list of the top 10 universities by the number of billionaire graduates.
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Notable graduate: Former Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham
Number of degrees earned by billionaires: 22
Notable graduate: Twitter founder and programmer Jack Dorsey
Number of degrees earned by billionaires: 22
Notable graduate: Former Coca-Cola chairman Roberto Goizueta
Number of degrees earned by billionaires: 23
A Chinese billionaire serving 14 years in prison for bribery and insider trading is the new owner of a $41.5 million Upper East Side mansion that sold earlier this week.
Huang Guangyu and his wife, Lisa Du Juan, bought the townhouse at 7 East 76th Street this week for just under $3,000 a foot, according to the New York Post. The seller was Japanese billionaire Bungo Shimada, as The Real Deal reported earlier this week.
“[Huang] is kind of like the Al Capone of China, running his business from behind bars,” a source told the Post.
Born in southern China, Huang built a massive electronics empire, Gome Electrical Appliances Holding Ltd., before moving into Chinese real estate. He was China’s richest person in 2006 and 2007, according to Forbes.
In 2008, he was arrested on suspicion of fraud and a Hong Kong court froze assets belonging to his company the following year. He was sentenced to prison in 2010.
Shimada originally listed the 14,000-square-foot home for $50 million, and relisted it for $45 million in January with Stan Ponte and Max Collins of Sotheby’s International Realty.
Known as the Clarence Whitman Mansion, the property is 24.5 feet wide and has seven bedrooms, two terraces and a rectangular staircase. It also has several secret passageways, including a secret door in the library that leads to a card room and a hidden entrance on the floor of a coat closet that goes to the basement. [NYP] — E.B. Solomont
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Billionaire casino magnate Steve Wynn went back for more, but yet again a court slapped down the notion that he was slandered by famed short seller, Jim Chanos.
Wynn appealed a 2015 district court decision to throw out a lawsuit against Chanos accusing the short seller of slander after remarks made in a closed talk.
In a three page decision upholding the dismissal viewed by Business Insider, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals maintained that Wynn had failed to make a "plausible" claim of liability on Chanos' part as Chanos was not stating fact, but asserting his opinion.
"Wynn asserts the district court erred when it determined Wynn had not spelled out the case for slander. We disagree," the Court wrote.
The decision also maintained Wynn's liability for Chanos' legal fees.
In case you missed the first go-round, back in 2014 Wynn sued Chanos for slander based on comments Chanos made during a closed talk about the casino industry in Macau.
You can see video of the event here.Chanos starts speaking around 4:00 and again around 36:00.
Chanos has been publicly short the casino industry in the past, and during his 2014 talk he expressed concern about potential violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
Wynn was livid and filed suit against Chanos in September 2014. The matter was dismissed in March 2015.
"I need look no further than the transcript and video of the symposium to conclude that Chanos’s words do not amount to a statement of fact, but rather an opinion that is not actionable. For these reasons, and because I grant Chanos’s motion to dismiss," California District Judge William Orrick wrote in his 2015 decision.
Undaunted, Wynn appealed, but he lost. And here we are. Jim Chanos declined to comment for this story.
Billionaires, man. They have problems just like us.
Read the full decision, embedded below:
Ninth Circuit OpinionWynnvsChanos by Linette Lopez on Scribd
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Beijing (AFP) - From making illegal cross-border deliveries to China in a minivan to buying a fleet of Boeing aircraft, the boss of SF Express has ridden a wave of online shopping to become one of the country's richest men.
Though secretive and media-shy, founder Wang Wei has found himself thrust into the spotlight after the listing of his SF Express courier service on the Shenzhen stock exchange made him a billionaire twenty times over.
He is now the fourth wealthiest man in China, according to Bloomberg's Billionaires Index, with $23.3 billion on March 29, just behind Pony Ma, founder of internet giant Tencent.
A maverick who boasted in his only public interview that the business began as a "black" -- or illegal -- delivery service, the 46-year-old has built his company into the top courier in China's booming and cutthroat e-commerce market.
While he stubbornly avoids the media, his SF Express is now inescapable, with an 80,000-strong staff -- using three-dozen aircraft and thousands of vehicles -- delivering throughout China's huge cities.
Wang, the son of a Chinese army interpreter and raised in Hong Kong, launched SF Express in 1993 as a way to shuttle packages across the border between the then-British colony and the Communist-ruled mainland.
It was a risky but lucrative job carried out by a handful of employees in a minivan.
"When SF started delivering packages in the 1990s, it was still an illegal business called 'black delivery'," Wang said in a 2011 interview with the Communist Party mouthpiece People's Daily. At the time, China's postal service enjoyed a monopoly over deliveries.
"We would be fined if caught by postal officers, so we had to handle packages sneakily."
His business grew on the back of so-called "parallel trading", where shoppers buy goods such as baby formula and medicines in Hong Kong and smuggle them to China for sale with a hefty markup.
In 2005, he reportedly staked the company as collateral for a half-a-million-dollar loan, according to Hong Kong’s Next magazine.
It was a bet that paid off.
Today, SF Express is the nation's largest parcel delivery company by revenue -- with sales of $7.4 billion in 2015, according to Bloomberg -- riding a booming domestic e-commerce industry that is led by Alibaba.
Wang realised his dream of joining the stock exchange after navigating a so-called "backdoor listing" this year, which allowed it to skip a waiting list of 700 firms looking to launch initial public offerings.
He was given a government green light for a complex transaction that allowed it to merge with a small rare earths company already listed in Shenzhen, then taking its place.
The transaction was finalised on February 24, when SF Holding replaced Maanshan Dingtai's shares. Its price ballooned about 70 percent in eight sessions, massively inflating Wang's fortunes.
Analyst Xu Yong told AFP the surge was no surprise, as "sales reflect the general confidence" in the business prospects of SF Express, which saw profits rise 112 percent last year.
For SF Express, the listing is crucial to finance infrastructure investments that could make Wang richer yet, particularly in smaller cities and air freight, Xu added.
The group is also constructing a cargo airport in the central province of Hubei.
China's express delivery industry is the largest in the world, with sales reaching 4 trillion yuan last year, representing more than 40 percent of global business in the industry, according to data from the country's postal service.
Wang's elusiveness has driven both media and investors to unusual lengths to learn about him and his company's operations.
Hong Kong's Next magazine sent a reporter to work undercover as a deliveryman at SF Express for three months in 2010, and private equity investors reportedly offered a 500,000 yuan bounty to anyone who could arrange a dinner with him.
But as the company has grown, it has become more difficult for Wang to avoid the spotlight.
In 2010, he found himself in the papers when he spent a then-record HK$350 million ($45 million) on land in Hong Kong, where he built a luxury four-storey trophy home.
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It's important to remember that money doesn't solve life's problems. In fact, these people's lives took a turn for the worse after winning the lottery.
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IBM's stock price is down 5.59%, or $9.51, at $160.47 a share as of 10:24 a.m. ET after the company reported declining revenue for a 20th consecutive quarter.
Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway is IBM's largest shareholder and is therefore losing the most money of any IBM shareholder on Wednesday.
As of its last SEC filing, Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway owns 81.249 million shares of IBM, or 8.61% of the total shares outstanding, Bloomberg data shows.
That means Berkshire has lost more than $772 million as a result of Wednesday's selling.
No one knows the exact number of IBM shares Berkshire holds because the company could have bought or sold shares between filing periods.
According to CNBC, "The chairman of Berkshire Hathaway bought IBM shares at an average price of $170.43 per share," meaning his position is down about $787.3 million over its life.
Click here for a real-time IBM chart.
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The largest private sailing yacht in the world, owned by Russian billionaire Andrey Melnichenko, was spotted in Gibraltar at the weekend, according to Yacht Harbour.
The 142.8-metre "Sailing Yacht A," as it has been named by his owner, or S/Y A, is undergoing final tests and is due to be handed over to Melnichenko in a matter of days. It left Nobiskrug, Germany, on February 5.
Its 300 ft masts are taller than Big Ben. The £360 million vessel also boasts eight storeys and counts a massive swimming pool and underwater observation pod among its stunning features, according to the Daily Mail.
Melnichenko also owns M/Y A, another luxury motor yacht. Both vessels are designed by Philippe Starck.
Instagram user @superyachts_gibraltar documented the sighting on May 1 at the Port of Gibraltar.
Boasting over 12,600 gross tonnes (GT), S/Y A has an interior volume more than four times larger than the second largest sailing yacht in the world, Black Pearl, and her 2,700 GT, according to Yacht Harbour.
Its 300 ft masts are taller than Big Ben.
The video below demonstrates the sheer size of the masts, as a man spends "hours" cleaning them.
The mega yacht is designed by Philippe Starck, who is also behind Melnichenko's other luxury vessel, M/Y A.
LONDON — The High Court ruled that a Russian-born billionaire must pay £453 million in a divorce settlement, according to The Times which covered the private hearing.
Justice Haddon-Cave ruled on Thursday that the anonymous billionaire should give the largest sum of its kind to his ex-wife because she was a "hands-on" mother and that she made an equal contribution to their marriage, which spanned over two decades.
The couple had two children together, who are now grown up, and the court heard how she brought up the two boys without the assistance of a nanny. She also cared for ex-husband's first child from his first marriage.
The amount comes from the court awarding her 41.5% of the "marital assets" worth just over £1 billion.
Both he and his ex-wife wished to remain anonymous and their identities cannot be disclosed by the press. The anonymous billionaire would be classed as one of the richest people in Britain. That is according to the Sunday Times Rich List, which ranks the 1,000 richest people in the UK, shows that the lowest entry has a net worth of £110 million.
However, The Times report disclosed details of couple without naming them.
The Russian-born man is 61-years-old and worked in London as an oil and gas trader and made a substantial fortune five years ago when he sold his shares in a Russian company for $1.3 billion, which by current measurements is £1.01 billion.
The woman is 44-years-old and was born in Eastern Europe. She was a "housewife and a mother throughout the marriage." She still lives in the former-family home in Surrey.
The man met his ex-wife in 1989 while she was studying in Moscow. They married four years later in Moscow and then moved to London the same year. They were then both were given indefinite leave to remain in Britain. Meanwhile, the woman obtained British citizenship 15 years ago.
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It's important to remember that money doesn't solve life's problems. In fact, many lottery winners' lives took a turn for the worse, and they also managed to lose all the money.
No college degree can guarantee you wealth, but a handful of schools have a proven track record of minting rich people, from billionaire founders and CEOs to investors to politicians.
Wealth-X, a firm that does research and valuations on ultra-high net worth (UHNW) individuals, has revealed where the world's wealthiest people — those with assets exceeding $30 million — went to college.
In its tally, Wealth-X counted alumni with both undergraduate and graduate degrees, counting alumni of multiple institutions more than once, but left out those with diplomas, certificates, honorary degrees, and drop outs. Considering some of the world's richest self-made billionaires dropped out of Harvard, Stanford, University of Chicago, and other schools on this list, the numbers of UHNW alumni could be even higher had they graduated.
Of the top 20 colleges in the world that produce the wealthiest people, five are public universities, six are Ivy League, and only one is located outside of the US. By and large, Harvard University mints the highest number of millionaires and billionaires, which together command a net worth of $811 billion, more than twice that of the No. 2 school, University of Pennsylvania.
Below, check out the top 20 colleges in the world that have produced the most rich people, along with the total known number of UHNW individuals with degrees from the institutions, and their combined wealth.
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Known UHNW alumni: 235
Combined wealth: $63 billion
Known UHNW alumni: 241
Combined wealth: $62 billion
Known UHNW alumni: 271
Combined wealth: $69 billion
Beyonce and Jay Z, already two of the biggest names in music, are officially a billion-dollar couple.
According to Forbes list of America's Richest Self-Made Women, released on Wednesday, 35-year-old Beyonce Knowles is worth $350 (£270) million. Her Formation World Tour alone grossed a quarter of a billion dollars.
Meanwhile, a recent Forbes ranking of The Richest in Hop Hop of 2017 revealed that Jay Z's fortune has jumped 30% in the past year to $810 (£625) million, putting the couple's combined net worth at $1.16 billion (£890 million).
This is partly due to a $200 (£154) million investment from Sprint into his music-streaming service, Tidal, which is now reportedly worth $600 (£463) million — more than 10 times what he paid for the company ($56 (£43) million) two years ago.
Together, the Knowles-Carters hold "significant equity" in Tidal.
However, according to Forbes, most of the Jay Z's wealth comes form his entertainment company, Roc Nation, and his Armand de Brignac champagne brand, both of which continue to grow.
Just last week, Jay Z also signed a new 10-year, $200 (£154) million deal with Live Nation.
The news comes as the couple are preparing to welcome twins to their family this summer.
They already have a 5-year-old daughter, Blue Ivy.
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With an estimated net worth of over $16 billion, Red Bull cofounder and CEO Dietrich Mateschitz is the wealthiest person in Austria.
After essentially creating the market for energy drinks with the invention of Red Bull in 1987, Mateschitz and cofounder Thai businessman Chaleo Yoovidhya came up with unique ways to promote the brand, like buying a Formula One racing team and partnering with Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner to do a 120,000-foot jump in 2012. According to Forbes, more than six billion cans of Red Bull were sold in 2016.
The reclusive 72-year-old is rarely seen in the spotlight, but in a candid interview with Austrian paper "Kleine Zeitung" last month, Mateschitz shared his opinion of President Trump and criticized the Austrian government for allowing an influx of refugees into the country. He defended the American president, saying, "I don't think he's as much of an idiot as he's portrayed to be."
Mateschitz also revealed his plan to launch a German-language news site called "Nä her an die Wahrheit," which translates to "Closer to the Truth."An article in the German newspaper Handelsblatt compared the venture to Breitbart.
Below, take a look at how Mateschitz has grown Red Bull into a leading international brand that stretches across platforms.
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Source: Forbes
Source: Forbes
Your beliefs about money can play a huge role in whether or not you finish rich.
So why not look to those who have been there, done that for inspiration?
Business Insider rounded up quotations about money from self-made billionaires that will shift your perspective on business, investing, and success.
From investor Warren Buffett to tech mogul Jeff Bezos, here's what some of the world's richest men and women have to say about money.
If you ask Sam Zell, the basics of business are straightforward.
"It's largely about risk," writes the billionaire businessman in his book "Am I Being Too Subtle? Straight Talk From a Business Rebel."
He continues:
"If you've got a big downside and a small upside, run the other way. If you've got a big upside and a small downside, do the deal. Always make sure you're getting paid for the risk you take, and never risk what you cannot afford to lose. Keep it simple. A scenario that takes four steps instead of one means there are three additional opportunities to fail."
Zell, who is the founder and chairman of Equity Group Investments, calls risk "the ultimate differentiator. I have always had a deep and complex relationship with it," he writes. "I am not a reckless person, but taking risks is really the only way to consistently achieve above-average returns — in life as well as in investments."
However, he writes, "I am probably more comfortable with risk than most people. That's because I do as much as I can to understand it. To me, risk-taking rests on the ability to see all the variables and then identify the ones that will make or break you."
Over decades running companies and evaluating risk, he writes that he's found many people make the same mistake: They're too focused on what happens if everything goes right.
Zell writes:
"Sure, I'm always looking for unlocked potential, for strong fundamentals in a business that suggest a high probability of success. But everybody wants to look at how good a deal can get. People love focusing on the upside. That's where the fun is. What amazes me is how superficially they consider the downside. For me, the calculation in making a deal starts with the downside. If I can identify that, then I understand the risk I'm taking. What's the outcome if everything goes wrong? What actions would we take? Can I bear the cost? Can I survive it?"
In addition to looking at worst-case scenarios, he writes, "I look at how hard something is to execute. The simpler the goals and the steps to reach them, the more likely I'll be successful. And if they aren't simple to begin with, I look at how I can untangle the complexities."
That's not to say that he can foresee every single possible future outcome. That would be predicting the future, and no one can do that. But when it comes to risk, Zell explains, he gets all the information he can — and then he takes the leap.
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Billionaires — they're just like us. Well, kind of.
Whether it's on a yacht, fancy car, or avant-garde collection of art, the wealthiest people in the world are willing to lay down some serious cash on the things they love.
We've rounded up some of the best billionaire toys here.
Billionaire hedge funder Steve Cohen has an art collection that has been valued at as much as $1 billion. In 2004, he paid between $8 million and $12 million for a shark that had been suspended in formaldehyde — a piece called "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living" by British artist Damien Hirst. He later paid Hirst for a replacement after the shark (which was once actually alive) began to deteriorate.
In 2013, Tesla CEO Elon Musk paid $866,000 at auction for the Lotus Esprit submarine that appeared in the 1977 James Bond flick "The Spy Who Loved Me." He has said he wants to try and make it "transform for real."
Billionaire Russian businessman Mikhail Prokhorov owns lots of cool toys (including that sports team he bought for $200 million). But he's also got some unique possessions, including a virtual ski machine. Prokhorov is a known daredevil; he once filmed himself doing stunts on a jetski and had a production company set the movie to music.
Jack Ma, the charismatic founder of Alibaba, has all the more reason to be happy today. He is $2.8 billion richer after Alibaba shares surged 13% on Thursday following news the company expects revenue to surge 50% this year, much higher than expected.
If revenue follow the Alibaba's predictions, it will be the second year in a row the company has managed a 50% or more increase in revenue.
The nearly $3 billion Ma gained from Thursday's spike caused his net worth to jump by 7.1% to $41.8 billion, according to Bloomberg. It's up 25.5% year-to-date.
Ma is currently the richest man in China, the Asia Pacific region, seventh in the industry category, and 14th overall richest person in the world.
Being the richest man in Asia is nice, but Ma has also been generous in sharing some of his company's wealth. The billionaire has donated 35 million shares of Alibaba to SymAsia, a non-profit based in Singapore, Bloomberg data shows. He has also committed the company to using 0.3% of its annual sales to help protect the environment. Last year, this amounted to around $7 billion.
The e-commerce giant is riding the growing enthusiasm in China for online spending. Shares of Alibaba are up 61.62% after Thursday's bump.
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Located in a quiet neighborhood of Omaha, Nebraska lies the home of billionaire Warren Buffett. He bought the house for $31,500 in 1958 or about $250,000 in today's dollars. It's now worth an estimated $652,619. He calls it the "third-best investment he's ever made."
