Lebanon has the unusual distinction of being the only country with more than one billionaire leader in this decade. Current caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri, in office since 2016, was a longtime member of the billionaires list . He was succeeded by Najib Mikati, a telecom billionaire who led the government until 2014.
By Giacomo Tognini
Even before Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 made him the first billionaire president in American history, members of the three-comma club were pouring resources into political campaigns in countries from Australia and Tanzania to South Korea and Nepal. Over the course of the past decade, dozens of billionaires ran for public office in elections around the world.
While President Trump’s fate now lies with the Senate following his impeachment in the House of Representatives, there are two other countries with a billionaire at the helm. Chilean President and billionaire investor Sebastián Piñera, in office since last year, is in his second stint after a previous four-year term ended in 2014. The Czech Republic is led by Prime Minister Andrej Babiš, an agricultural magnate who first won office in 2017. Forbes estimates his net worth at $3.6 billion, making him the richest elected national leader in the world, edging out Trump’s $3.1 billion fortune.
Trump isn’t even the richest politician in the U.S. — that title goes to Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, who was elected in November 2018 after one of the most expensive gubernatorial races in American history. In another pricey governors’ contest, the 2010 California race, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman lost to the incumbent Gov. Jerry Brown. And while there may be little precedent for billionaire presidents, there is no shortage of billionaire governors: both West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice and former Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, who ended his second term in January 2019, are worth ten figures.
Forbes found that Lebanon has the unusual distinction of being the only country with more than one billionaire leader in this decade. Current caretaker Prime Minister Saad Hariri, in office since 2016, was a longtime member of the billionaires list and worth an estimated $1.5 billion in 2018; he dropped off the list in 2019. He previously served as Lebanon’s prime minister from 2009 to 2011, when he was succeeded by Najib Mikati, a telecom billionaire who led the government until 2014.
It turns out that having billions of dollars at your disposal doesn’t always ensure victory: in Ukraine, the so-called “chocolate king” Petro Poroshenko won the presidency in 2014 — when Forbes estimated his net worth at $1.3 billion — but lost re-election this year to comedian Volodymyr Zelensky. In Russia, Brooklyn Nets co-owner Mikhail Prokhorov garnered a measly 8% of votes in his bid to unseat Vladimir Putin in 2012, and Foxconn founder Terry Goufinished a distant second in the 2019 presidential primaries for Taiwan’s opposition Kuomintang Party.
While many with ten-digit fortunes entered politics for the first time in the 2010s, some doubled down on their commitment to public office. Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who Forbes estimates is worth $7.2 billion, stepped down as the country’s leader in 2011 but went on to serve as a member of parliament and a senator before winning election to the European Parliament last May. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg left City Hall in 2013 but is back in the headlines since he announced his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in November — and notably plunked down $30 million in an ad buy in cities across the country.
Not every billionaire sought the highest office in the land — plenty of others were content with contesting a seat in parliament. The list of ten-figure representatives stretches from steel baroness Savitri Jindal, who served in the legislature of the Indian state of Haryana from 2005 to 2014 and has a net worth of $6.5 billion, to South Korea’s Chung Mong-Joon, net worth $1.2 billion, a scion of the late founder of Hyundai who spent more than two decades in parliament before stepping down in 2014 to (unsuccessfully) run for mayor of Seoul.
For others, politics is a family business. Real estate tycoon Manuel Villar came third in the 2010 Philippine presidential elections and served in the Senate from 2001 to 2013; his wife, Cynthia, succeeded him in the Senate and their son, Mark, is a minister in President Rodrigo Duterte’s cabinet. Olivier Dassault of France and Magdalena Martullo-Blocherof Switzerland hold seats in their country’s respective parliaments, following in the footsteps of their fathers: Serge Dassault, who was a billionaire senator before his death in 2018; and Christoph Blocher, who divided his stock in the Swiss chemical giant Ems-Chemie among his four children in 2004 so he could run for office.
Bucking the assumption that they vote and campaign with their pocketbooks, some billionaires have embraced left-wing politics. Tom Steyer has put climate change and taxing the rich at the center of his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. Binod Chaudhary, Nepal’s only billionaire, won a seat in parliament for the far-left Marxist-Leninist Communist Party before switching to the centrist Nepali Congress in 2017.
Billionaires also became a common sight in non-competitive elections during the 2010s, particularly in Russia, where oligarch politicians have endured despite Vladimir Putin’s criticism of their presence in parliament in 2008. Suleiman Kerimov, a wealthy investor with a net worth of $9.7 billion, has been a mainstay in Russian politics since 1999, when he joined Russia’s lower house, the State Duma; in 2008, he switched to the Federation Council, Russia’s equivalent of the Senate. Others ran for office only to leave it in short notice: Anatoly Lomakin, who made his fortune trading chemicals, joined the Duma in 2012 but stepped down the following year due to health issues.
The 2010s marked the arrival of America’s first billionaire president — and while it’s too early to predict what the next decade has in store, it’s likely that billionaires will continue to wield their wealth to run for office and gain political power. Here’s a list of current and former billionaires who entered politics in the past decade, ranked by order of net worth:
Michael Bloomberg
Net worth: $56.1 billion
Source of wealth: Bloomberg LP
Position: Mayor of New York City (2002-13)
Running for: President of the United States (2020)
Suleiman Kerimov
Net worth: $9.7 billion
Source of wealth: investments
Position: Member of the Russian State Duma (1999-2007); Member of the Russian Federation Council (2008-present)
Silvio Berlusconi
Net worth: $7.2 billion
Source of wealth: media
Position: Prime Minister of Italy (1994-95, 2001-06, 2008-11); Member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies (1994-2013); Senator of Italy (2013); Member of the European Parliament (2019-present)
Terry Gou
Net worth: $7.1 billion
Source of wealth: electronics
Ran for: President of Taiwan (2019; lost in the Kuomintang primary)
Manuel Villar
Net worth: $6.7 billion
Source of wealth: real estate
Position: Senator of the Philippines (2001-13); Speaker of the Philippine House of Representatives (1998-2000); Member of the Philippine House of Representatives (1992-2001)
Ran for: President of the Philippines (2010; lost in the general election)
Savitri Jindal
Net worth: $6.5 billion
Source of wealth: steel
Position: Member of the Haryana Legislative Assembly, India (2005-14)
Olivier Dassault
Magdalena Martullo-Blocher
Net worth: $5.3 billion
Source of wealth: chemicals
Position: Member of the Swiss National Council (2015-present)
Andrei Skoch
Net worth: $5.1 billion
Source of wealth: steel
Position: Member of the Russian State Duma (1999-present)
Bidzina Ivanishvili
Net worth: $4.9 billion
Source of wealth: investments
Position: Prime Minister of Georgia (2012-13)
Andrei Guriev
Net worth: $4.3 billion
Source of wealth: fertilizers
Position: Member of the Russian Federation Council (2001-13)
Jeff Greene
Net worth: $3.9 billion
Source of wealth: real estate, investments
Ran for: Governor of Florida (2018; lost in the Democratic primary); Senator from Florida (2010; lost in the Democratic primary)
Meg Whitman
Net worth: $3.7 billion
Source of wealth: eBay
Ran for: Governor of California (2010; lost in the general election)
Andrej Babiš
Net worth: $3.6 billion
Source of wealth: agriculture
Position: Prime Minister of the Czech Republic (2017-present)
J.B. Pritzker
Net worth: $3.4 billion
Source of wealth: hotels, investments
Position: Governor of Illinois (2019-present)
Alexander Skorobogatko
Net worth: $3.2 billion
Source of wealth: real estate, airport
Position: Member of the Russian State Duma (2003-16)
Donald Trump
Net worth: $3.1 billion
Source of wealth: real estate
Position: President of the United States (2017-present)
Sebastián Piñera
Net worth: $2.8 billion
Source of wealth: investments
Position: President of Chile (2010-14, 2018-present); Senator of Chile (1990-98)
John Catsimatidis
Net worth: $2.7 billion
Source of wealth: oil, real estate
Ran for: Mayor of New York City (2013; lost in the Republican primary)
Najib Mikati
Net worth: $2.5 billion
Source of wealth: telecom
Position: Prime Minister of Lebanon (2005, 2011-14); Member of the Lebanese Parliament (2000-present)
Vadim Moshkovich
Net worth: $2.1 billion
Source of wealth: agriculture, land
Position: Member of the Russian Federation Council (2006-14)
Mohammed Dewji
Net worth: $1.9 billion
Source of wealth: diversified
Position: Member of the Tanzanian National Assembly (2005-15)
Bill Haslam
Net worth: $1.8 billion
Source of wealth: truck stops
Position: Governor of Tennessee (2011-19); Mayor of Knoxville (2003-11)
Clive Palmer
Net worth: $1.8 billion
Source of wealth: mining
Position: Member of the Australian Parliament (2013-16)
Binod Chaudhary
Net worth: $1.7 billion
Source of wealth: diversified
Position: Member of the Nepalese Parliament (2008-12; 2017-present)
Thomas Steyer
Net worth: $1.6 billion
Source of wealth: hedge funds
Running for: President of the United States (2020)
Jim Justice, II
Net worth: $1.5 billion
Source of wealth: coal
Position: Governor of West Virginia (2017-present)
Anatoly Lomakin
Net worth: $1.4 billion
Source of wealth: investments
Position: Member of the Russian State Duma (2012-13)
Farkhad Akhmedov
Net worth: $1.4 billion
Source of wealth: investments
Position: Member of the Russian Federation Council (2004-09)
Andrei Molchanov
Net worth: $1.2 billion
Source of wealth: construction materials
Position: Member of the Russian Federation Council (2008-13)
Chung Mong-Joon
Net worth: $1.2 billion
Source of wealth: shipbuilding, industrial machines
Position: Member of the South Korean National Assembly (1988-2014)
Ran for: Mayor of Seoul (2014; lost in the general election)
Ihor Kolomoyskyy
Net worth: $1.1 billion
Source of wealth: banking, investments
Position: Governor of Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine (2014-15)
Hary Tanoesoedibjo
Net worth: $1 billion
Source of wealth: media
Ran for: Vice President of Indonesia (2014; lost in the legislative election)
FORMER BILLIONAIRES:
Serge Dassault (d. 2018)
Net worth (at time of death): $22.6 billion
Source of wealth: diversified
Position: Senator of France (2004-17); Mayor of Corbeil-Essonnes (1995-2009)
Saad Hariri
Net worth (in 2018): $1.5 billion
Source of wealth: construction, investments
Position: Prime Minister of Lebanon (2009-11, 2016-present); Member of the Lebanese Parliament (2005-present)
Frank Stronach
Net worth (in 2018): $1.5 billion
Source of wealth: auto parts
Position: Member of the Austrian National Council (2013-14)
Dmitry Ananyev
Net worth (in 2017): $1.4 billion
Source of wealth: banking, IT, real estate
Position: Member of the Russian Federation Council (2006-13)
Petro Poroshenko
Net worth (in 2014): $1.3 billion
Source of wealth: confectionery
Position: President of Ukraine (2014-19); Member of the Ukrainian Parliament (1998-2002; 2003-07; 2012-14)
Sergei Petrov
Net worth (in 2018): $1 billion
Source of wealth: auto import and dealerships
Position: Member of the Russian State Duma (2007-15)
Vijay Mallya
Net worth (in 2012): $1 billion
Source of wealth: liquor
Position: Member of the Indian House of the People (2002-09, 2010-16)
Andrei Komarov
Net worth (in 2011): $1 billion
Source of wealth: manufacturing
Position: Member of the Russian Federation Council (2005-10)
(Forbes)
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