Ioan Niculae, Romania’s richest man along with former tennis player Ion Tiriac are the only Romanians present on the new edition of Forbes World’s Billionaires ranking. According to the top, the richest Romanian is Ioan Niculae, with a fortune estimated at USD 1.2 billion. In the international hierarchy, Ioan Niculae ranked 1,605. On the other hand, Ion Tiriac has a fortune estimated at USD 1 billion and is placed on 1741 in the world.
“Founder of Interagro, Romania’s leading agricultural and fertilizer conglomerate, Ioan Niculae benefited from the conflict in Ukraine by picking up chemical contracts when Ukrainian suppliers could not deliver. But he’s still facing charges brought by state prosecutors alleging two Romanian politicians gave Interago favorable discounts on gas transfers from 2006 to 2010,” Forbes notes. The magazine writers point out that Niculae, who is also the owner of Astra Giurgiu soccer team, is an avid hunter and he made headlines last year when he flew to South Africa to hunt elephant, lion, wildebeest, and buffalo in order to stuff and return then to Romania. Ioan Niculae ranked 1372 in Forbes’ 2014 edition.
In 2015 Ion Tiriac returns to the famous top for the first time since 2010. He is described as ‘a financial and real estate investor’, considering the fact that Romania’s real estate market has strengthened to pre-2008 levels.
“He also owns banking, insurance, auto leasing and retail assets and is expanding a museum that houses his 200 high-end cars and motorcycles, including Jaguars, Bentleys and Rolls Royces. He competed in the 1960 Olympics as an ice hockey player and later switched to tennis, eventually coaching several tennis greats including Boris Becker, Steffi Graf and Goran Ivanisevic,” Forbes shows.
This year, Forbes’ ranking of the world’s richest billionaires hit a record: 1,826 10-digit fortunes that hail from 70 countries. That’s more than a 13-fold increase from the first global wealth list in 1987, when Forbes found 140 billionaires from 24 countries.
Bill Gates has been declared the richest man in the world for the 16th time by Forbes magazine’s annual ranking of global billionaires. Gates’s net worth rose to USD 79.2 billion in 2015 from USD 76 billion last year. That put him at the top of the magazine’s list of the world’s billionaires for the second consecutive year. The co-founder of Microsoft Corp. has topped the list for 16 of the last 21 years.
In second place is Mexican telecommunications mogul Carlos Slim Helu, with a net worth of USD 77.1 billion. He had topped the list in 2013. Next is investor Warren Buffett, who moved up one slot this year with a net worth of USD 72.7 billion.