30 Israelis make Forbes 2022 billionaires list, led by Miriam Adelson

Luke Tress is an editor and a reporter in New York for The Times of Israel.

Thirty Israelis were listed on the Forbes 2022 billionaires list released on Wednesday, including tech entrepreneurs, shipping magnates and a Hollywood producer embroiled in Benjamin Netanyahu’s corruption trial.

The highest-ranked Israeli was Miriam Adelson, listed as the 50th-richest person in the world with a net worth of $27.5 billion.

Adelson is from Israel, but Forbes placed her in the US in its annual ranking, since she holds American citizenship and lives in Las Vegas.

Adelson debuted on the list in 2021 after her husband, casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, died early in the year. He was a mega-donor to the Republican party and the publisher of Israel Hayom.

Miriam Adelson inherited most of her late husband’s fortune and became the wealthiest new billionaire in the world last year, placing 24th on the Forbest list. She lost around $360 million in the past year.

Eyal Ofer, the head of Ofer Global Holdings, was the wealthiest person in Israel on the list, in 117th place with a fortune of $15.4 billion derived from assets in the real estate and shipping industries.

His brother, Idan Ofer, is the next richest Israeli, in 188th place with $10.5 billion from shipping and energy interests.

The two are the sons of Israeli shipping tycoon Sammy Ofer, who was once Israel’s richest man.

Brothers Dmitri and Igor Bukhman, owners of the gaming company Playrix, were ranked 275th with $8.1 billion.

Arnon Milchan, an Israeli Hollywood film producer and a key witness in Netanayahu’s trial, was the 851st richest person with $3.5 billion.

Adam Neumann, the founder of WeWork, was ranked 2,076th with $1.4 billion. He resigned from WeWork in 2019 after the company’s disastrous IPO attempt, which was partly blamed on his management. That year, he had $4.1 billion.

Roman Abramovich, a Russian who holds Israeli citizenship and had been touted as the richest Israeli, was in 350th place with an estimated net worth of $6.9 billion, down from $14.5 billion last year. He was ranked among 83 Russians on the list.

Forbes said 34 Russians dropped off the billionaires list following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the biggest drop of any country except China, which lost 87 billionaires due to a government tech crackdown.

Abramovich has been sanctioned by the European Union and the United Kingdom, but not the US.

The world’s richest person was Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, with $219 billion, followed by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, with $171 billion.

American tech giants Bill Gates, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Larry Ellison and Steve Ballmer, as well as US investor Warren Buffet, were also in the top 10.

The Jewish former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg was 12th, with $82 billion, and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg was 15th with $67 billion, down sharply from a year earlier.
Former US president Donald Trump was ranked 1,012 with $3 billion.

Josh Kushner, brother of Jared Kushner, became the first of his family on the list with a net worth of $2 billion from venture capital investments.

There were 2,668 billionaires in the world, 87 fewer than last year, worth a total of $12.7 trillion, Forbes said.

A total of 236 new billionaires were added to the list, including pop star Rihanna and director Peter Jackson, and 329 people fell off the list. The US had the most total entrants, with 735, followed by China, with 607.

The world’s billionaires overall lost $400 billion dollars in the past year.

France’s Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, heiress to the L’Oreal beauty company, was the world’s richest women, listed with her family at 14th place, alongside 327 other women on the list.

The richest self-made woman was China’s Fan Hongwei, who heads chemical supply company Hengli Petrochemical, who was in 88th place with with $18.2 billion.

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