What are the top 10 richest billionaires in the world doing in Vietnam?
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Meanwhile, entering the Vietnamese market since 1996, right after Vietnam and the United States normalized diplomatic relations, Microsoft, founded by Bill Gates, has been present in Vietnam for over 20 years in various infrastructure projects, education, employment, business, and human resource training projects... The current CEO of Microsoft Vietnam is Mr. Pham The Truong. At the end of 2014, Microsoft transferred its smartphone manufacturing plants and production lines from China, Mexico, and Hungary to Bac Ninh - Vietnam. With this shift, Microsoft Vietnam's export revenue in 2014 reached 2 billion USD. However, in 2016, Microsoft announced that it had reached an agreement to sell its feature phone division to FIH Mobile and HMD Global for 350 million USD. This is the phone manufacturing plant of Microsoft located in Bac Ninh, which will be transferred to FIH Mobile – a subsidiary of the Taiwanese technology group Hon Hai/Foxconn Technology. Not only investing in the technology sector in Vietnam, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust, founded by billionaire Bill Gates and his wife, has poured tens of millions of USD into a fund specializing in investing in businesses in Vietnam.
To date, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust has invested 88 million USD in Vietnam Enterprise Investment Ltd (VEIL) - managed by Dragon Capital. Established in 1995, VEIL is currently the oldest and largest investment fund in Vietnam with total assets reaching 1.5 billion USD. Currently, VEIL is investing and holding shares in leading Vietnamese enterprises such as: Vinamilk, MBBank, FPT Corporation, Vietcombank, Thegioididong, Hoa Phat, Vietjet, ACB,... Bill and Melinda Gates – the richest charity foundation in the world – always maintains investment in pharmaceutical patents and other fields such as alcohol, tobacco, oil and gas, genetic modification, as well as some other sources. The charity of billionaire Bill Gates and his wife once held shares in BP - the British multinational oil and gas corporation and the American multinational oil and gas corporation - ExxonMobil, which have been and are cooperating in investing in Vietnam, but the foundation has withdrawn all shares in these companies.
In 2010, this fund purchased 500 shares for 23.1 million USD of the agricultural chemical giant Monsanto - a corporation currently providing genetically modified seeds and herbicides to Vietnamese farmers. The fifth richest billionaire in the world today with a net worth of 71.2 billion USD is Mark Zuckerberg - the owner of the largest social network in the world, Facebook. According to The Next Web, Vietnam is in the top 10 countries with the most Facebook users in the world. As of July 2017, Vietnam had 64 million Facebook users, accounting for 3% of the total active Facebook accounts globally, ranking seventh in the world. Since entering the market with 55 million internet users, Facebook has provided a variety of public information services across borders into Vietnam. Advertising services on the Facebook social network are very developed, bringing in significant revenue. According to statistics from market research company Vinalink, by the end of 2015, Facebook ranked first in online revenue in Vietnam with sales of about over 3 trillion VND (equivalent to 150 million USD).
Ranking seventh in the world billionaire ranking, Amancio Ortega - founder and chairman of the fashion company Inditex, which owns the famous Zara brand, has a net worth of 64.9 billion USD. The Spanish billionaire has had many moments of being the richest person in the world in the Forbes ranking. The Zara brand first appeared in 1975 and now has about 6,500 stores in 88 countries worldwide, with annual revenue exceeding 18 billion Euros. Zara, owned by the Spanish billionaire, first entered the Vietnamese market by opening its first store in the Vincom Center building in Ho Chi Minh City. In November 2017, Zara officially "moved north" to Hanoi by opening a store in the A Tower Vincom Ba Trieu shopping center. In fact, Zara is not the only clothing brand that Inditex owns. The company also holds a series of other brands that make fashion enthusiasts around the world "crazy," including Bershka, Massimo Dutti, Zara Home, Kiddy’s Class, Tempe, Stradivarius, Pull and Bear. In addition, Larry Ellison's software company Oracle, the eighth richest person in the world, is also present in Vietnam with two offices located in Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, providing a full range of services related to information technology including industry applications, cloud systems, databases, server systems… Thus, among the top 10 billionaires in the world, there are currently 4 billionaires (Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Amancio Ortega, Larry Ellison) doing business in Vietnam, 1 billionaire "hinting" at investment (Jeff Bezos), while 5 others have not yet had a direct presence (Warren Buffett, Bernard Arnault, Carlos Slim Helu, brothers Charles Koch and David Koch).
Bill Gates reveals two 'crazy' things he has bought since becoming a billionaire 30 years ago
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Bill Gates said that since becoming a billionaire, the two most luxurious items he has ever bought are a Porsche and a private jet. As the founder of Microsoft and co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, he is the second richest person in the world with an estimated net worth of 91.8 billion USD, according to the Bloomberg index. However, he is known for living very simply and frugally. Unlike other wealthy billionaires, Bill Gates rarely spends money on luxury pleasures or buys expensive items for himself. He and his wife have dedicated large sums of money to charity and changing the world. Gates officially became a billionaire when he was 31 years old, the youngest billionaire in history at that time. However, having more numbers in his bank account did not change his living habits. “I do not have a habit of spending money on luxury items, so becoming a billionaire did not change my daily life too much,” Bill Gates shared in an interview with DeGeneres: “My concern at that time was to develop the company, help employees have a better life, and be able to take care of their families.”
Nevertheless, Bill Gates also admitted that he has spent money on two luxury items that he calls the two "crazy" things in his life. They are a Porsche and a private jet. Bill Gates once called that his guilty pleasure. He owns a Bombardier BD-700 Global Express with 19 seats, worth up to 41 million USD. He also has a special fondness for Porsche cars. Bill Gates has three speeding tickets, two of which were from the same police officer while he was driving a Porsche 911 from Albuquerque to his new home in Seattle. In addition, Bill Gates also owns a “castle” worth 125 million USD in Medina, Washington, less than a mile from Jeff Bezos. The house where Bill Gates lives with his family is equipped with advanced technology, and notably has a separate room for a trampoline. It is not surprising that Bill Gates is not currently the richest person on the planet, as he spends a lot of money on charitable activities. Specifically, he and his wife, Melinda, donated more than 2 billion USD in 2016 to health and education development organizations in the United States.
Bill Gates could become the first trillionaire by 2025
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Bill Gates may still be 915.6 billion USD short of becoming the first trillionaire in the world, but a recent research report shows he is closer to this goal than some predictions. The new report on wealth and inequality from Oxfam titled “An Economy for the 99%” indicates that the wealth of super-rich individuals like Bill Gates has surged in the past decade. In the next 25 years, the wealth of billionaire Bill Gates could increase unprecedentedly. According to Oxfam's report, in 2009, there were 793 billionaires with a total net worth of 2.4 trillion USD. By 2016, those 793 wealthy individuals maintained a net worth of 5 trillion USD, an increase of 11% per year. “If these profits continue to rise, we may very well witness the first trillionaire in the world in the next 25 years,” according to Oxfam.
In other words, Oxfam estimates that if this trend continues, Bill Gates, who is leading the list of the richest people in the world according to Forbes magazine (USA), with a net worth of 84.4 billion USD, could stand alone in the list of “World Trillionaires” in the future as ranked by Forbes. It is not that Bill Gates necessarily wants this distinction. Since leaving Microsoft in 2006, he has devoted time and resources to fighting infectious diseases and improving education worldwide through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Together with his friend, legendary investor Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and his wife established the Giving Pledge initiative for other billionaires who want to contribute to public causes by donating a portion or the majority of their wealth. Bill and Melinda Gates have stated that they do not intend to leave their children billions or millions. However, according to Oxfam, the wealth is unlikely to shrink when a person is rich enough that spending is no longer a careful choice. Oxfam's report indicates: “The super-rich can achieve profit figures that no ordinary saver can reach, thus widening the gap between the rich and anyone else. The larger the initial investment, the higher the profits, as the initial costs for high-end consulting and high-risk investment forms can be rewarded with the prospect of super profits.” Since 2013, Bill Gates has donated at least 28 billion USD to the Gates charity. Unless this 61-year-old billionaire can determine how much more he will donate in the coming years, he may enter an unprecedented wealth tier at the age of 86.