Bill Gates retains Americas richest person slot: Forbes

New York, Sept 20

22 Business

w w w. f i n a n c i a l e x p re s s . c o m

l FRIDAY l SEPTEMBER 21 l 2012

ICROSOFT cofounder Bill Gates has retained his position as the richest person in America for the 19th year in a row this year, according to Forbes'annualrankingof the nation's 400 super rich people who have a combined net worth of $1.7 trillion dollars. With a net worth of $66 billion, Gates not only remained therichestpersoninAmerica but is also "the planet's most generous person", thanks to his countless philanthropic endeavours in developing nations, including India, Forbes said. The 56-year-old Harvard drop out has given away $28 billion to philanthropic causes so far, with his new obsession being building better toiletsforthosewithoutwateror sewagesystems,itadded. Every year 1.5 million children die from food and water tainted with fecal matter, more than the annual deaths from AIDS and malaria combined, Forbes said. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is also spearheading a malaria vaccine that is showing promise in clinical trials. The non-profit Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) founded by Gates has raised $4.3 billion in pledges from various countries to provide life-saving vaccines against a range of deadly infections. "Gates and his good friend Warren Buffett continue to

Berkshire Hathaway chairman Warren Buffett is at second spot with $46-billion net worth THE FORBES 400
Top 10 richest people in America
Rank Name Net worth
$66 B $46 B $41 B $31 B $31 B $27.9 B $26.8 B $26.3 B $26.1 B $25 B

Five Indian-Americans make it to list

Age
56 82 68 76 72 57 64 62 68 70

Residence
Medina, Washington Omaha, Nebraska Woodside, California Wichita, Kansas New York, New York Jackson, Wyoming Bentonville, Arkansas Fort Worth, Texas Bentonville, Arkansas New York, New York

Source
Microsoft Berkshire Hathaway Oracle Diversified Diversified Wal-Mart Wal-Mart Wal-Mart Wal-Mart Bloomberg LP

1 2 3
Bill Gates

Bill Gates Warren Buffett Larry Ellison Charles Koch David Koch Christy Walton & family Jim Walton Alice Walton S. Robson Walton Michael Bloomberg

4 4 6

Warren Buffett

7 8 9 10

Larry Ellison

New York, Sept 20: Five Indian-Americans, including Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and founder of IT major Syntel, Bharat Desai, have been named among the richest people in the US by Forbes. Desai with a net worth of two billion dollars as of September 2012 has been ranked 239 in Forbes' annual list released on Wednesday. Desai, 59, started Syntel in 1980 with his wife while earning his MBA from the University of Michigan. An IIT Mumbai alumnus, Desai stepped down as chief executive of the firm in 2009 but remains chairman. Founder and chairman of the Symphony Technology Group, Romesh Wadhwani, is ranked 250 with a net worth $1.9 billion. Google board member and shareholder Kavitark Ram Shriram occupies the 298th rank with a net worth of $1.6 billion. Manoj Bhargava, founder and CEO of the popular energy drink '5-hour energy' is ranked 311 and has a $1.5 billion net worth. He is followed by Khosla on the 328th rank and a $1.4 billion net worth. A graduate of Carnegie Mellon University and IIT Mumbai,

Wadhwani, 65, developed business software firm Aspect Development which he sold in 2000 during the height of the tech bubble for $9.3 billion. A "notable" newcomer on the list, Bhargava, 59, is a Princeton University drop out who "chose one of the roads less travelled to the American Dream. Described as a math whiz, Bhargava lived as a monk in the mountains of India for 12 years before returning to the US to forge a successful career in plastics. Forbes said Stanford and IIT alumnus Khosla, 57, "isn't afraid to fail. His firm also had a stake in social enterprise software company Yammer, which was purchased by Microsoft in July for $1.2 billion. A Google board member and large shareholder, Shriram, 55, has stakes in online outsourcer 24/7 Customer and serendipitous website picker StumbleUpon. He also invested in Inkling, which makes interactive textbooks for the iPad. He serves as a trustee at Stanford University, where he and his wife endowed the Shriram Family Professorship in Science Education. PTI

recruitnewmemberstotheir Giving Pledge, in which the very wealthy promise to give away at least half of their net worth during their lifetime oraftertheydie,"Forbessaid. Gates' net worth rose $7 billion since last August on the back of Microsoft shares, which climbed 20% and on gains from investments in private equity, bonds and stocks, Forbes said. In addition, Gates contin-

ues to sell shares of Microsoft and now just one-fifth of his net worth stems from the software company he cofounded 37 years ago. On the second spot with a $46 billion net worth is 82year-old Buffett, chairman of Berkshire Hathaway who re, cently completed radiation treatmentforprostatecancer. Earlier this year, Buffett saidhehadpickedhisCEOreplacement but has declined to

give a name. Among the names of possible successors making the rounds is Berkshire's head of reinsurance businessIndia-bornAjitJain. Buffett is not too far behind Gates when it comes to philanthropy He gave $1.5 . billion to the Gates FoundationinJuly ,bringinghistotal contributionto$17.25billion. On his birthday in August he pledged $3 billion of stock to his children's foundations.

His fortune grew $7 billion as class A shares jumped more than 20% since last year. Forbes said the combined net worth of the 2012 class of the 400 richest Americans is $1.7 trillion, up 13% from the $1.5 trillion a year ago. The average net worth of a Forbes 400 member is a staggering $4.2 billion, up from $3.8 billion dollars and the highest ever, as two-thirds of theindividualsaddedtotheir

fortunes in the past year. "The gap between the very rich and the merely rich is widening.Onlytwointhetop 20 are poorer, and as a group they are worth $73 billion more than a year ago," it said. On the third spot is Oracle headLarryEllison,whosenet worth grew $8 billion to $41 billion,thebiggestdollargain of anyone on the list this year. The country's three richest entrepreneurs drove

muchof thosegains,continuing to add billions to their net worth, even as they give money away Forbes said. While , winners outnumbered losers by nearly four to one, there were some stunning drops. "Noonefellmoredramatically than Facebooks Mark Zuckerberg," whose fortune stumbled $8.1 billion, makinghimtheyear'sbiggestloser. Zuckerberg ranked 36th on the list with a net worth of

$9.4 billion but he is still $2.5 billion richer than he was two years ago and he's "handily entrenched in the ranks, Forbes said. "Zuckerberg has faced a rough road since Facebook wentpublicinMay .Thestock of the social networking company has performed poorly, falling below $20 in Augustafterdebutingat$38." In July the company reported a net loss of $157 million for its second quarter, driving the stock price down. "What is less clear is whether the young executive, who married his longtime girlfriend Priscilla Chan the dayaftertheIPO,canrightthe ship and make Facebook into a winning public company ," the publication said. Newcomers include widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, Laurene Powell Jobs who is now the wealthiest woman in Silicon Valley and , Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey Jobs was placed 28th . on the list with a net worth of $11 billion. Just 45 women made it to the list, up from 42 last year, Forbes said. Others on the list are New York mayor Michael Bloomberg at 10, Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos (11), Google co-founders Sergey BrinandLarryPage(13),media titan Rupert Murdoch (36), business tycoon Donald Trump (128), talk show host Oprah Winfrey (151) and Starbucks chairman Howard Schultz (311). PTI

Latest casualty of Apple-Google mobile-phone mkt: iPhone maps

SanFrancisco,Sept20:Thelatestcasualty of Apples war with Google in the mobile-phone market is one of the most widely used features of the iPhone: maps.NewmappingsoftwareAppleisintroducing this week with the iPhone 5 was criticised by technology gadget reviewers, who said it doesnt provide directions for public transportation and sometimes gets confused when navigatingusers. Applebelievesthattheycandelivera better experience for customers than Google, said Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst at Forrester Research. But in the short term, Google has a better mappingapplication,andiPhonecustomers will suffer. Apple, which is touting the map features as a key software change in the iPhone 5, built its navigation application amid a growing battle with Google, which had provided its Google Maps program since the iPhone was introduced in 2007. Apple built the replacement app because it wanted to scale back its relationship with Google, not because of any product flaws, said two people familiar with Apples development of the mapping features. and HTC that compete with Apples iPhone. Android is now the worlds most popular smartphone software. As the competition escalated, Google chairman Eric Schmidt exited Apples board in 2009. Apple also traded patentinfringement lawsuits with several smartphone manufacturers who use Android, including Samsung. The fallout from the feud extends beyond mapping. Customers also wont find Googles YouTube application preinstalledontheiPhoneforthefirsttime since 2007. Googles e-mail and document software also havent worked as well for iPhone customers as on Android phones, Rotman Epps said. From a business perspective, Apples decision on mapping is important because its software ecosystem for providing music, apps and other services to customers helps to differentiate its products, said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Gartner. It doesnt make sense for Apple to outsource a key part of their entire ecosystemtoGoogle,Gartenbergsaid. Customers arent likely to find as much fault with the mapping features as the reviewers did, he said. Bloomberg

BlackBerry creator Lazaridis puts $100 m into Nano labs

Toronto, Sept 20: Mike Lazaridis , whose invention of the BlackBerry smartphonemorethanadecadeago redefined the way people send e-mail, is drawing inspiration from the early days of computing for his next act. Backed by his $100-million donation, the Mike & Ophelia Lazaridis Quantum-Nano Centre opens on Friday in Waterloo, Ontario, aiming to recreate the conditions that made AT&Ts Bell Labs a hive of technological innovation in the early 1960s and laid the groundworkforthesuccessof Silicon Valley . The new research centre is designed to produce breakthroughs in the science and technology of things approaching the size of an atom. Its absolutely going to be the Bell Labs of the 21st century, Lazaridis said on Wednesday . Bloomberg

THE FUED EXTENDS BEYOND MAPPING. THERE WONT BE YOUTUBE APP PREINSTALLED ON THE iPHONE FOR THE FIRST TIME SINCE 2007
The companys rivalry with Google was born after the owner of the worlds largest Internet search engine developed the Android mobile operating system,whichrunsdevicesfrommanufacturers such as Samsung Electronics

London, Sydney Sept 20: , For more than a decade, the worlds biggest liquefied naturalgasproducersledbyRoyal Dutch Shell plotted how to movetheir$170-billionindustryontobargesatseatotapremote fields. Now theyre finally doing it. Shell will forge the hull of a floating LNG plant in South Korea by yearend that will be the worlds largest vessel, weighing six timesthebiggestaircraftcarrier, a Nimitz-class warship. Some5,000workerswillbuild the factory to produce LNG off Australias northwest coast in a $13-billion project that also will shield Shell fromescalatingcostsitwould have to pay at the countrys onshore plants. Rivals from Malaysias Petroliam Nasional to GDF Suezof Francelikewisewant to compress gas into liquid at sea, where many of the largestfindsweremadeinthe lastdecade.Itsagenerational change for a land-based industry that started about 50 years ago in Algeria, where

Shell leads LNG competitors out to sea with biggest ship

Shellprovidedtechnologyfor Camel, the first commercial LNGplant.Todaythosefacilities typically cost at least $20 billiontobuild. We remove the need for the pipeline and use about 50% of the raw materials for an equivalent onshore plant, said Neil Gilmour, Shells FLNG general manager. Hes overseeing construction of the worlds first floating LNG vessel, which will be as long as the Empire State Building, for use by the Prelude venture partners. Costs for onshore LNG plants are surging in Australiaasitmovestochallenge Qatar as the worlds biggest LNG exporter. The UKs BG GroupandWoodsidePetroleum have announced budget overruns at onshore projects in Australia amid rising labour expenses, while Chevron is reviewing the cost of its A$43 billion ($45 billion) Gorgon venture. The Prelude vessel is being built for Shell, Europes largest oil company by Ko, reas Samsung Heavy Indus-

Shell will forge the hull of a floating LNG plant in South Korea by year-end that will be the worlds largest vessel BLOOMBERG

tries and Technip of France. It will be immune to some of the onshore cost inflation youve seen in other projects globally, Gilmour said. The Anglo-Dutchcompany ,based in The Hague, is already charting the next three vessels aimed at developing stranded gas resources. The development will broaden the LNG business, which took off around 1959 with the help of a chemical engineer named Cedomir Cheddy M Sliepcevich, the son of an immigrant from Hercegovina to the US. He developed a process of shrinkingthefuelsvolume600times forshippingintankers. LNG demand will more than double to about 460 MT by2025,accordingtoDeutsche Bank forecast in August. Floating LNG plants will supply about 3% of the fuel. Customersimportedabout331billion cubic metres of LNG last year worth about $170 billion based on an average price in Japan, according to BP and LNGJapandata. Bloomberg