Archive for January, 2010
Rags to Riches Billionaire Story # 2
Li Ka-shing
Net worth: $26.5 billion
Li Ka-shing
Li fled turbulent China in 1940 and resettled in Hong Kong. Li’s father died in Hong Kong.
Shouldering the responsibility of looking after the livelihood of the family, Li was forced to leave school before the age of 15 and found a job in a plastics trading company where he labored 16 hours a day.
By 1950, his hard work, prudence and his pursuit of excellence had enabled him to start his own company, Cheung Kong Industries. From manufacturing plastics, Li led and developed his company into a leading real estate investment company in Hong Kong that was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 1972.
Rags to Riches Billionaire Story # 3
Roman Abramovich
Net worth: $23.5 billion
Roman Abramovich
Orphaned at age 4, Abramovich was raised by his uncle and grandmother. He dropped out of college and eventually made a fortune after taking over Russian oil giant Sibneft, which he later sold.
Roman, was gifted with a talent for business and being in the right place at the right time as he started his career as an entrepreneur just as Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms permitted the opening of small private businesses.
He began his business career selling plastic ducks from a grim Moscow apartment but, within a few years, Abramovich’s vast wealth spread from oil conglomerates to pig farms, and secured his place within Yeltsin’s inner circle. However, even today, his task force of bodyguards and armoured Mercedes testify to the high-risk nature of capitalism in post-Soviet Russia.
Rags to Riches Billionaire Story # 4
Sheldon Adelson
Net worth: $26 billion
Sheldon Adelson
The son of a Boston cabdriver, he borrowed $200 from an uncle to sell newspapers at age 12. Later, he dropped out of college to become a court reporter. Now a casino and hotel magnate, Adelson took his Las Vegas Sands public in December 2004.
He worked at a young age selling newspapers on local street corners and owned his first business by the time he was twelve. In the years that followed, he worked as a mortgage broker, investment adviser and financial consultant. He started a business selling toiletry kits, and in the 1960s he started a charter tours business with two friends. He went to college at City College of New York but did not complete a degree there.
The basis for Adelson’s wealth and current investments was the computer trade show COMDEX, which he and his partners developed for the computer industry; the first show was in 1979. It was the premier computer trade show through much of the 1980s and 1990s.
In 1988, Adelson and his partners purchased the Sands Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, the former hangout of Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack, in order to bring Las Vegas to a new phase of business centricity through the exhibition industry.
