1. Angela Merkel, age 59: Chancellor, Germany Angela Merkel is the first political star to emerge from the former East Germany. After training as a physicist, Merkel entered politics after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, becoming Germany’s first female chancellor and one of the leading figures of the European Union, following the 2005 […]

1: Qatar. $96,992 per capita GDP Qatar takes the number one spot as the world’s richest country. Besides being wealthy and internationally recognisable, it is due to host the FIFA World Cup in 2022. The country’s economy continues to rely on energy to fuel its ascent to the top. With its natural gas and oil […]

Wall Street has made its name synonymous not only to the U.S. financial sector, but to the global one at large. Wall Street means cash, gold, stocks, fast cars and large yachts—in a word: “wealth.” Although not everyone who has ever walked through the golden gates of Wall Street has pockets overflowing with money, the […]

1) James Simons Total Investment Value: $41.28 billion (as of March 2013) Net worth: $11.7 billion (as of March 2013) James Simons is the founder of Renaissance Technologies Corporation, and in 2013 was #28 on the Forbes 400 list, and #82 in the list of top billionaires. His Top New Buys of 2013: International Business Machines […]

1) New Coke There is a saying, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The Coca-Cola executives of the 1980s should have listened to this, but at the time, Coke had been losing market share against Pepsi for over a decade, so the company invented a new formula, which was actually preferred over old Coke in […]

1) The U.S. Dollar First place, perhaps unsurprisingly, goes to the U.S Dollar with almost 85 percent of the transactions in foreign exchange markets involving the dollar. Until the establishment of the Federal Reserve System in 1913, various currencies were issued in the U.S. In the late 18th century and during the American Revolution, the Continental […]

1) Tesla Skeptics who questioned whether electric car maker Tesla Motors could ever be a real business were left open-mouthed when the company announced it turned profitable without any help from accounting adjustments last year. Sales of its latest car, the Model S sedan, exceeded expectations too with expected 2014 earnings growth predicted to be 606% […]

1) Bill Gates Net Worth: $72 B Age 58 Source: Microsoft Country: United States Bill Gates is the wealthiest man in the U.S. (and the world), despite past gifts of more than $28 billion to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He bolstered his foundation’s efforts to eradicate polio in April, securing $335 million in […]