Several other Asians figure in Darrell West’s list though.
By Sujeet Rajan
NEW YORK: How powerful are billionaires Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani in the political sphere in India? Not that much, if one were to go by writer Darrell West’s Global Billionaires Political Power Index.
In his new book ‘Billionaires: Reflections on the Upper Crust’ (Brookings Institution Press), which released today, on Thursday, West, vice president and director of Governance Studies and holds the Douglas Dillon Chair at Brookings, and is the founding director of the Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings, has no Indian billionaire in the top 15 billionaires globally who wield political power too.
The list, which is topped by Bill and Melinda Gates, is a ranking of the top global billionaires in terms of overall political power. There are a number of existing rankings that rate the net worth of billionaires, but according to West, no one has assessed their overall political influence globally or in particular countries around the world.
Kings, queens, dictators, or authoritarian heads of state were not considered because of the difficulty of ascertaining their wealth. Gauging wealth is impossible in some places even though it is suspected that certain leaders are billionaires, says West. Families of government leaders who have gained extensive wealth were also left out because it is hard to gauge their specific holdings.
The top 15 in his list:
- Bill and Melinda Gates
- George Soros
- Jack Ma
- Petro Poroshenko
- Andrej Babis
- Carlos Slim Helu
- Rupert Murdoch
- Bidzina “Boris” Ivanishvili
- Aliko Dangote
- Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal Al Saud
- Mikhail Prokhorov
- Xiao Jianhua
- Clive Palmer
- Mo Ibrahim
- Robin Li