Chang Yun Chung, a Singaporean shipping magnate, is now the world's oldest billionaire at age 98. His net worth is $1.79 billion, according to FORBES' real-time billionaire rankings.
He became the oldest billionaire on Monday, when David Rockefeller passed away at the age of 101. Rockefeller, who FORBES estimated had a fortune of $3.3 billion at the time of his death, was the last living grandchild of Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller, America's first billionaire
Chang, who is also known as Teo Woon Tiong, graduated from Xiamen Datung College and started working in the shipping business in 1949. He founded his own shipping company, Singapore-based Pacific International Lines, with 10 investors in 1967. The company started with just two formerly Dutch ships that made trips to Jakarta and Bangkok. It became one of the first foreign shipping companies to operate in the Chinese market in the 1960s. Within a decade, it owned more than 60 vessels that traveled to China, the Arabian Gulf and East Africa. By the mid-1990s, the company had moved primarily into container shipping.
Today PIL, still privately held, operates 150 vessels and had revenues of $3.7 billion in 2015. It runs ships between 500 locations in 100 countries and employs 18,000 people. It’s subsidiary, Singamas Holdings, listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange since 1993, is the world’s second-largest container manufacturer. Chang remains chairman of PIL and retired as chairman of Singamas in 2013, when his son Teo Siong Seng took over. Teo is also managing director of PIL and CEO of Singamas. His older brother, Teo Tiou Seng, is executive director of Singamas and on the board of PIL.
Old age is not always a blessing for the ultra-rich. At 94, Liliane Bettencourt, heir to the L'Oréal cosmetics empire, is the world's richest woman with an estimated $40.3 billion fortune, according to FORBES' real-time rankings. In August 2016, a French appeals court found photographer François-Marie Banier, Bettencourt’s former confidant, and others guilty of swindling the elderly widow, who has dementia, out of millions. The court ordered Banier to pay a $400,000 fine and give up $90 million in assets (a lower court had imposed a jail term and ordered him to pay her $170 million). Banier denies wrongdoing and is appealing the verdict to France’s highest court. Bettencourt is appealing the reduced judgment.
Just a few months younger than Chang is American billionaire Henry Hillman, who is also 98. He got his start at Pittsburgh Coke & Chemical, the family business, in 1946. When his father died in 1959, Hillman bought out his siblings and sold off the company's assets, then reinvested in real estate, private equity and venture capital. He was an early investor in both private equity firm KKR and California venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers. In recent years, he's given more than $40 million to his eponymous foundation for civic projects in Pittsburgh. FORBES estimates that his net worth is $2.6 billion.
FORBES initially listed Maria Franca Fissolo, who inherited the Italian candy company that makes Nutella, as the world’s newest, oldest billionaire. After several readers contacted FORBES, we discovered we had an incorrect birth date for her in our records. Fissolo is not 99, as we had believed, but in her early 80s.
Chang and Bettencourt are among 46 nonagenarians on the FORBES World's Billionaires list this year. Here are the world’s 10 oldest billionaires, with net worths as they appeared in the 2017 rankings:
Age: 98
Net worth: $1.7 billion
Source of wealth: shipping
Citizenship: Singapore
Age: 98
Net worth: $2.6 billion
Source of wealth: investments
Citizenship: United States
Age: 96
Net worth: $2.4 billion
Source of wealth: banking
Citizenship: Brazil
Age: 96
Net worth: $1.5 billion
Source of wealth: real estate
Citizenship: Canada
Age: 95
Net worth: $3.1 billion
Source of wealth: construction
Citizenship: Philippines
Age: 95
Net worth: $1.6 billion
Source of wealth: insurance
Citizenship: United States
Age: 94
Net worth: $1.9 billion
Source of wealth: property, retail
Citizenship: Australia
8. Liliane Bettencourt & family
Age: 94
Net worth: $39.5 billion
Source of wealth: L'Oreal
Citizenship: France
Age: 93
Net worth: $1.5 billion
Source of wealth: textiles, electronics
Citizenship: Hong Kong
10. David Murdock
Age: 93
Net worth: $2.7 billion
Source of wealth: Dole, real estate
Citizenship: United States