Thursday, March 3, 2011

FinancialEdge: Who Wants To Be A Trillionaire?

One trillion dollars is a figure so vast most people cannot really get a firm hold on what it means. One trillion is roughly the GDP of Mexico and South Korea, one-half of the U.S. federal government's revenue in 2010, and enough to buy Exxon Mobil, Apple, Google, Nike and Agilent, with billions left over. (For related reading, also check out What's Your Billionaire Age?)

Even though $1 trillion is an unthinkably large sum of money, sooner or later the world will have its first trillionaire. When John D. Rockefeller became a billionaire in 1916 that too was a seemingly impossible level to attain - and that billion dollars was equivalent to around $400 billion in today's figures. Let us consider, then, who might have a chance of approaching this figure and it will require.

Carlos Slim Helu
Carlos Slim is a well-known Mexican tycoon with major interests in landline and cellular telecommunications in Latin America. Worth upwards of $54 billion in 2010, but also 70 years old, Slim faces long odds of even approaching $1 trillion. Assuming another twenty years of wealth accumulation, Slim would have to see compound annual growth of 16% - an unlikely achievement given the top-line growth of his primary holding is in the mid single-digits.

Please click this link for the full piece:
http://financialedge.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0311/Who-Wants-To-Be-A-Trillionaire.aspx

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