http://in.news.yahoo.com/040404/137/2cdva.html Sunday April 4, 11:54 PM IKEA founder overtakes Gates as world's richest - TV STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Ingvar Kamprad, the Swede who founded furniture retail chain IKEA, has overtaken Microsoft's Bill Gates as the world's richest man, Swedish TV news reported on Sunday. Citing next week's edition of the Swedish business weekly Veckans Affarer, public service SVT2 television said Kamprad, 77, has a personal fortune of 400 billion crowns ($53 billion). Gates's fortune is put at $47 billion, according to the latest list of the world's rich in U.S. Forbes magazine, SVT2 said. Kamprad, known for frugal habits such as flying economy class, lives in Switzerland and no longer takes part in the daily running of IKEA, but has kept ownership of the company with more than 180 stores in over 30 countries in the family. SVT2 said the dollar's slide against other currencies is the main reason why Kamprad has now overtaken Gates.
Lesson - if you want to become the richest man in the world, sell crappy bullsh*t products to armies of clueless morons. P.T. Barnum was right all along.
===================== Most on the Forbes list & Fortune list have patterns of ; middle age plus real estate public business owner/management private business owner/management
That's crap, this guy went from 18.5 Billion in Feb 2004 Forbes list to 53 Billion dollars. Somethings not right here.
That may be true, but Kamprad did this in 2 months. The Forbes list came out in Feb 2004 and he was worth 18.5 Billion. Ikea stated that it is denying Kamprad is the richest.