Very few hispanics among the richest people in the US

Very few Hispanics among the richest people in the U. S.

I am aboard flight AA 56 on my way to London to then connect to BA flight 434 on to my final destination, Amsterdam in the Netherlands. I will be speaking at the Global Federation of Speakers Summit.

I am very fortunate that I am travelling business class and that will make this 8 hour trip a little bit nicer. Eight hours sitting in the tight seats in the back is quite an ordeal to say the least.

I watched the movie The Fighter, I recommend it to you my dear readers, and when I was ready to look for another movie, I remembered that I should be writing my weekly column for the Puerto Rico Daily Sun.

I take a look at the New York Times to see if I get an idea on what to write about and I draw a blank. Nothing really inspires me to write an article about.

I put the paper away and I take out my I-pad. I look at the screen and suddenly a button stares at me, Forbes list of the 400 richest people in the United States, 2010 edition.

First thing I wonder is how many Hispanics are on the list?

Only five to my surprise, with a Spanish last name. Actually four, because I will not count Jeff Bezos number 18 in the list with a fortune of 12 billion since he is not really Hispanic. He has a Hispanic name because he was adopted by his Cuban step father, Mike Bezos who I have gotten to know personally quite well, and Jeff wanted to be named like him.

An interesting point about this guy, he is always looking for ways to re invent his business. In today’s economy, it is a good thing to re invent your business so that you can take advantage of new opportunities.

Already the world’s largest online bookshop, Amazon is now also the world’s biggest online retailer with net sales of 24.5 billion in 2009. Also quite interesting, its kindle e reader has been its best selling item for the last two years and in fact, in May, June and July of this year, Amazon sold 143 e books for every 100 paper copies. Amazon also acquired online shoe retailer, Zappos which it bought in July 2009 for 1.2 billion in cash and stock. Bezos shares, account for 90% of his net worth, and he has sold $400 million worth of Amazon shares since the start of the year. I found it very interesting that his base salary was $81,840 in 2009 but he spent $1.7 million on his security. Forbes tried to find out why this much security and what it entails but the company spokesperson declined to give an explanation.

Jeff Bezos is an amazing individual. Although I did see him at TED in February, I didn’t have a chance to talk to him, but I did speak to Mike his dad, a very nice down to earth guy. Jeff is now funding aerospace company Blue Origin, which is developing spacecraft in West Texas and they are currently building a vertical takeoff, vertical landing rocket which if everything turns out ok, will take astronauts, researchers and the public into space. How exciting!!!

Getting back to the Hispanic richest men, number 205, and the first Hispanic is a guy named Jude Reyes. They are in the food and beer distribution business in Illinois. I haven’t been able to find out where is his family from but at least the name Reyes means that he is from Hispanic descent.

Number 2 and 290 in the list is John Arrillaga, from California but of Basque descent, began making money buying up tracts of California farmland and converted them into office parks in the 1960’s. With a partner, he now oversees 15 million square feet of land and office buildings in and around San Jose. He is a good guy, well, I can’t be sure of that, but I do know that he donated $100 million to Stanford University in 2006. He went a little bit overboard when he built a bathroom and shower for Stanford’s football coach for $50,000 and he caught some heat for it because at the time, the team’s budget was being reduced.

The third Hispanic is Brazilian Eduardo Saverin of Facebook fame who has a billion dollars because of his early involvement in the development of Facebook. He actually cofounded Facebook with Harvard classmate Mark Zuckerberg in 2004. For a very brief time, he had a 33% stake in Facebook and Zuckerberg had the rest. Then, everything fell apart and he was sued by Facebook for allegedly interfering with business and insisting on keeping a 30% stake in the company. Saverin counter sued and finally settled for a 5% stake and a cofounder bio on Facebook’s site. Ego always plays a part, he wanted to be listed as a cofounder and he got it. He is a very smart guy, graduated magna cum laude from Harvard with a degree in economics.

I have asked around to find out where he is living now and no one knows or no one wants to say where but maybe he is in Brazil.

And the last guy with a Hispanic surname in the Forbes list is Arturo Moreno, from Tucson, Arizona, which means odds are he is of Mexican descent, in the 385^th position tied with a few guys. He is a Vietnam veteran and partnered with Outdoor Systems founder William Levine in 1984. That business was sold to Infinity for $8.7 billion in stock in 1999 and he then bought baseball’s Angels from Disney in 2003. That team has made the playoffs five times since and is now the seventh most valuable team in Major League baseball with a 2010 worth of $520 million.

I should mention that the richest man in the world is Carlos Slim from Mexico who owns a myriad of companies among them Claro, with a presence in Puerto Rico, bought from Verizon a few years ago.

His fortune is estimated to be over 74 billion dollars surpassing Bill Gates who has 54 billion. It is interesting to note that Carlos increased his net worth by 21 billion just last year and that is why he surpassed Bill Gates.

Bill Gates, though, can take comfort in the fact that he is, by a wide margin, the most generous person on the planet, having cut checks worth $28 billion.

In a speech given in Puerto Rico a few months ago, a reporter told Carlos Slim about the Bill Gates charity contributions and asked him whether he was also willing to donate part of his wealth to charity. Carlos’s answer surprised everyone when he answered “I don’t believe in charity”.

Warren Buffet, number 2 in the USA list is coaxing America’s richest to pledge half their fortune to charity. He has already done so and has also declared that when he dies, he will donate 99% of his $45billion to Bill Gates charity and the Buffet children charity and on the will he has a provision that everything he donates must be spent within 10 years.

“Too often a vast collection of possessions ends up possessing its owner. The asset I most value, aside from health, is interesting, diverse and longstanding friends”.

This friends is a very generous man and extremely wise.