Billionaire altruism: Pledge to help poor

Serenaded by Kylie Minogue and fed 1.7 tons of lobster, celebrities enjoyed the opening of the Atlantis in Dubai last week. But former London cabbie-turned billionaire retailer Mahesh “Micky” Jagtiani had bigger worries.

His vision, he said at the champaign bash, is to teach the poor English so that they can build successful businesses. “I will give about a billion dollars to help people,” said the founder of the Landmark Group. No wonder friends call him the “Gandhi of retail”.

Earlier, James Wolfensohn, the former president of the World Bank, worried about how the poor will cope with the “tectonic shifts” in the economy. For wealthy people, it is not an issue of survival, he said during the Leaders in Dubai Forum. “Their kids might be taken out of private school and put into state school. That never killed anybody. But if you can’t eat, that kills you,” he said. His sentiment was echoed by Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency who warned: “Poverty is the most lethal weapon of mass destruction.”