Move over, Bill Gates: Baked bean investor Warren Buffett tops list of wealthiest gainers

Warren Buffett spent most of 2013 amassing fortunes of over £23million a day through investments into food manufacturing giants like Heinz

Jenn Selby
Wednesday 25 December 2013 12:00 GMT
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Warren Buffett spent most of 2013 amassing fortunes of over £23million a day through investments into food manufacturing giants like Heinz, which he bought earlier this year
Warren Buffett spent most of 2013 amassing fortunes of over £23million a day through investments into food manufacturing giants like Heinz, which he bought earlier this year

The world’s biggest financial gainer has baked beans and ketchup to thank for catapulting him ahead of Bill Gates in a new list of super-rich tycoons.

Warren Buffett spent most of 2013 amassing fortunes of over £23million a day through investments into food manufacturing giants like Heinz, which he bought earlier this year.

The investor topped the Wealth-X ‘gainers’ list for 2013, having made a staggering £7.7billion since January to bring his estimated net worth to a cool £36billion.

Buffett beat former richest man Gates back to second place. The Microsoft founder added a comparatively measly £7billion to his fortune, which is now estimated at £44.3billion (larger overall than Buffet’s).

But Buffett isn’t one to keep all the cream for himself. The 83-year-old Tycoon is a long-time advocate of high tax rates for the rich, and has given away £6.7billion of shares in his company to good causes, saying: “If you’re in the luckiest one per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.”

Other tycoons who featured on Wealth-X’s super-rich list included Facebook inventor Mark Zuckerberg, Google co-founder Larry Page and Amazon creator Jeff Bezos.

“The individuals on the top ten list collectively gained £62billion in 2013 – an average gain of £6.2billion each,” a Wealth-X spokesperson said in a statement.

“On average, they made £18million per day in 2013 and increased their wealth by 41.6 per cent.”

See the list – and earnings – of the Top 10 below.

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