Wheel of fortune turns for wealthiest
Commodity rally boosts Glencore's Glasenberg but Atul Gupta drops out of dollar billionaire club
The past 12 months have been terrible for three out of four dollar billionaires on the Rich List, although Glencore CEO Ivan Glasenberg is probably thanking the commodity gods for their generosity. Atul Gupta of Oakbay Investments, Bruno Steinhoff of Steinhoff and PSG founder Jannie Mouton dropped out of the dollar billionaire club. But if ranked according to rands, the number of billionaires in South Africa has risen to 52 from 50 last year. One of the newest additions to the list - debuting at No13 - is Dis-Chem founder and CEO Ivan Saltzman, who owns 53.55% of the pharmacy chain.While retail magnate Christo Wiese's portfolio slumped by 22% to $5.7-billion (about R81-billion), the wheel of fortune seems to have turned in Glasenberg's favour - his wealth grew to $4.2-billion, up from last year's $1.6-billion at an exchange rate of R13.69 to the dollar. During 2014 and 2015, Glencore was hurt by a crashing commodities market, costing Glasenberg about two-thirds of his wealth. Glenco...
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