Sheldon Adelson, founder of Las Vegas Sands Corp., the world’s largest casino company, was the second-biggest gainer in 2013, adding $14.4 billion to his net worth as the company’s shares rose 71 percent. Gaming revenue from the six operators of China’s only legal casinos rose 18.6 percent to 360.75 billion patacas ($45.2 billion) last year, Macau’s Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau said today.
Las Vegas Sands had revenue of $13.2 billion in the 12 months ending Sept. 30. More than 58 percent of its sales come from Macau.
Slim lost $1.4 billion during 2013. His America Movil SAB, the largest mobile-phone operator in the Americas, dropped 12 percent in the first three months of the year after Mexico’s Congress passed a bill to quash the billionaire’s market dominance. The company finished the year up 2 percent after a planned expansion into Europe was reined in, reassuring investors who were leery about the billions of dollars in investment the strategy would require.
The 73-year-old Mexican is $51 billion ahead of Jorge Paulo Lemann, Latin America’s second-richest person and Brazil’s wealthiest. Lemann’s 3G Capital completed its $29 billion acquisition of Pittsburgh-based HJ Heinz Co. in June, a transaction done with Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. With his two partners, the Brazilian billionaire, a former professional tennis player, manages three iconic American brands: Burger King, Budweiser beer and Heinz ketchup.
Latin America’s third-wealthiest person is Colombian Luis Carlos Sarmiento, who controls more than a quarter of the country’s financial industry through four publicly traded banks that form Bogota-based Grupo Aval. His net worth fell 7.4 percent to $16.7 billion, according to the Bloomberg ranking.
Nobody lost more of their fortune than Eike Batista, whose net worth declined more than $12 billion during the year. OGX Petroleo & Gas Participacoes SA, the oil company that transformed him into Brazil’s richest man, filed for bankruptcy protection in October. Batista was the world’s eighth-richest person in March 2012, and now has a negative net worth, according to the Bloomberg ranking.
Hidden Billionaires
“His loss of credibility is explained by not delivering on the results promised when he listed his companies,” Elad Revi, an investment analyst at Spinelli SA, said by telephone in a July 26 interview from Sao Paulo. “There was a chain reaction: he lost credibility in one, then he lost it in all of them.”
Bloomberg News uncovered 109 billionaires in 2013 who have never appeared on an international wealth ranking, including Lynsi Torres, the youngest female billionaire in the U.S. The 31-year-old heiress to In-N-Out Burger has watched her family expand the chain from a single drive-through hamburger stand founded in 1948 in Baldwin Park, California, into a fast-food empire valued at more than $1 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
John “Johnny” Morris became a billionaire by stitching together shopping outlets for multiple outdoor sports and adding a touch of entertainment to the mix. Since founding Bass Pro Shops LLC in 1972 in his father’s liquor store in Springfield, Missouri, Morris has expanded to at least 58 superstores, with 20 more planned. The company makes a variety of fishing boats and house-apparel brands, and controls a chain of full-service restaurants inside the stores.