The planet's mega-moneyed are scattered far and wide, with more than 78 nations and territories across four continents boasting at least one billionaire. That said, the richest individuals’ net worth varies wildly from country to country. The wealthiest residents of some countries, for example, own a mere fraction of the wealth of the global number one, Elon Musk (pictured).

Read on to discover who rules the roost in 30 major economies based on The Richest Billionaire in Each Country 2025, a list published by Forbes in April 2025, and see how their wealth compares to that of the world's richest man.

All dollar amounts in US dollars

Peru’s sole billionaire, Eduardo Hochschild ranks 1,513 in the world with a fortune worth $2.4 billion (£1.9bn) earned from the mining industry. 

In 2006 Hochschild became the chairman of his family's silver and gold mining conglomerate, the Hochschild Group, which his great-uncle founded. He joined the company as a relatively lowly mine safety assistant nearly 40 years ago and has led it since 1998, when kidnappers abducted and murdered his father. Hochschild is currently the group's largest shareholder, with a 38% stake.

The only billionaire in Portugal is Maria Fernanda Amorim, the widow of Americo Amorim (the couple are pictured here). She and their three daughters inherited his fortune when he passed away in 2017. 

Americo oversaw his family's cork business, Corticeira Amorim, which dates back to 1870 and has dominated the cork industry. He also invested in banks in several countries and held an estimated 18% stake in Portuguese oil and gas company Galp Energia, which is currently chaired by his eldest daughter Paula Amorim.

Marcos Galperin is the founder and CEO of e-commerce platform MercadoLibre, which has operations in Portugal and across Latin America. In 2023, Time magazine named MercadoLibre as one of the world's top 100 most influential companies. 

Galperin himself is an alumnus of both Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania. He worked for Argentine oil company YPF and JPMorgan before setting out as an entrepreneur. His overall net worth has defied Argentina’s recent economic travails, growing steadily in the past few years to reach $8 billion (£6.3bn). 

He may be the youngest son of the late Cho Choong-hoon (pictured) who founded Korean Air parent company Hanjin Group, but Cho Jung-ho hasn’t made all of his money in transportation.

The finance tycoon boasts a net worth of $8.4 billion (£6.6bn) thanks to his role as chair of Meritz Financial Group. Years of working in investments meant the baby of the family has out-earned his older brothers – and everyone else in South Korea to boot.

The richest person in Belgium is old-money sugar baron Éric Wittouck, whose grandfather Paul and great-uncle Frantz (pictured) established the Tiense Suicker company at the end of the 19th century.

Publicity-shy Wittouck has massively expanded his fortune with the help of US private equity firm Invus, which has made several lucrative investments on his behalf in companies such as WW International (formerly known as Weight Watchers) and Blue Buffalo Pet Products.

While New Zealand is fast becoming a magnet for super-rich doomsday preppers, the country is home to just five people with a net worth in excess of 10 figures: Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson; investor Richard Chandler; tech whizz Charles Gibbon; spacecraft maker Peter Beck, and packaging tycoon Graeme Hart (pictured).

With a fortune of $9.3 billion (£7.3bn), Auckland resident Hart is the wealthiest of the gang by a long stretch. He's not afraid to splash the cash either, and in 2023 he reportedly took delivery of a swish new superyacht featuring a helipad and incredible glass stairways.

Brothers John and Patrick Collison are the co-founders of digital payment company Stripe, a business idea they developed while in university. Each brother has a personal net worth of $10.1 billion (£7.9bn).

Patrick, age 36, (pictured) is CEO of the firm and John, age 34, is president. The brothers grew up near Limerick, Ireland, where their parents ran a lakeside hotel.
 

Worth a fortune of $10.7 billion (£8.4bn), banking titan Jaime Gilinski Bacal is the joint richest person in Colombia.

With an MBA from Harvard, Bacal got his first job in 1980 with financier Morgan Stanley, working in its mergers and acquisitions department. This experience helped him build one of the biggest banking empires in Latin America over the next few decades – plus he now has a significant stake in Metro Bank.

Bacal, who has dabbled in real estate, also sits on the boards of numerous well-known institutions including the Georgia Institute of Technology, Harvard Business School, Teatro Real in Madrid and the Blavatnik School of Government at Oxford University.

He may have to share the title of Colombia's wealthiest billionaire, but 43-year-old businessman David Velez bears the distinction of being the nation's youngest. Born in Medellín, his family relocated to Costa Rica when he was nine to escape the chaos wrought by warring drug cartels in the country.

Starting his career in investment banking, Velez was inspired to launch the digital banking company Nubank after noticing that 80% of the market was controlled by five Brazilian banks, which charged high fees for basic financial products.

He co-founded Nubank in 2013 and the organisation went public on the New York Stock Exchange in December 2021. Currently, it has 90 million customers across Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. Velez serves as CEO.

Robert Kuok (pictured centre) is the richest person in Malaysia with a $12.1 billion (£9.5bn) fortune. 

His wealth is diversified across several industries. As owner of the Kuok Group, he has stakes in interests ranging from commodities to real estate and hotels, specifically the chain of Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts. The successful and long-established business magnate celebrated his 101st birthday in October 2024.

The top five wealthiest people in Singapore have a combined net worth of $49 billion (£39bn), with Goh Cheng Liang ranking number one.

The self-made businessman started a small paint factory in Singapore in 1962 and amassed his fortune thanks to a majority stake in Japan’s paint manufacturing company Nippon Paint Holdings. He’s pictured here cutting a cake in the shape of a can of paint to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Nippon Paint in Singapore.

The richest of South Africa's seven billionaires is Johann Rupert. He's the chairman of Swiss luxury goods firm Compagnie Financière  Richemont, a holding company that counts Cartier and Montblanc among its portfolio. 

Rupert – who has loudly opposed fracking plans in the Karoo region of South Africa – also chairs and owns 7% of the investment fund Remgro, a company originally founded by his father Anton as Rembrandt Group Ltd in the 1940s. 

Charlene de Carvalho-Heineken is the wealthiest person in the Netherlands by far and one of the richest women in the world.

The heiress's staggering wealth is derived from her 23% stake in Heineken. The Amsterdam-based multinational brewing company was launched by her great-grandfather, Gerard Adriaan Heineken, in 1864. Her husband Michel de Carvalho, sons Charles and Alexander, and daughter Louisa all occupy seats on Heineken boards.

Manuel Villar's self-made fortune of $17.2 Billion (£13.5bn) makes him the wealthiest billionaire in the Philippines. His fortune comes from a diverse range of companies. These include property development firm Vista Land & Lifescapes, run by his son Manuel Paolo, which owns a portfolio of 10 shopping malls and two office towers.

Villar's wife and other children hold public office, and he too has been actively involved in politics, even running for president in 2010. In recent years, he's been busy launching his own TV network.

Former H&M chairman Stefan Persson is the wealthiest person in Sweden thanks to his 36% stake in the fast fashion business.

H&M was founded by Persson's father Erling in 1947. When Stefan Persson stepped down from his role as chairman in 2020, his son Karl-Johan succeeded him. Several other members of the Persson family are among Sweden's billionaires. 

The UK boasts some world-famous billionaires, including Sir Richard Branson and Sir James Dyson.

However, the richest citizen of all is currently Michael Platt, cofounder and CEO of BlueCrest Capital Management, one of the world's largest hedge fund firms. Platt recently edged out Sir James Ratcliffe to take the top spot among the UK's billionaires and has largely flown under the radar. He maintains a low profile with one newspaper report claiming that many of his employees don't even know who he is.

The so-called “King of Coal,” president director of coal company Bayan Resources Low Tuck Kwong actually got his start in timber. However, his net worth skyrocketed when he bought a coal mine in Borneo in 1997.

The businessman has also expanded into renewables with a majority stake in Singapore's renewable energy company Metis Energy, further bolstering his net worth of $27.3 billion (£21.4bn).

Around 10 years ago Low Tuck Kwong gained a reputation for his lavish private zoo, home to peacocks, orangutans and tigers as well as zebra hybrids known as “zonkeys” and a “zorse.”

Mining magnate Gina Rinehart is the richest person in Australia with a fortune of almost $29.3 billion (£23bn). Rinehart has transformed her late father's floundering iron ore company Hancock Prospecting into a flourishing business, raking in billions in the process.

In recent years, she's made big investments in the rare earth minerals sector. Rinehart is also Australia's leading landowner and one of its premier cattle producers.

Eduardo Saverin is the wealthiest person in Brazil, with a net worth of $34.5 Billion (£27bn).

Saverin cofounded Meta Platforms, formerly Facebook, with his Harvard classmate Mark Zuckerberg in 2004. He's now a venture capitalist, but the bulk of his wealth comes from his small but extremely lucrative stake in Meta.

Swiss shipping magnate Rafaela Aponte and her Italian businessman husband Gianluigi (pictured) each have a net worth of $37.7 billion (£29.6bn).

This makes them the richest of Switzerland's many billionaires by some distance. The couple entered the shipping industry in 1970 when they purchased their first ship with a loan of $200,000, the equivalent of around $1.6 million (£1.2m) in 2025. Today, they each own a 50% stake in MSC, the world's largest shipping line.

Who knew Nutella and Kinder Eggs could make someone so deliciously rich?

The executive chairman of his family's eponymous confectionery company, Giovanni Ferrero is the wealthiest of Italy's billionaires by some stretch. In the financial year ending August 2024, the business recorded revenues of €18.4 billion ($20.5bn/£15.8bn), while Ferrero's net worth stands at a very sweet $38.2 billion (£30bn).

At 32, Austria's youngest billionaire is also the country's wealthiest.

Mark Mateschitz inherited his father's 49% stake in energy drink company Red Bull when CEO Dietrich Mateschitz passed away in 2022. 

The richest billionaire in Germany, and easily one of the wealthiest people in Europe, Dieter Schwarz opened the first Lidl store in 1973. His firm Schwarz Group is worth more than $160 billion (£126bn) thanks to discount supermarket stores including Kaufland.

When his father Josef Schwarz – a partner in fruit wholesaler Suedfruechte Grosshandel Lidl & Co since 1930 – passed away in 1997, Dieter inherited the firm and built it into a retail empire that spans Europe. A notorious recluse, not much is known about Germany’s biggest billionaire and verified images of him are scarce.

The richest person in Japan is Tadashi Yanai, the founder of Fast Retailing, the parent company of global fast fashion chain Uniqlo.

Bolstering the business further, Fast Retailing has snapped up a raft of top brands over the years, ranging from Helmut Lang and Theory to J Brand and Comptoir des Cotonniers.

Changpeng Zhao is the richest person in Canada with a net worth of $62.9 billion (£49.4bn), according to Forbes. Also known as "CZ", the founder and former CEO of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance has maintained his largesse despite pleading guilty to money laundering charges in 2023 and agreeing to pay a $50 million (£39m) fine.

Following his guilty plea, Zhao spent four months in a California jail during 2024. Now the billionaire former felon is a strategic adviser to the newly created Pakistan Crypto Council.

Considering the immense popularity of the app TikTok, it’s no surprise the co-founder and former CEO of parent company Bytedance is China’s wealthiest person.

Despite the app's runaway success, Zhang Yiming stepped down in 2021 saying he lacked leadership skills and no longer wanted to run the company. He is still thought to own around 20% of the firm, which has since faced the prospect of being banned in the US.

With a fortune of $65.5 billion (£51.4bn), Zhang Yiming is the richest of China’s 450 billionaires.

Carlos Slim Helú reigned supreme as the world's richest person between 2010 and 2013 and still holds the title of richest person in Mexico. 

The telecoms tycoon controls Latin America's largest wireless company, América Móvil, and also has hefty stakes in construction, mining, consumer goods, and real estate firms.

With an eye-watering fortune of $92.5 billion (£73bn), Mukesh Ambani is the richest man in India by a long shot. Ambani runs Reliance Industries, a business founded by his yarn trader father Dhirubhai Ambani in 1966. Today, the business has interests in petrochemicals, oil and gas, telecoms, and retail. 

The company is expanding into green energy, with plans to invest $80 billion (£65bn) in renewables over the next 10-15 years. Ambani's three children, Akash, Isha and Anant, joined the board of Reliance in 2023. Known for their lavish spending, their extravagant family weddings have made headlines around the world.

Amancio Ortega, the founder and former chairman of Inditex, holds the title of Spain's richest person.

Inditex is the parent company of the fast fashion chain Zara, as well as brands including Massimo Dutti, Bershka, and Pull&Bear. According to Forbes, Ortega earns around $400 million (£325m) in dividends each year, which he invests in real estate around the world.

Bernard Arnault helms the French conglomerate LVMH, which he formed in 1987. With a staggering fortune of $178 billion (£140bn), he's not only the richest person in France but has also briefly been the richest person in the world.

One of Europe's most valuable businesses, LVMH boasts scores of distinguished high-end brands, from Louis Vuitton and Christian Dior to Moët & Chandon and Tiffany & Co. The latter brand was acquired by LVMH in 2021 in a deal worth a sparkling $15.8 billion (£12.8bn). 

When it comes to billionaires, America leads the way with more than 900. The richest of the lot is Tesla, SpaceX, and X supremo Elon Musk, whose fortune stood at $342 billion (£268bn) when Forbes' Richest Billionaire list was published.

Early last year, Musk was the third-richest person on the planet, beaten by Jeff Bezos in the US and blocked from the top spot by France's Bernard Arnault. However, his fortune has ballooned, and he's now very firmly back on top. Given the fluctuating fortunes of the world's wealthiest people, it’s not impossible that it could all change again. But for now, Musk’s world-beating position looks almost unassailable...

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