Germany’s richest person owns discount supermarket giant Aldi Sud.

Karl Hans Albrecht, Germany’s richest person and world number 6 richest men was born on 20 February 1920.He was grown up in the modest circumstances in Essen. His father was a miner and later was employed as a baker’s assistant. His mother had a small grocery store in the worker’s quarter of Schonnebeck. His brother “Theo” worked in his mother’s store, while Karl worked in a delicatessen shop. During World War II Karl served in the German Army. After the end of World War II, they took over their mother’s business in 1946. With younger brother Theo, Karl transformed their mother’s grocery store into discount supermarket chain Aldi (Albrecht-Discount). Aldi’s operations were later divided between the brothers in 1961, Karl took the stores in southern Germany, plus the rights to the brand in the U.K., Australia and the U.S. Theo got northern Germany and the rest of Europe.

Karl Albrecht has withdrawn himself from public life and maintained a selective circle for that a little is known about him. He is married and he has two children, neither of them is employed by Aldi. He is a fan of golf, and he built his personal golf course, the Öschberghof, in 1976 where he loves to play. He also raises orchids and collects antique typewriters.

In 1994, Karl Albrecht retard from Aldi Süd and took the position of chairman of the board. At the beginning of 2002, he also relinquished that position. Now, the business is no longer run by any of Karl Albrecht’s family members.

According to Forbrs Magazine Karl Albrecht is the wealthiest man in Germany and he is among the richest men in the world, with an estimated net worth of $21.5 billion in 2009.

Teenager Ingvar Kamprad Peddled matches, fish, pens, Christmas cards and other items by bicycle.

Ingvar Feodor Kamprad is a Swedish entrepreneur was born in Pjätteryd in Almhult Municipality and grew up on a farm called Älmtaryd near the small village of Agunnaryd in Liungby Municipality in the province of Smaland, Sweden on March 30,1926.

According to Forbes magazine, he is the richest person in Europe and the 5th wealthiest person in the world in 2009, with an estimated net worth of around US$22 billion.

When Kamprad was a young boy he buys the matches from Stockholm in bulk very cheaply and sell them individually at a low price from his bicycle. From matches, he expanded to selling fish, Christmas tree decorations, seeds and later ballpoint pens and pencils. When Kamprad was 17, his father gave him a reward for succeeding in his studies. He used this money to establish the home furnishing retail chain IKEA.

The acronym IKEA is made up of the initials of his name (Ingvar Kamprad) plus those of Elmtaryd (now spelled Älmtaryd) , the family farm where he was born; and the nearby village Agunnaryd.

Kamprad lived in Switzerland since 1976. At that time he maintained a very simple life. He drives a 15 year old Volvo, use economy class during air travel and take very cheap meals. He always encourages his IKEA employees to write on both sides of a paper.

Swedish business weekly Veckans Affarer reported that Kamprad is the wealthiest person in the world, assuming that he owns the entire IKEA Company. But both IKEA and the Kamprad family reject that report because Kamprad personally retains little ownership in the company. He transferred his interest to Stichting INGKA Foundation and INGKA holding as part of a complex tax sheltering scheme.

The sliding value of the US dollar in 2005 put Kamprad ahead as the richest person in the world. In March 2009, Forbes magazine estimated his fortune at US$22 billion, making him the 5th richest person in the world.

Though he retired in 1986; as company’s “senior adviser” he still reportedly works tirelessly on his brand. His sons all work at the company.

Lawrence Joseph Larry Ellison is an American entrepreneur and the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Oracle Corporation.

World number 4 richest man and database titan Lawrence J. Ellison was born on August 17, 1944 in the Bronx, New York City in a Jewish family. At the age of 9 month he was contracted by pneumonia. So his 19 year’s old unmarried mother fined it difficult to nursing him. She requested her aunt and uncle in Chicago to raise him. At the request of his mother, Lillian Spellman Ellison and Louis Ellison adopted him when he was only nine months old. Until he was twelve years old he did not know that he was adopted. Ellison did not learn the name of his mother or meet her until he was 48; the identity of his father is unknown.
Ellison grew up in Chicago’s in a two-bedroom apartment. His father was a modest government employee.

Ellison graduated from Eugene Field Elementary School, Chicago and attended Sullivan High School. Ellison was a bright but inattentive student. After his adoptive mother had just died he left the University of Illinois at the end of his second year with out taking part in final exams. Then he attended the University of Chicago for one term, where he first encountered computer designing.

Ellison started his carrier in Ampex Corporation during 1970s in a database for the CIA, which he named “Oracle”. A paper on relational database systems called “A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks” written by Edgar F. Codd inspired him, and he founded Software Development Laboratories (SDL) in 1977, putting up only $2000 of his own money, In 1979, SDL was renamed as Relational Software Inc., later on renamed as Oracle.

In 1990, Oracle was suffering with mismatch between cash and revenues and lay off 10% i.e., about 400 of its work force. Later Ellison says that Oracle had made “an incredible business mistake.”

During 1990-1993, Sybase was the fastest growing database company and Oracle fell behind Sybase. But in 1993 Sybase’s merger with Power soft, as a result they lost their focus from their core database technology and sold the rights to its database software to Microsoft Corporation. Microsoft is now marketing that product under the banner of “SQL Server.”

In 1994, Informix Software overtook Sybase in 1994 and become competitor of Oracle. But ultimately, Oracle defeated Informix. In 1997 Ellison was made a director of Apple Computer.

Once Informix and Sybase were defeated, Oracle enjoyed years of industry dominance.

Ellison’s earning from Oracle: (in us $)

In the year ending May 31, 2009 he made $56.8 million. For the fourth year in a row, Oracle’s Board awarded Ellison another 7 million stock options on July 2, 2009.

A report published on August 22, 2009 said that for the fiscal year of 2010 Ellison would be paid only $1 for his base salary, down from the $1,000,000 he was paid in fiscal 2009.

According to Forbes list Ellison’s was the ninth richest man in the world in 2005 and his net worth was estimated as $18.4 billion. According to Forbes list of billionaires Currently (as of March 11, 2009) he is the fourth richest person in the world and third richest American, with an estimated net worth of $22.5 billion.

Now Ellison owns 22.59% of Oracle’s shares which worth between 20 to 25 billion dollars.

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Latin America’s richest man Mexican telecom titan Carlos Slim Helú dropped one spot to No. 3 losing $25 billion.

Mexican Communication businessman and Investor Carlos Slim Helu are involved in a group of companies. His main business and investment sectors are telecommunications, banking, insurance, retail, technology, and auto parts manufacturing. According to the Forbes business magazine Carlos Slim Helu is famous being the number 3 richest men out of top ten in the world, wealthiest in the Mexican and the richest Latin American man.
Carlos Slim Helú is the 5th of 6 children of Mr. Yusef Salim and mother Linda Helu. He was born in Mexico City on the 28th of January, 1940 and graduated as engineer from the University of “Nacional Autonoma de Mexico”.

During a privatization period of the Mexican government in 1990 Slim Helu acquired the Telefonos de Mexico (Telmex) cheaply and he makes it profitable by raising phone call costs soon after purchasing the business. For which he was criticized too. But he is going on improving the phone services in Mexico by offering various services like local and long distance calls, mobile phone services, Internet services, and a telephone directory etc. The main secrete of Carlos financial success is finding undervalued companies and making them profitable.
Carlos Slim Helu say’s “It’s not a question of arriving and putting in a whole new administration, but instead, arriving and “compacting” things as much as possible, reducing management layers. We want as few management layers as possible, so that executives are very close to the operations. We also don’t believe in having big corporate infrastructures.”

Carlos Slim Helu has been some time referred as the “Warren Buffett of Latin America”, but the basic difference between Carlos and Buffett is that Carlos thinks himself as an operator of his companies, but Buffett is just an investor of his companies.

Carlos has keen interest in Internet and modern technology. He say’s “Technology is going to transform people’s lives and society everywhere in the world. My main task is to understand what’s going on and try to see where we can fit in.”
Carlos owns the largest Internet Service Provider (ISP) in Mexico and one of the largest in the United States of America and also the major computer retailer CompUSA throughout the USA and Puerto Rico having more than 200 retail stores.

According to Forbes business magazine Mexican Telecom tycoon Carlos Slim Helu’s was the 4th richest man in the world with net worth of US $23.8 billion, in 2006 with net worth US $30 billion he ranked as the 3rd richest man in the world and in 2007 he remained in third position with US $49 billion. This was a successful year for Mexican Billionaire. This year his wealth dramatically increased by US $19 billion. In June 2007, it was reported that his wealth increased to US $67.8 billion (estimated), which put him ahead of Warren Buffett and Bill Gates and ranked him the richest man in the world.
In the year 2009, due to economic recession the collective net worth of richest people’s down $2 trillion from last year. Bill Gates lost $18 billion, Warren Buffett, last year’s No. 1, lost $25 billion and Mexican telecom tycoon Carlos Slim Helú also lost $25 billion and dropped to third richest men in the world.