Red Bull heir Mark Mateschitz has become the world’s richest person aged 30 and under after inheriting 49 per cent of the energy drink company when his father died last October, according to the Forbes 2023 World Billionaires List.
Mr Mateschitz has a net worth of $34.7 billion, but his reign will be short-lived, as he turns 31 next month.
His father, Austrian Dietrich Mateschitz, cofounded Red Bull in 1984. The company’s revenue surged by almost a quarter in 2022 after it sold 11.6 billion cans of its energy drink globally, Bloomberg reported in January.
This year’s Forbes list, which used stock prices and exchange rates from March 10 to calculate the personal fortunes of the world’s richest people, features 15 billionaires aged 30 and under, who have a combined net worth of $64 billion.
Eleven of them inherited their wealth, four are self-made entrepreneurs, at least one dropped out of college and two are teenagers.
World’s richest people aged 30 and under — in pictures
Together, the group represents only 0.6 per cent of the 2,640 billionaires featured on this years list, Forbes said.
The world’s newest teenage billionaire — and second-wealthiest on the Forbes list — is Clemente Del Vecchio, 18, who inherited a $3.5 billion fortune (along with two siblings) from his father Leonardo Del Vecchio, the billionaire founder of Italy’s Luxottica group, which owns the likes of Sunglass Hut, Ray-Ban and Oakley.
Salmon tycoon Gustav Magnar Witzoe, 29, is the fourth richest on the list with a net worth of $2.7 billion.
He inherited almost half of his family’s Norwegian salmon farming company SalMar, but is not involved in the business. Instead, he is a tech start-up investor, according to Forbes.
Rounding out the top five is Germany’s Kevin David Lehmann, 20, with a fortune of $2.3 billion.
At the age of 14, Mr Lehmann inherited a 50 per cent stake in chemist chain dm-drogerie from his father, although it remained under trusteeship until his 18th birthday, Forbes said.
Meanwhile, newcomers to the list include South Korean sisters Kim Jung-min, 21, and Kim Jung-youn, 19, both of whom inherited about one third of their family’s assets, including a 15 per cent stake each in game maker Nexon.
They have a net worth of $1.7 billion.
Other newcomers include Briton Ben Francis, 30, who founded activewear maker Gymshark, with a fortune of $1.2 billion, and Palmer Luckey, who sold his first start-up — VR headset maker Oculus — to Facebook for $2 billion.
Mr Luckey, 30, now has a net worth of $1.7 billion.
Entrepreneur Ryan Breslow, 28, fell from fourth place in 2022, to last place on the list this year. The Stanford University dropout, who has founded three start-ups, has a net worth of $1.1 billion, down from $2 billion last year.
Norwegian sisters Katharina and Alexandra Andresen, aged 27 and 27, respectively, continue to feature on the list with personal fortunes of $1.3 billion and are ranked 13th.
However, the biggest fall this year is that of FTX co-founder Gary Wang — who topped the youngest billionaires list in 2022 at the age of 29 with a net worth of $5.9 billion.
The former chief technology officer of collapsed cryptocurrency platform FTX pleaded guilty to fraud charges in December — and is not expected to feature on the world’s richest lists again.
World’s top 15 richest people under 30
- Mark Mateschitz — $34.7 billion
- Clemente Del Vecchio — $3.5 billion
- Luca Del Vecchio — $3.5 billion
- Leonardo Maria Del Vecchio — $3.5 billion
- Gustav Magnar Witzoe — $2.7 billion
- Kevin David Lehmann — $2.3 billion
- Michal Strnad — $2 billion
- Kim Jung-min — $1.7 billion
- Kim Jun-youn — $1.7 billion
- Palmer Luckey — $1.7 billion
- Katharina Andresen — $1.5 billion
- Alexandra Andresen — $1.5 billion
- Wang Zelong — $1.4 billion
- Ben Francis — $1.2 billion
- Ryan Breslow — $1.1 billion
Source: Forbes
