Ingenuity beats inheritance in Forbes rich list

FOUR Irishmen are listed as billionaires in the latest annual edition of Forbes magazine’s list of the world’s richest people, which voted Microsoft founder Bill Gates as richest man for the 13th year in a row.

Seán Quinn, the Fermanagh entrepreneur who recently bought the health insurance firm BUPA, is Ireland’s wealthiest individual with an estimated fortune of €3.43 billion.

The self-made businessman has overtaken Ireland’s better-known billionaires such as Tony O’Reilly and Dermot Desmond in recent years due to the dramatic expansion of his Quinn group of businesses.

Mr Quinn, who set up a building materials business from a quarry on his father’s farm without completing his formal education, now owns a major business empire with interests in insurance, construction supplies, glass manufacturing as well as a number of hotels and pubs including the Slieve Russell Hotel in Ballyconnell, Co Cavan.

Mr Quinn is ranked as No 177 in the world’s rich list, well ahead of his nearest Irish rival, John Dorrance III, with a personal fortune of almost €2bn.

Ireland’s second wealthiest man is the US-born heir to the Campbell Soup fortune, who sold his estimated €1.98bn share in the business in 1996.

Financier, Dermot Desmond has overtaken media baron Tony O’Reilly as Ireland’s third’s richest person, climbing almost 200 places to reach No 557 on the Forbes list.

The decision of Celtic football club’s owner to sell his major shareholding in London City Airport last year helped bring his personal wealth to €1.37bn.

However, Dr O’Reilly, best known for his media empire run by Independent News & Media, slipped down the rankings to 583rd place, despite seeing the value of his fortune grow by almost €230m in 2006.

But there was no place in the Forbes list for one of Dr O’Reilly’s main business rivals, Denis O’Brien, who added €610m worth to his business empire in recent weeks through his Caribbean mobile phone business, Digicel.

The magazine admitted that the man who made his initial fortune through ESAT, which won the State’s lucrative second mobile phone licence, would probably have made the list if it had been aware of his recent Digicel deal.

Overall, 2006 was a good year for the world’s richest individuals as two-thirds of the record number of 946 billionaires increased their wealth during the period.

Ingenuity rather than inheritance is the common characteristic as 60% of the tycoons are self-made billionaires.

Meanwhile, Irish rock group U2 emerged as No 4 in a separate list of the World’s Top 100 Celebrities by Forbes.

U2 are estimated to have earned around €800m between July 2005 and June 2006.

However, Forbes admitted that U2’s prominent position in the list after Tom Cruise and the Rolling Stones was largely due to Bono’s global media exposure for his campaigns on AIDS awareness and debt relief in Africa.