With an estimated personal fortune of US$15.3 billion, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is the world’s wealthiest bachelor, according to a Wealth-X top 10 list that includes Italian fashion designer Giorgio Armani and Mikhail Prokhorov, owner of an American basketball team, the Brooklyn Nets.
Allen, who is the founder of Vulcan Capital and owner of an American football team, the Seattle Seahawks, and an American basketball team, the Portland Trail Blazers, has never been married and lives full-time on Seattle’s Mercer Island. He bought a US $27-million, eight-bedroom mansion in the Silicon Valley town of Atherton in mid-November, according to several media reports. Allen joins other billionaire residents in the Atherton neighborhood, including Google chairman Eric Schmidt, HP chief Meg Whitman and brokerage magnate Charles Schwab.
Giorgio Armani, the fashion world’s perennial bachelor, has an estimated personal net worth of nearly $11 billion, which puts him in the number two spot on the Wealth-X list. The legendary Italian designer – whose business empire includes a high-fashion clothing line, hotels and fragrances – turns 80 in April 2014.
Below are the top five billionaire bachelors:
|
Rank
|
Name
|
Age
|
Company
|
Net Worth
(in US$ billion)
|
|
1
|
Paul Allen
|
60
|
Vulcan Capital
|
15.3
|
|
2
|
Giorgio Armani
|
79
|
Giorgio Armani S.p.A
|
10.9
|
|
3
|
Mikhail Prokhorov
|
48
|
Brooklyn Nets
|
9.3
|
|
4
|
Xavier Niel
|
46
|
Iliad
|
8.0
|
|
5
|
David Geffen
|
70
|
Dreamworks Animation SKG
|
6.6
|
The individuals on the list have never been married.
Wealth-X President David S. Friedman commented: “Against the backdrop of a proliferation of matchmaking TV shows and online services, meeting the right person is harder than ever. Add to that the compounding difficulty of super wealth and navigating the right soul mate and discerning right intentions becomes even more challenging.”
About Wealth-X
Wealth-X is the definitive source of intelligence on the ultra wealthy with the world’s largest collection of curated research on ultra high net worth (UHNW) individuals, defined as those with net assets of US$30 million and above. Headquartered in Singapore, it has 12 offices on five continents.