There are currently more than 2,871 individuals on earth who can claim the title of billionaires. On Tuesday, April 2, Forbes magazine published the ranking of individuals with fortunes estimated at over one billion dollars. Together, they represent a total of 14.2 trillion dollars. Among these fortunes, Livia Voigt, at only 19 years old, is the youngest on the list.
As every year, Forbes economic magazine has compiled its list of the 25 youngest billionaires in the world in 2024. At the top, a young woman only 19 years old named Livia Voigt. Originally from Brazil, she owns a fortune amounting to 1.1 billion dollars thanks to her minority stake in the electrical equipment manufacturer WEG.
Co-founded by her grandfather Werner Ricardo Voigt, who passed away in 2016, the publicly traded company is positioned as the largest industrial of electric motors in America. WEG notably achieved a turnover of approximately 6 billion dollars in 2022.
Livia Voigt’s attainment of billionaire status has attracted the attention of the business world. The young woman does not hold (yet?) a position on the board of WEG and she does not rest on her growing wealth, remaining focused on her university studies in the field of psychology.
This is the first time that Livia Voigt has entered this prestigious ranking, just like her 26-year-old sister Dora Voigt de Assis.
No self made
The individuals on this list of billionaires under 30 share a common characteristic: they are all heirs to family fortunes. Second in the ranking and two months older than Livia Voigt, Italian Clemente Del Vecchio is on his side the heir to EssilorLuxottica, owner of brands like Ray-Ban.
The absence of “self-made” billionaires (those who have built their fortune themselves) in this ranking is explained in particular by the aging of these wealthy autodidacts who are now passing the age of thirty.
This is the case of Evan Spiegel, CEO of the Snapchat messaging app now aged 33, or Palmer Luckey, 31, a pioneer in virtual reality with Oculus VR.
The millennials, a generation of heirs
For specialists, the trend observed within the data provided by Forbes heralds an unprecedented economic phenomenon. Over the next few years, we should witness the largest generational wealth transfer in history.
According to UBS bank, over 1,000 billionaires are expected to transfer around 5.2 trillion dollars to their heirs over the next two decades. Astronomical figures based on the fortunes of billionaires aged 70 and over.
The Generation Y, or millennials, is thus expected to become the richest in history, benefiting from the wealth of their elders from the silent generation (those born from 1920 to 1940) and from the baby boomers (born from 1945 to 1960).
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