A billionaire, in countries that use the short scale number naming system, is a person who has a net worth of at least one billion units of a given currency, usually the United States dollar, Euro, or Pound sterling. Forbes magazine updates a complete list of U.S. dollar billionaires around the world every year.[1]
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Based on the Forbes report released on March 2011, there are 1,210 U.S. dollar billionaires worldwide, boasting a combined total net worth of $4.5 trillion as of February 14, 2011. The United States had 413 billionaires, with a total net worth of $1.5 trillion; Asia had 332 (nearly three times the number two years previously), 115 of whom were in the People's Republic of China; Europe had 300; and the rest of the world had 165. Among U.S. billionaires, the average age was 66 years.[2]
In countries that use the long scale number naming system, a billionaire would have 1012 (1,000,000,000,000) units of currency. There are no known Euro or U.S. dollar billionaires in this sense of the word – in U.S. dollars, such a fortune would be roughly equivalent to the entire 2010 gross domestic product of Mexico.[3]
Under the short scale number naming system, a trillionaire would have 1012 units of currency. Although, as noted above, there are no known U.S. dollar or Euro trillionaires, some individuals have attained fortunes of over one trillion units in other currencies. According to VnExpress, 19 Vietnamese had stock market assets valued at over one trillion đồng in May 2010.[4] According to The Korea Times, there are 14 Koreans with stock market assets valued at over one trillion won as of January 2011.[5]
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