The rise of emerging markets is reshaping the ranks of the superwealthy.
There was once a time when a captain of industry started his day with a full English breakfast and a quick skim through the Financial Times to see how British stalwarts like ICI were performing.
More recently, a US Master of the Universe would begin his day at 5am with a bowl of granola and a quick run through the latest triumphs from Silicon Valley, recapped on CNBC.
Plenty of big UK companies are still thriving, of course, and in the US, the tech giant Apple has just become one of the top five biggest US companies. But it's safe to say that investors' first thoughts now turn more often overseas.
You've barely been able to take a spoonful of your Huevos Rancheros in the past couple of years before Reuters' or Bloomberg's website on your iPhone is making the investment case for this or that BRIC country, or the soaring ambition of a hitherto unheard of emerging market company.
After the triple-digit stock market gains from investing in recent years, perhaps that's no surprise.
Not so Slim pickings
Yet it's not just us little investors who have fixed a greedy eye on emerging markets.
The West's superwealthy have been expanding their interests overseas, too -- while keeping the other eye on the up-and-coming moguls of such regions, in case they threatened their status as the global elite.
Almost inevitably, that threat became real yesterday when the closely watched Forbes Rich List named a Mexican as the world's wealthiest person.
The man of the moment, Carlos Slim Helu, is worth $53.5 billion. Seventy years old, the roots of Slim's fortune lie in the privatisation of Mexico's telephone network in the 1990s. He now makes money in construction, too, with his conglomerate Impulsora del Desarrollo y el Empleo specialising in infrastructural projects.
I think it's interesting that Slim's money was made domestically. As investors, we're too quick to assume that emerging market riches are based on exports to the richer West, when in fact it's the urbanization and growing wealth of the leading developing nations that will secure their long-term prosperity and status on the world stage.
The three other emerging market representatives in Forbes' Top 10 do fit more to the expected mould, though.
Fourth-placed Mukesh Ambani runs the energy giant Reliance Industries -- the biggest company in India by market capitalisation. Fifth-placed Lakshmi Mittal (the highest placed British resident on the list) is a well-known steel mogul.
Brazil's Eike Batista -- who added $19.5 billion to his personal balance sheet in the past year to gain eighth position – made most of his money through OGX, a newly-listed oil and gas company. Eike also has a shipbuilder he's getting ready to float for over $5 billion, plus various mining interests.
Gates shut out and Buffett rebuffed
Compare the wealth base of these rising stars with that of two tycoons formerly occupying the top slot.
Bill Gates, currently worth $53 billion, was last year's top dog. You don't need me to tell you Gates made his money with Microsoft, the dominant technology company of the late 1980s and 1990s. But almost ten years to the day from the dotcom bubble bursting, technology hasn't been a reliable billionaire-making machine for a good while (though Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg will be an instant billionaire if and when the social network gets its IPO).
Then we have Warren Buffett, languishing down in third place with a mere $47 billion. Buffett made his fortune backing world-conquering US brands such as Coca-Cola and American Express, as well as by acquiring dozens of traditional manufacturers and retailers. For the record, Buffett actually added $10 billion to his net worth last year -- he just didn't recover as fast as his good friend Gates or Mexico's Slim.
With the US still getting over the fallout from the credit crisis, it's hard to tell whether Gates' and Buffett's slippage down the ranks of the world's richest is representative of a permanent re-adjustment to America's hitherto unassailable position in global capitalism, or just a temporary blip.
I suspect it's some combination of both. Fast-growing emerging nations are claiming more of the global pie (although we should note that won't necessarily make us rich) but America has been minting billionaires since the days of Rockefeller and Carnegie. I'm sure it will again.
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