Nine Armenians on Forbes 2023 Billionaires List

NEW YORK (Armradio) — Nine Armenians have made it to the Forbes 2023 World’s Billionaires list. Globally, Forbes has counted 2,640 ten-figure fortunes, down from 2,668 last year.

Sergei Galitsky (Arutyunyan), founder of Magnit, one of Russia’s biggest supermarket chains and cosmetics retailers with more than 26,000 stores, ranks 905th on the list.

Samvel Karapetyan, owner of the $2.8 billion Tashir Holding and a commercial real estate developer, eanks 1,104th.

Albert Avdolyan, who owns Far East and Siberian coal mining and gas companies, is ranked 1368th.

Artem Khachatryan, co-founder of the Russian discount retailer Fix Price, is 1434th.

Russian-Armenian entrepreneur Andrey Andreev (Andrey Ogadzhanyantshas), who built five online dating sites and apps since 2004: Mamba, Badoo, Bumble, Chappy and Lumen, ranks 1616th.

Chairman of Corporación América International Eduardo Eurnekian, the son of Armenian immigrants to Argentina, who first operated in the textile industry, comes 1575th.

Noubar Afeyan, the founder and CEO of Cambridge, Mass. life sciences innovation firm Flagship Pioneering, is 1804th.

Kim Kardashian, who parlayed reality TV stardom into a ten-figure fortune, the vast majority of which comes from her stake in Skims, her shapewear business, ranks 2259th.

Kardashian shares the 2259th place with Ruben Vardanyan, co-founder of the investment company Troika Dialog in the early 1990s.

Altogether, the planet’s billionaires are now worth $12.2 trillion, a drop of $500 billion from $12.7 trillion in March 2022. Nearly half the list is poorer than a year ago, including Elon Musk, who falls from No. 1 to No. 2 after his pricey acquisition of Twitter helped sink Tesla shares. Bernard Arnault, head of luxury goods giant LVMH, takes his place as the world’s richest person, marking the first time a citizen of France leads the ranking.

The United States still boasts the most billionaires, with 735 list members worth a collective $4.5 trillion. China (including Hong Kong and Macau) remains second, with 562 billionaires worth $2 trillion, followed by India, with 169 billionaires worth $675 billion.