VietNamNet Bridge – Pham Nhat Vuong, the head of Vingroup, is Vietnam's richest man, included on Forbes’ billionaire list for the third consecutive year. However, his position fell by 26 spots from 2014.

Billionaire Pham Nhat Vuong.

The annual rankings of the world’s richest men by Forbes this year includes 1,826 billionaires, with total net asset value of $7.05 trillion, compared to $6.4 trillion in 2014.

Vuong is the only US dollar billionaire of Vietnam, with total assets of $1.7 billion, increasing from $1.6 billion in the previous year. Vuong ranking was 1,118 on the list, compared to last year's 1,092.

According to Forbes, last year Vuong implemented dozens of new projects. The most prominent was Vinhomes Central Park project worth $1.5 billion, including a 81-storey building that is expected to be the tallest building in Vietnam.

In 2013 Vuong was identified by Forbes with $1.5 billion, with a ranking of 974.

Last year, the world had 290 new billionaires, including 71 people from China. The number of billionaires under 40 years old is 46, the highest number so far. On average, each billionaire on the list owned $3.86 billion, down $60 million compared with 2014.

Bill Gates continues to be the richest man on the planet and he has held this position for the past 16 to 21 years. The next positions in the top 5 are Carlos Slim of Mexico, the legendary investor Warren Buffett of the US, the billionaire of Spanish fashion industry Amancio Ortega, and the founder of US software firm Oracle, Larry Ellison.

Young billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, moves five spots to 16, marking his first time in the top 20 richest people in the world.

Billionaire Jack Ma of China is in the top 50.

The world's youngest billionaire this year belongs to Evan Spiegel, 24, the co-founder of photo sharing app Snapchat.

Silicon Valley in California, USA, has 23 new billionaires in the Forbes list this year, including the co-founder of Uber,Travis Kalanick. California has 131 billionaires, more than any country in the world, except China and the US.

The billionaire who lost the most money in 2014 was Aliko Dangote of Nigeria. Net asset value of this cement producer fell to $14.7 billion from $25 billion due to the strong devaluation of the Nigerian currency and the decline in cement demand. However, Dangote is still the richest man in Africa.

The number of Russian billionaires fell from 111 to 88 last year. The number of Russian billionaires is less than that of the US, China, Germany, and India.

Last year 38 people became ex-billionaires, including American fashion designer Michael Kors and former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

Of the people on the list, 1,191 billionaires made their money by themselves and only 230 were heirs. At least 405 people inherited part of their property and funds, but they worked hard to increase it.

TBKTVN