Billionaire | featured news

Which country has the largest number of billionaires, China or America? China. According to the latest Hurun Global Rich List 2013, China had 212 billionaires in 2013, compared to 211 in America.

"You don't back a horse called Striding Snail, you don't name your boat Titanic II." Sound advice from a 1996 Beautiful South tune, "Little Blue." One man, however, seems hellbent on ignoring such plain folk wisdom in an audacious pursuit to rewrite history... A replica of the doomed ship Titanic will sail in 2016, says Blue Star Line chairman Clive Palmer.

What could possibly go wrong? An Australian billionaire is getting ready to build a new version of the Titanic that could set sail in late 2016.

Last year, about $450 million belonging to top executives at billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson’s New York firm took a quick round trip to Bermuda. In April, the executives sent the money to a reinsurance company that they’d set up on the island 650 miles off the North Carolina coast. By June, the Bermuda company, which has no employees and sells far less reinsurance than the industry norm, had sent all the cash back to New York, to be invested in Paulson & Co. funds.

Gold futures slid to a six-month low as some investors lost confidence in gold's prospects after billionaire George Soros reduced his bullion holdings by half.

As Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana ready their latest collections for this spring’s slew of international catwalk shows, their lawyers will be working behind the scenes to ensure two of Italy’s most successful designers won’t be spending the next few Fashion Weeks behind bars...

As the Forbes Wealth team gears up to bring you the Billionaires issue this March -- featuring an extensive catalog of the world's wealthiest people -- we've been finding massive hidden fortunes across the globe. If you're a regular on Forbes.com, you've probably noticed that our homepage has been clogged with new names, some familiar, many more obscure, as we've rifled through financial and legal documents and talked with sources at all hours of the day (and night). We do it all in the name of making public fortunes that many would prefer stay private.

The star prosecution witness in the trial of convicted Texas financier R. Allen Stanford was sentenced Tuesday to five years in prison for helping to bilk investors out of more than $7 billion in one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in U.S. history.

Once again, Steve Wozniak proves that he is the absolute best guy in the world of technology. Forget all the other antics of the world’s tech billionaires combined, this is a guy who is just having fun with it – witness the fact that he’s co-starring in an upcoming iOS game with “Machete” star Danny Trejo.

Michael Rubin is lucky. And he’s also damned good. Lucky, because eBay approached him last year with a $2.4 billion offer to buy his moneylosing GSI Commerce–which provides Web design, customer service and shipping to big-brand retailers–a 51% premium over the share price. Damned, because Rubin has always played so loose and fast that he’s nearly brought on his own ruin–and stoked the wrath of shareholders. Good, because he has an uncanny eye for undervalued assets and a lifelong talent for turning them into gold.