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From What Sector Will The Next Billionaires Come?

This article is more than 10 years old.

I have been covering Brazilian billionaires for Forbes for about half a year. I have contributed to Forbes' last published billionaires list, in which Brazil had 37 members. Do these wealthy people have anything in common, besides their nationality? It is hard to tell, but 35% of them come from the banking sector. From what sector will the next billionaires come?

When I graduated from my bachelor’s in 2008, I had a few different job offers. I used two main criteria to evaluate all the options: where I would learn the most and grow the quickest. Consequently, I joined Noble Group, Asia's largest diversified commodities trading company  as a soybeans trader. Later, The Economist published a piece advising recent graduates to make similar decisions: “Go east young moneyman.” I was an ambitious young man and was excited to work in Hong Kong, Switzerland and Latin America. I followed the words of James “Jim” Rogers, who co-founded and administrated with George Soros an investment fund named Quantum, which returned more than 4000% in 10 years. In an interview for the Brazilian magazine Veja, the world’s fourth most sold magazine worldwide, Rogers affirmed that “People working with agriculture will be the world’s next billionaires! Wealth will come from farms. Farmers will be the owners of Lamborghinis in the future, not the smart guys working in finance.”

Brazil, the world’s largest exporter of soybeans and one of the main agricultural powerhouses, hopes Rogers is correct and that the world’s next billionaires will come from the agricultural sector. Dr. Kroko, Chairman of Environmental Parliament,  goes on the lines, affirming that the next billionaires will be entrepreneurs who instead of focusing on building the next Instagram or any other useless app, focus on what really matters. The next billionaires will solve our world’s most urgent needs, create tools to fundamentally transform people’s lives, and will be financially compensated in exchange.

I believe the main markets that create the billionaires will change radically. Today, what sectors come to mind when billionaires are mentioned? Oil tycoons? Bankers? Technology? Telecommunications?

Yes, all of these examples are correct; there are a few billionaires in each one of the aforementioned markets. I wonder, which sector will produce the billionaires of the future?

The next billionaires will come from a new group of entrepreneurs. An oil trader told me he believes that the bulk of the next generation of billionaires will be linked to people and companies focused on providing clean energy to the masses.

“Just imagine the amount of money that the energy market trades. All this money will be transferred to clean energy, and those people that were willing to start fixing the problems before everyone else will reap the benefits. Do you want to become a billionaire? Focus on fixing the environment. I am not only talking about energy. We have a lot of technology that we don’t fully use, because today there’s an easier way to get a result. When the masses start developing a long term view, changing their habits, and concluding that if something is not sustainable, it shouldn’t be used, the new billionaires will start to pop up. It will be people that took the risk to develop those solutions.”

Not everyone agrees with Dr. Kroko and this oil trader. I have asked someone working in the Argentinean embassy in Paris who defines himself as a passionate about sustainable development.

“One of the main concerns that come to our mind when we think about the future is the environment. I have researched sustainable development in small and medium enterprises in Latin America. I have spent countless hours interviewing CEO’s, founding partners, and managers of leading companies around the world that have engaged in sustainable projects. The advancements in the field of sustainability are truly amazing, but…. Did you know that in 2012 citizens of the world are less concerned about the environment than in 2007. How come!?

We just don’t care anymore. Our leaders don’t care, companies don’t care and people don’t care.The fate of the earth is being decided right now in Doha and let me tell you something. We are pretty much walking backwards. The person hosting the Climate Change event in Doha is the current Minister of Oil of Qatar. Are you serious!?

So if you ask me, where are the next billionaires going to come from? They will still be people in the oil industry, bankers, etc... There is a status quo that prevents any real change from happening and the world seems to be very confortable with that.”

This pessimistic Argentinean has different views of the near future than I do. Time will tell us who is right. Today, it is easier to analyze with precision the past and the present. Maybe change is coming faster than expected. For instance, Forbes recently published that there are 40 Billionaires residing in Africa ; 4 made their money in oil and 6 built their wealth in the financial industry.  Although Africa is known for its abundant natural resources, only 25% of the billionaires of the continent come from oil and financial industry.