The Top 10 Business Schools for Billionaires

The world is home to 2,325 billionaires – that’s up from 2,170 in 2013 – according to a new report released by Wealth-X. Together they are worth an estimated US$7.3 trillion.

Approximately 14% of this number attended business school, or one in five of the 65% who had pursued tertiary (master’s level) education from the study’s list of billionaires.

The top 10 business schools in terms of billionaires produced account for around 50% of MBA billionaires – 153 to be precise.

Harvard is way out in front among these particular top 10 business schools – its count of 64 alumni billionaires is almost three times as high as second-placed Stanford. By the time we reach Chicago Booth in fifth position, we are down to just 10 alumni billionaires.

Notable billionaires who attended one of these top 10 business schools include:

• HBS alumnus, Jorge Paulo Lemann, a banker held to be Brazil’s richest man
• Nike’s Knight – the sports giant founder, Philip Knight, graduated from Stanford GSB in 1962
• Warren Buffett, influential magnate and Columbia Business School graduate
• Susanne Klatten, an IMD MBA alumna held to be Germany’s richest woman
• London Business School MBA graduate, Kumar Mangalam Birla, who heads one of the largest conglomerates in India, the Aditya Birla Group.

Wealth-X is a firm that carries out research into individuals with net assets of US$30 million and above. In the 2014 edition of its billionaire census, it found the biggest rise in billionaire numbers was to be found in Latin America and the Caribbean. However, the biggest rise in the worth of a region’s billionaires came from Asia. Europe is home to the highest number of billionaires with a count of 775, ahead of North America’s 609.

The report holds that cities, and not countries, are what matter most to billionaires – and a similarly themed report released earlier this year placed London ahead of New York in this respect.