Forget Facebook! Meet the other young billionaires who made their way onto Forbes' list (2024)

By Meghan Keneally
Updated: 22:47, 7 March 2012

The four billionaire creators of Facebook had better watch their backs because this year’s list of billionaires included three new American men who are ready to take their place as the new young bucks.

A little-known Apple engineer and two hedge fund moguls added their names on Forbes’ annual list of young billionaires, as they are all between the ages of 34 and 38 years old.

The youngest newcomer is 34-year-old Robert Pera, the computer engineer-cum-wireless entrepreneur who has been somewhat of a rising star in Silicon Valley.

He founded his company, Ubiquiti Networks, in 2005 but Mr Pera made his big bucks when he took it public in October of this year.

In spite of the fact that he is valued at $1.5billion, he still prefers to keep his options open as he rents his BMW and lives in a minimalist one-bedroom apartment in San Jose.

The next self-made newcomer to the list is Chase Coleman, 36, who made his estimated $1.1billion by investing his hedge fund’s money in highly profitable stocks like Apple and Google early on.

Mr Coleman now runs a fund called Tiger Management which was one of the most successful funds last year.

Though his family has known great wealth for some time- he is a descendant of Peter Stuyvesant, a significant figure in early New York City- Mr Coleman made his money on his own.

He also married Stephanie Ercklentz who was featured in a 2003 HBO documentary called Born Rich.

In one poignant moment on the show, she said that she quit her job as an investment banker because ‘my friends are at downtown Cipriani, it's 10 o'clock at night, they're having Bellinis, and, like, I'm sitting here cranking out numbers that are never even going to get looked at.’

The oldest member of the tenacious trio that hit the big time this year is John Arnold, a 38-year-old trader who is worth $3billion.

Mr Arnold founded his Houston-based hedge fund Centaurus after Enron went bust in 2002. Like Enron, he continues to focus his attention on oil and natural gas stock.

He and his wife Laura have their own charitable foundation and they donated $101million last year. The money went to benefit a wide range of programs, as the Laura and John Arnold Foundation helps fix the criminal justice system, pension systems, and public education.

While the fact that little is known about these new members of the wealthiest club makes them quite mysterious, they have not taken over the group quite yet.

The fabled Facebook Four- Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, Sean Parker and Eduardo Saverin- remain on the list with Mr Zuckerberg coming in at 35th overall.

And that placement may be wrong as well: because Facebook is still in the process of going public, they took a conservative estimate of his wealth and pegged him at only $17.5billion.

Other than the Facebook boys, the remaining ten youngest billionaires have all inherited their wealth from family operations and inheritance.

Scott Duncan, 29, is one of the four heirs to his father Dan’s energy pipeline fortune.

The only woman on the list is 30-year-old Yang Huiyan, worth $4.7billion, who took control of her father’s Chinese real estate fortune.

Brothers Fahd and Ayman Hariri, aged 31 and 33 respectively, both pocketed $1.3billion from the fortune of their father, the assassinated former prime minister of Lebanon Rafic Hariri.

And finally, there is Albert Von Thurn Und Taxis, the 28-year-old (single) billionaire from Germany who inherited his wealth from his family’s auto-racing league.

For Mr Von Thurn Und Taxis, being on the list is nothing new: he made his first appearance on the Forbes list when he was only 8-years-old but did not legally inherit the money until he was 18.

Though all the young up-and-comers make for prime personifications of the American Dream, the old-timers still win the race.

Mexican telecommunications tycoon Carlos Slim and his family take the number one spot, with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett in second and third.