TL;DR – There’re only five women on the list.
So, Forbes’ list of the world’s most powerful people for 2018 is out!
Did you know that there are nearly 7.5 billion of us people on earth, and Forbes has ranked these 75 special men and woman to be the ones who are able to make the world shake. Why 75, you asked? Well, Forbes say they’re trying to “find that one special person out of every 100 million whose actions mean the most.”
Source: Forbes
#1 Xi Jinping (64) President, China
#2 Vladimir Putin (65) President, Russia
#3 Donald Trump (71) President, United States
#4 Angela Merkel (63) Chancellor, Germany
#5 Jeff Bezos (54) Amazon.com
#6 Pope Francis (81) Roman Catholic Church
#7 Bill Gates (62) Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
#8 Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud (32) Crown Prince, Saudi Arabia
#9 Narendra Modi (67) Prime Minister, India
#10 Larry Page (45) Alphabet
#11 Jerome H. Powell (65) Chairman of the Federal Reserve, United States
#12 Emmanuel Macron (40) President, France
#13 Mark Zuckerberg (34) Facebook
#14 Theresa May (61) Prime Minister, United Kingdom
#15 Li Keqiang (62) Premier of the State Council, China
#16 Warren Buffett (87) Berkshire Hathaway
#17 Ali Hoseini-Khamenei (78) Supreme Leader, Iran
#18 Mario Draghi (70) European Central Bank
#19 Jamie Dimon (62) JPMorgan Chase
#20 Carlos Slim Helu (78) America Movil SAB de CV (ADR)
#21 Jack Ma (52) Alibaba Group
#22 Christine Lagarde (62) Managing Director, International Monetary Fund
#23 Doug McMillon (51) Wal-Mart Stores
#24 Tim Cook (57) Apple
#25 Elon Musk (46) Tesla
#26 Benjamin Netanyahu (68) Prime Minister, Israel
#27 Ma Huateng (46) Tencent Holdings
#28 Larry Fink (65) BlackRock
#29 Akio Toyoda (62) Toyota Motor
#30 John L. Flannery (56) General Electric
#31 Antonio Guterres (69) Secretary-General, United Nations
#32 Mukesh Ambani (61) Reliance Industries Ltd.
#33 Jean-Claude Juncker (63) President, European Union
#34 Darren Woods (53) ExxonMobil
#35 Sergey Brin (44) Alphabet
#36 Kim Jong-un (34) Supreme Leader, North Korea
#37 Charles Koch (82) Koch Industries
#38 Shinzo Abe (63) Prime Minister, Japan
#39 Rupert Murdoch (87) News Corp
#40 Satya Nadella (50) Microsoft
#41 Jim Yong Kim (58) President, World Bank
#42 Stephen Schwarzman (71) Blackstone Group
#43 Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan (70) President, United Arab Emirates
#44 Haruhiko Kuroda (73) Governor of the Bank of Japan
#45 Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (63) President, Egypt
#46 Li Ka-shing (89) CK Hutchison Holdings
#47 Lloyd Blankfein (63) Goldman Sachs Group
#48 Recep Tayyip Erdogan (64) President, Turkey
#49 Bob Iger (67) Walt Disney
#50 Michel Temer (77) President, Brazil
#51 Michael Bloomberg (76) Bloomberg
#52 Wang Jianlin (63) Dalian Wanda Group
#53 Mary Barra (56) General Motors
#54 Moon Jae-in (65) President, South Korea
#55 Masayoshi Son (60) Softbank Corp.
#56 Bernard Arnault (69) LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton
#57 Justin Trudeau (46) Prime Minister, Canada
#58 Robin Li (49) Baidu
#59 Michael Dell (53) Dell
#60 Hui Ka Yan (59) Evergrande Real Estate Group
#61 Lee Hsien Loong (66) Prime Minister, Singapore
#62 Bashar al-Assad (72) President, Syria
#63 John Roberts (63) Chief Justice, United States
#64 Enrique Pena Nieto (51) President, Mexico
#65 Ken Griffin (49) Citadel LLC
#66 Aliko Dangote (61) Dangote Group
#67 Mike Pence (58) Vice-President, United States
#68 Qamar Javed Bajwa (57) Chief of Army Staff, Pakistan
#69 Rodrigo Duterte (73) President, Philippines
#70 Abigail Johnson (56) Fidelity Investments
#71 Reed Hastings (57) Netflix
#72 Robert Mueller (73) Director, FBI, United States
#73 Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (46) leader of militant terrorist organisation (ISIL), Islamic State
#74 Joko Widodo (56) President, Indonesia
#75 Gianni Infantino (48) FIFA
Here are some interesting observations:
There are three Southeast Asians on the list,
While the inclusion of the honchos of some global businesses from the West is hardly surprising, I also spotted names of some Chinese businesses,
The youngest three most powerful people are also the only three people in their 30s,
The oldest three most powerful people are, incidentally, the only three people in their late 80s,
And sadly, there are only five women on this list,
