1.IKEA Kamprad Family ($73 billion)
Net Worth: 620 billion SEK ($73 billion)
Company: IKEA (furniture giant)
Ingvar Kamprad, founder of global furniture retailer IKEA, died on January 27, 2018 at age 91. Kamprad created IKEA when he was 17, peddling matches, fish and Christmas cards by bicycle. He opened his first furniture store in 1947 and built it into one of the world’s most successful retailers, with fiscal 2017 revenues of nearly $46 billion. Kamprad relentlessly pursued efficiency to keep his furniture prices low and showed little interest in the trappings of wealth, at one point driving a Volvo for two decades.
Between 2005 and 2010, Kamprad was estimated by Forbes to be one of the 10 richest people in the world, worth as much as $28 billion, based largely on the value of IKEA. In 2011 his net worth fell dramatically after his lawyers presented documents showing that ownership of IKEA had been irrevocably transferred to a foundation in tax haven Lichtenstein decades earlier. Despite the drop in net worth, he retained his billionaire status.
In 2016 Kamprad fell off the Forbes billionaires list after he transferred his assets to his sons Peter, Mathias and Jonas, all of whom are billionaires.