Personal wealth of the world's richest individuals is on the increase, writes Conor O'Clery

Despite the global economic downturn, the two richest people holding Irish citizenship - Mr John T Dorrance 111 and Sir Anthony O'Reilly - have considerably increased their personal wealth in the last year, according to Forbes Magazine's 16th annual ranking of the world's billionaires.

They have bucked a trend which cost the world's billionaires 11 per cent of their fortunes in the past year, with 83 former billionaires not making the cut.

Mr John T Dorrance 111, grandson of Mr John Dorrance, the founder of Campbell Soup and the inventor of condensed soup, saw his fortune increase from $2.1 billion (£2.42 billion) to $2.2 billion, pulling him up from 222nd place to 191st in the rankings.

Born in the US, Mr Dorrance became an Irish citizen in 1994 under the passport-for-investment scheme. His siblings and fellow heirs to the fortune are still US citizens. He bought a house in Rathgar in Dublin when he became an Irish citizen and has homes in the Bahamas and Wyoming. According to Forbes, Mr Dorrance, 58, "continues to sit on his soup can inheritance and appears to do little else".

The passports-for-investment scheme was abolished by the Government in April 1998 but applications made before September 4th, 1996 remained eligible for processing. The total naturalised under the scheme to date is 178, the Seanad heard this week.

Sir Anthony, whose rise to great wealth is also associated with soup - of the Heinz variety - increased his worth from $1.2 billion to $1.3 billion, and rose from 421 to 351 in the rankings.

His entry in Forbes describes a much more active billionaire. It states: "The former Irish rugby star headed Heinz for 21 years. Now oversees an empire that includes Irish crystalmaker Waterford Wedgwood and newspaper group Independent News & Media. This year, backed by a private investor group that included Goldman Sachs and George Soros's private equity group, he successfully won control of Eircom, Ireland's leading telecom company. Not included in his tally is the reported half-billion dollars his second wife, Chryss Goulandris, inherited from her family's Greek shipping fortune." If Mrs O'Reilly's half-billion were added, it would bring the O'Reilly couple up to 134th place in the billionaire rankings with $1.8 billion.

Messrs Dorrance and O'Reilly are exceptions in a year that saw the world's richest people getting poorer because of the global economic downturn. The number of billionaires, headed once again by Microsoft's founder Mr Bill Gates, is down to 497 from 538 last year. Of these, 50 per cent saw their net worth fall, 23 per cent saw it rise and 19 per cent held steady. The billionaires' average net worth dipped from $3.2 billion to $3.1 billion.

The world's second-richest man is investor Mr Warren Buffett, the head of Berkshire Hathaway, followed by German discount retailers Messers Karl and Theo Albrecht, Microsoft's Mr Paul Allen and Oracle founder Mr Lawrence Ellison. The four heirs of Mr Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart, are all in the top ten: if taken together, their combined fortunes of $82.1 billion would make them the richest family in the world by far.

"As a group, our billionaires are worth $190 billion less since last summer, part of a decline that drove 83 people off our list. Of the 497 who remain, 249 of them saw their fortunes sink. But while there are fewer billionaires in the world, there's no shortage of ingenious new ways to create wealth," the magazine said.

Among the big losers are Japanese investor Mr Masayoshi Son whose worth dropped $77 billion in two years, as the value of his Softbank Company holdings fell 98 per cent.

Mr Ted Turner, founder of CNN and AOL Time Warner's largest individual shareholder, lost $5 billion through a 60 per cent drop in his stock's value.

The winners included Mr Amancio Ortega of Spain whose fashion company Inditex went public last year. His worth went up from $6.6 billion to $9.1 billion.

Though he stayed at the top with $52.8 billion to his name, Mr Gates was also a loser, dropping $6 billion in the past 12 months. The biggest setback however was suffered by Mr Leo Kirch, the German media magnate, whose fortune plummeted from $12 billion to $1 billion.

Japan's billionaires suffered from the recession there but Russia's seven billionaires, owners of oil or metals companies, all did well.

The United States accounted for 243 billionaires, Europe 121 and Asia 70 in the list which Forbes compiles using share prices and exchange rates, and estimates of what private companies would be worth if they went public. The value of art collections, real estate and other assets are also included.