Billion dollar Tay day

Swift makes it on to Forbes rich list but she’s still only at 2,545 and the top 10 are still all MEN

MEGASTAR singer Taylor Swift has made it into the exclusive billionaires’ club.

The US pop star has a fortune of $1.1billion (£877million) according to The World’s Billionaires, a list published by US magazine Forbes – but that only puts her in 2,545th place globally, a long way behind the all-male top 10.

Top of the list is LVMH French luxury goods titan Bernard Arnault, with a reported fortune of $233bn (£185bn).

Next is South African-born Tesla tycoon Elon Musk, with £155bn, then Amazon founder Jeff Bezos with £1bn less.

Taylor, 34, made her fortune from her blockbuster Eras tour, the value of her music catalogue and her property portfolio.

According to Pollstar’s 2023 year-end charts, the tour is the first to cross the $1bn earnings mark.

Taylor amassed $1.04bn (£831.6m) in revenue, selling 4.35 million tickets across 60 dates.

Additionally, Swift’s tour generated around $200m (£159.8m) in merchandise sales.

Costs of staging the concerts will have been substantial. As well as Taylor, other new additions to the list this year are basketball legend Magic Johnson, with assets valued at $1.2bn (£950m) and Sam Altman, creator of the AI chatbot ChatGPT, whose worth is reported as being $1bn (£800m). Forbes also revealed there are a record 2,781 billionaires in the world in 2024. That is 141 more than there were last year and 26 up on the previous record set in 2021, according to the magazine. And the elite are richer than ever, with a collective wealth of $14.2trillion (£11.3tn). In the UK, hedge fund manager Michael Platt is the richest person with £14.4bn.

He is followed by Manchester United part-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe, who is worth £12.9bn, and vacuum cleaner magnate Sir James Dyson on £10.6bn. Chase Peterson-Withorn of Forbes said a record-breaking 14 centi-billionaires now have 12-figure fortunes if counted in US dollars. He said: “Even during times of financial uncertainty for many, the super-rich continue to thrive.”