The total fortune of Turkey’s top 100 exceeded $120 billion
Last week, FORBES Turkiye announced the 13th edition of its yearly “100 Richest Turks” list. The total fortune of the FORBES 100 increased by $18.5 billion compared to the previous year, reaching $121.4 billion. The biggest leap was in the number of billionaires on the list, increasing by 9 to 40 while the total wealth of billionaires amounted at $72.4 billion. Erol Tabanca, Melih Abdulhayoglu, the Tosyali brothers, and Eren and Fatih Ozmen were among the firt time billionaires this year. Mehmet Hattat and Olgun Zorlu returned to this year’s list after a long absence.
Murat Ulker again topped of list for the fifth time this year. Ulker’s fortune increased by $1.1 billion compared to the previous year, while Erman Ilicak, the boss of Ronesans Holding, increased his fortune to $4 billion. The founder of the biotech company Samumed, Osman Kibar, who entered the list directly as a billionaire last year, increased his fortune by $800 million to $2.8 billion and ranked in fourth place on the list. Eren and Fatih Ozmen, who carry cargo to NASA’s space station with the Sierra Nevada Corporation they established in the U.S., rose to the league of billionaires for the first time with a total worth of $1.5 billion.
Melih Abdulhayoglu, founder of the internet security company, Comodo, based in the UK and the U.S., is among the billionaires for the first time this year as well with a fortune of $1.6 billion. Erol Tabanca, founder of Polimeks Insaat and the Tosyali brothers of Tosyalı Holding owe their ‘billionaire’ status to their businesses and investments abroad. For example, 95 percent of the projects Polimeks has completed so far, accounting more than $11 billion, were carried out in Turkmenistan, lifting Erol Tabanca onto the FORBES 100 list with a $1.3 billion fortune. Tosyali Holding’s iron and steel investment in Algeria has carried the Tosyali brothers into the billionaires’ club.
FORBES Turkiye Editor in Chief, Burcak Guven, said in a statement regarding the research that the most important source of the increase in the share of Yildiz Holding Chairman Murat Ulker was the value created by Pladis, which is worth 2.2 billion pound sterling.