Who are the richest Canadians on the Forbes list of billionaires?

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The richest American is also the richest person in the world, according to the latest edition of Forbes’ World’s Billionaires List. You probably know his name. But who is the richest Canadian in the world?

Time’s up. It’s Changpeng Zhao, a Chinese-Canadian coder who in 2017 founded the cryptocurrency exchange Binance. He served as the CEO until 2023, when he resigned and pleaded guilty to a money laundering charge in the United States. He spent four months in prison — “he passed the time by working out, writing a book and talking crypto with fellow inmates,” Bloomberg reported last year.

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According to Forbes, Zhao is worth US$62.9-billion, which is enough to place him 24th on the list, far behind such well-known U.S. tech titans as Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Larry Ellison, who hold the top four places on the list, with a combined wealth of just under US$1-trillion.

(Musk is technically the world’s richest Canadian, as he holds citizenship in this country as well as South Africa and the United States. However, Forbes lists him as American.)

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There are 76 Canadian entries on the Forbes list of billionaires this year. The next is Sherry Brydson, all the way down at 125. Listed as one of six billionaire heirs to the media empire founded by her grandfather Roy Thomson, Brydson is worth US$16.7 billion and, according to Bloomberg, she owns 23 per cent of the business.

She is also one of 11 female Canadian billionaires on Forbes’ list. The others include fellow Thomson heirs Taylor Thomson (US$10.2 billion), Gaye Farncombe (US$8 billion) and Linda Campbell (US$8 billion).

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Female billionaires also include AppLovin investor Ling Tang (US$5 billion), about whom Forbes says “little is known … though securities filings list a business address for her on the same street in Hong Kong as another mysterious billionaire AppLovin investor, Hao Tang”; Pan Dong (US$1.9 billion), chair of Blue Moon Group; Zhang Ning ($1.9 billion), chair of Red Avenue Materials Group; Azrieli Group heirs Naomi and Sharon Azrieli (US$1.6 billion); Michelle Zatlyn (US$1.6 billion), co-founder of the internet security company Cloudflare; and Catherine Phillips (US$1.5 billion), an early investor in Shopify.

Rounding out the top five Canadians on the list brings us to number 163, “Professor Billionaire” David Cheriton, a professor emeritus at Stanford University who invested US$100,000 in the 1990s in Google and is now worth US$13.5 billion.

Who’s David Cheriton? Meet the Canadian billionaire who made an early bet on Google

Next up is Joseph Tsai, whose US$11.8-billion fortune ranks him at 195 on the list. The Taiwan-born Canadian citizen is a cofounder of Alibaba Group, a Chinese multinational tech company specializing in e-commerce.

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He’s followed  at number 213 by 96-year-old Jim Pattison (US$11.4 billion), CEO, chair and sole owner of the Jim Pattison Group, which is involved in packaging, food and entertainment. Pattison also controls more than 50 per cent of the forest products company Canfor Corporation, which is based (as is he) in Vancouver.

Pattison is also the third oldest Canadian on the list. Placing 1,045th with US$3.5-billion is Jean Coutu, 97-year-old founder of the eponymous Quebec drug store chain. And all the way down at number 2,233 (US$1.5-billion) is Stephen Jarislowsky, a Berlin-born business magnate and investor, at 99 years old.

The list goes all the way to 3,028 billionaires, with almost a hundred people tied for the bottom spot at an even US$1 billion. There were 140 on the first list, in 1987, and 2,000 in 2017, with this year marking the first time the number cracked 3,000.

Combined, those on the list are worth US$16.1 trillion. According to Forbes, America has the most billionaires, with 902, followed by China (516, including Hong Kong) and India (205).

Most of Canada’s billionaires live in Canada, and most of those live in one of the country’s three major cities, with 20 listed as residing in Toronto, 13 in Montreal and 6 in Vancouver, according to Forbes.

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Also represented in Forbes’ list were Edmonton (pharmacy magnate Daryl Katz), Burlington, Ont. (investor Michael Lee-Chin) Ottawa (Bill Malhotra, founder of Claridge Homes, and telecom executive Terrence Matthews), Oakville, Ont. (Mark Miller, COO of Constellation Software) and Windsor (Barry and Clayton Zekelman, both members of the same family, in the steel business).

Other residences spanned the globe and included Florida, California, Hong Kong, Switzerland and the Isle of Man.

Here’s a complete list of Canadians featured in the Forbes’ Billionaires List (all figures in U.S. dollars):

Changpeng Zhao — $62.9B (24th place)

Sherry Brydson — $16.7B (125)

David Cheriton — $14.3B (163)

Joseph Tsai — $12.1B (195)

Jim Pattison — $11.4B (213)

David Thomson — $10.2B (264)

Taylor Thomson — $10.2B (264)

Peter Thomson — $10.2B (264)

Tobi Lutke — $8.9B (337)

Linda Campbell — $8B (382)

Gaye Farncombe — $8B (382)

Chip Wilson — $6.8B (498)

Alain Bouchard — $6.6B (512)

Peter Gilgan — $6.4B (540)

Stuart Hoegner — $6.2B (561)

Mark Scheinberg — $6B (581)

Daryl Katz — $5.8B (605)

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Stephen Smith — $5.8B (605)

Anthony von Mandl — $5.7B (620)

Bruce Flatt — $5.5B (639)

Leonid Boguslavsky — $5.2B (688)

Mark Leonard & family — $5.2B (688)

Bob Gaglardi & family — $5.1B (700)

Garett Camp — $5B (717)

Ling Tang — $5B (717)

Ryan Cohen — $4.7B (767)

Carlo Fidani — $4.3B (846)

Emanuele (Lino) Saputo & family — $4B (902)

Lawrence Stroll — $3.8B (948)

Jean Coutu & family — $3.5B (1,045)

Barry Zekelman — $3.4B (1,072)

Michael Latifi — $3.4B (1,072)

Jacques D’Amours — $3.2B (1,141)

Jack Cockwell — $3B (1,219)

Serge Godin — $2.9B (1,265)

N. Murray Edwards — $2.8B (1,305)

Larry Tanenbaum — $2.8B (1,305)

Mitchell Goldhar — $2.7B (1,362)

Charles Bronfman — $2.5B (1,462)

Robert G. Miller — $2.4B (1,513)

Bill Malhotra — $2.2B (1,626)

V. Prem Watsa — $2.2B (1,626)

Hal Jackman — $2.1B (1,688)

Clayton Zekelman — $2.1B (1,688)

Jay Hennick — $2B (1,763)

Pierre Karl Péladeau — $2B (1,763)

Max Lytvyn — $1.9B (1,850)

Pan Dong — $1.9B (1,850)

Alex Shevchenko — $1.9B (1,850)

Zhang Ning — $1.9B (1,850)

Richard Fortin — $1.8B (1,947)

Alan Zekelman — $1.7B (2,019)

Ivan Zhao — $1.7B (2,019)

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Naomi Azrieli — $1.6B (2,110)

Sharon Azrieli — $1.6B (2,110)

Stewart Butterfield — $1.6B (2,110)

Terence (Terry) Matthews — $1.6B (2,110)

Michelle Zatlyn — $1.6B (2,110)

Stephen Jarislowsky — $1.5B (2,223)

Catherine Phillips — $1.5B (2,223)

John Phillips — $1.5B (2,223)

Gerald Schwartz — $1.5B (2,223)

Philip Fayer — $1.4B (2,356)

Brandt Louie — $1.4B (2,356)

Sam Pollock — $1.4B (2,356)

Elly Reisman — $1.4B (2,356)

Huang Chulong — $1.3B (2,479)

Michael Andlauer — $1.2B (2,623)

Brian Hill — $1.2B (2,623)

Guy Laliberté — $1.2B (2,623)

Réal Plourde — $1.2B (2,623)

Christopher Olah — $1.2B (2,623)

Michael Lee-Chin — $1.1B (2,790)

Apoorva Mehta — $1.1B (2,790)

Mark Miller — $1B (2,933)

Christopher Urmson — $1B (2,933)

* Net worth as reported by Forbes at publication time; figures on Forbes are updated in real time.

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