1 Elon Musk
Elon Musk invested in and acquired social media giant Twitter in 2022. When he initially resorted to the deal, Twitter tried to protect itself with the Poison Pill Strategy – A strategic move, undertaken by investors in a public company to thwart acquisition, by buying up large amounts of its stocks.
Eventually, when Elon pushed through an agreement, he was not satisfied with some terms and stats of the company. His impulsive moves bit him back when he couldn’t withdraw his choice because he was in the middle of the deal and was bound legally.
In a historic move, Twitter was finally acquired on October 27, 2022.
2 Bernard Arnault
Bernard Arnault is the second richest person in the world who owns luxury brands like the Louis Vuitton group and has stakes in luxury fashion like Dior or Givenchy.
In 2022, Bernard Arnault invested in the Series D round of Devialet, a patented speaker brand in France, in which he has been investing since 2015. Devialet uses patented tech – ADH and HBI in its speaker products. Devialet hosts a series of speakers named Phantom.
3 Gautam Adani
Gautam Adani, India’s richest business person is on an aggressive investment spree, this year involving more than 150 Bn dollars this year in energy, cement, soil, mining, metals, manufacturing, core sectors and in the development of many states.
He kept making it to the news for his acquisitions, takeovers and ventures in industries with limited competition. Since these sectors demanded a large volume of capital, the rationale behind his buys was that small players could not afford to compete.
Adani is now, the 2nd largest player in the cement, the 3rd largest liquid storage company – nearly 50% stake in IOTL, and has tied up with Total Energy France for renewable energy. His least performing segment, edible oil went public this January.
He who holds the pen holds the power. Adani media group has stealthily acquired a chunky 30% stake in NDTV.
4 Jeff Bezos
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and its products has made a significant amount of investments this year.
Bezos invested in a tech-enabled digital media company Overtime which distributes social media content on sports and has its own flagship basketball league. He invested in the Series C Funding of the company.
He invested in a startup offering customized products in finance and healthcare targeting Gen Z consumers – Realworld.
Bezos expeditions have invested 45 million dollars in Brazilian FinTech company StarkBank in Series B. He also invested in the Series C round of Doxo, which offers online bill payments. He has also invested in an Indonesian D2C SAAS Lummo, which specializes in data-analytics services for e-commerce and its flagship product LummoSHOP.
Bezos has backed Arrived, a real estate investment platform, which enables regular people to buy shares in single-family rental properties. Bezos has also invested in freight-tracking startup Outgo, this year.
On the bio and eco front, Bezos has invested in the Series-B of cell-cultured salmon cultivation startup, Wildtype and Cloudpaper which designs paper towels and toilet paper from bamboo to curb deforestation.
5 Warren Buffet
In the post-Covid era, Warren Buffet is placing his bets high on energy, this year. Warren Buffet has invested 12% of his portfolio in integrated energy companies – Chevron and Occidental. Warren Buffet estimates that crude oil and Natural gas prices will remain high, for years to come.
These integrated energy companies fit his sentiment, since they involve energy end-to-end, from drilling to holding assets like plants and refineries.
He has invested in Tech stocks heavily. 40% of his portfolio is made up of Apple stocks. He has invested in HP because PC sales tend to be generally stable. Buffet has also invested heavily in Taiwan semiconductors and Activision Blizzard – A Video game product.
He has also invested in the media distribution company, Paramount Global. According to his 13F filings, he invested in 19 stocks in 2022, ranging from General Motors to Formula One, which pays him regular dividends. He is also a consistent major investor in his own company Berkshire Hathaway.
6 Larry Ellison
Larry Ellison is the CEO of Oracle. In 2022, there has chipped in 1 Billion dollars to Elon Musk for his Twitter takeover. Larry has also invested in sailing to the team of Great Britain this year. Apart from this, he owns 15% of Tesla’s stocks.
7 Bill Gates
The former Microsoft CEO and founder, has consistently owned shares in his own company and some other companies long-term like Berkshire Hathaway, and Canadian National Railways.
This year, in February, he invested 14 Billion dollars in Republic Services Inc, (RSG), a non-hazardous solid waste disposal services company.
One of his holdings Ecolab INC which provides hygiene, water and energy tech was invested heavily in, this year by Cascade INC.
He has purchased biotech shares in companies in Lumira Dx (Diagnostics solution provider) and Vir biotechnologies. Last year, he opened a position at Immunocore Holdings. He has sold his shares in Atreca INC (A biopharma company specializing in the development of immunotherapeutics) and Immunocore Holdings. According to his 13F filings, he has investments in multiple tech companies including Caterpillar (the popular electronics company).
8 Mukesh Ambani
The multi-billionaire from India who owns Reliance industries including all its arms – JIO, Reliance Retail and oil and gas rolled out 5G services and committed 2 Lakh Crore for the purpose, this year in India.
This year, he invested in Sanmina, an electronics manufacturer and signed a joint venture to build an electronics manufacturing hub in India. He has invested 440 crores in a media company – News Nations Inc and holds 33% of its shares, as of 2022.
He has invested 75,000 crores in the expansion of the existing Petrochemical capacity by investing in plants, vinyl chains and chemical units.
Reliance partnered with Qualcomm for the 5G rollout this year and Meta for the integration of JioMart with Whatsapp.
9 Larry Page
Tech CEO Larry Page, founder of Google and CEO of Alphabet invested in personal aircraft manufacturer Kitty Hawk this year. He also invested in Opener, the company which works to bring flying cars for personal travel.
10 Carlos Slim Helu
Carlos Slim Helu is a Mexican businessperson, who has methodically diversified investments in real estate, a construction company, mining interests and retail stores.
