But it always occurred to me; what is a pet to do with all that money and so I am constrained to ask the owner – WHAT were you thinking!

There are different estimates about who is the richest pet in the world and a latest report published about the richest pets in the world spoke of a German Shepherd, called Gunther IV who inherited $372 million, from his father Gunther III, who made it rich after his owner Countess Karlotta Libenstein of Germany passed away.

One Frankie, a lucky mansion-living dog from San Diego who is worth a cool $5.3 million! Frankie’s owner passed away and roped in a neighbor to look after the dog. I wonder who cleans the mansion.

Then there is Kalu the Chimp who is reportedly worth about $80 million after Patricia O’Neill passed away. O’Neill’s husband wasn’t overly fond of Kalu and the apprehension that Kalu would be homeless after her, made her leave him a very rich chimp indeed.

Oprah Winfrey is one of the biggest fortunes in showbiz and much of this, will go to her dogs when she passes on. According to estimates, her pooches will be richer by a cool $30 million when the chat show hostess passes on to the great TV show in the sky.

Then there are some very rich cats in existence thanks to their kooky owners – British comedienne and actress Beryl Reid left her 1.8 dollar estate to her cats who frolicked in great luxury after she passed away.  Tinker the cat also inherited a very sizeable sum from Margret Layne, and another cat inherited 13 million USD from a British man called Ben Rea.

And why stop at felines and canine or indeed any mammals? There is also a hen who is very rich indeed – Gigoo the hen had a very different life than the kind most chickens who grace our dinner tables ever had.  Gigoo inherited 10 million pounds after the wife of millionaire Miles Blackwell died.

And then there is the self made millionaire animal – a killer whale who didn’t inherit but made a lot of money – Keiko the killer whale from Free Willy is worth an estimated 23 million pounds sterling.

Those are some rich animals indeed – and I am moved to ask yet again – what do they do with all that money?

Gina Rinehart (Georgina Hope Rinehart) was born on 9 February 1954 at St John’s, Perth, Western Australia. She is estimated to be the richest person in Australia and is the heiress of Hancock Prospecting, and the daughter of mining magnate Lang Hancock.

Gina Rinehart is the woman that Forbes says is likely to outstrip the current richest men in the world – Carlos Slim, Bill Gate, the Ambani Brothers, Laxmi Mittal and so on – and become the richest individual in the world in the future. It is the projection of the Citigroup that she will soon surpass all of these and even the baby faced pin up boy of self made billionaires Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook in case you’ve been living under a rock and are neither on Facebook, nor have watched the film The Social Network) who incidentally is now richer than the Google guys Sergei Brinn and Larry Page. So apparently now Zuckerberg is worth a cool $18 billion and the chaps at Google are worth a mere $17 billion (numbers that don’t even make a lot of sense to me really).

Anyway the point of this post is, that none of these usual suspects that are pretty much worshiped by techies the world over, are likely to become or continue to be the richest men in the world, it is likely that they will be overtaken by an Australian woman soon; one about whom little was known until recently.

Rinehart’s fortunes have currently got a huge fillip and she is now worth $9 billion. Her already considerably holdings as much as quadrupled or grew four times last year because of the high global prices of iron ore for which there is  huge demand in China. The 9 billion may seem a mere bagatelle right now, but it is believed by analysts that this could reach a staggering $100 billion in the future. This projection is based on the global markets research on mining projects conducted by the Citigroup.

Rinehart is the heiress of Hancock Prospecting which she inherited from her father which is currently the fifth largest mining outfit in the world, but she is a self made woman in many senses, owing the increase of her fortunes mainly to herself and these are set to change dramatically for the better.

Currently the richest woman in the world is Walmart heiress Christy Walton – for how long she holds that position though needs to be seen.

Bill Gates – Microsoft Corporation. Arguably the one person who has changed the way we work, communicate, use technology. He started Microsoft in 1975 and launched Windows in 1985 and has never looked back after that. There isn’t a home or office today that doesn’t have some reliance on this global behemoth Microsoft, that has made Gates the owner of a $52 billion fortune, a lot of which, it must be said, he seems intent on giving away.

Steve Jobs – Apple Inc. A number of marvelous devices now populate our lives thanks to Steve Jobs. The iPod has made it possible for us to carry around all the music that we ever will want to listen to; the iPhone is so much more than telephony, the iPad has made it possible for the computer to literally fit inside the pocket – Whatever Apple produces is a resounding hit with the buying public, a waiting list already existing before the launch of the product.

Larry Ellison – Oracle Corporation. He is the sixth richest person in the world, with a personal wealth of $27 billion. His career has been a checkered one, with threats coming from various quarters such as IBM, Sybase, Microsoft and so on, but Ellison is still widely considered a pioneer in database systems, and with his net worth being what it is, he must have been doing something right.

Larry Page – Google, Inc. The central importance of Google in our lives cannot be denied – hardly do we go a day without Googling something or the other (and yes new words have added to our lexicon thanks to Google) and arguably the most advanced emailing system in the world is now available at our fingertips, free of charge, with various other innovations from Larry Page and Sergey Brin that we rely on in everyday life.

Carlos Slim Helu – Telmex, América Móvil and Grupo Carso. The richest man on earth; the Mexican business magnate, philanthropist and the chairman and CEO of Telmex, América Móvil. His extensive holdings include fields such as communications, technology, retailing, and finance.

1. Indra Nooyi, Chairman and CEO PepsiCo is the most powerful businesswoman in the world. She has come a long way from her native India. Not only has she successfully contended with declining sales of soft drinks manufactured by her company, she has looked at providing the consumer with healthier options such as orange juice fortified with omega 3 fatty acid.
2. Irene Rosenfeld, Chairman and CEO of Kraft Foods, has used effective and innovative strategies such as empowering local managers in developing countries, and launching new and convenient products to keep and enhance her company’s market position
3. Pat Woertz Chairman, President, and CEO Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) She made sure that her company known as the “supermarket to the world” held its own even in the midst of higher corn costs and doubts about ethanol.
4. Anne Mulcahy, Chairman and CEO Xerox (XRX) is largely given the credit for a full scale turnaround of her company since taking it over. Xerox is at no. 3 in the Fortune 500 companies in terms of profit growth over 5 years. Sounds pretty impressive to me.
5. Angela Braly, President and CEO Wellpoint (WLP) Wellpoint is the largest woman led company in the US in terms of revenue.
6. Andrea Jung, Chairman and CEO Avon Products (AVP) She is also a member on the Apple board (the only female one), and is responsible for the stock price going up 15% among other things
7. Susan Arnold, President, Global Business Units Procter & Gamble (PNG) She is tipped to be the dark horse who may run the company one day
8. Oprah Winfrey, Chairman Harpo – After her TV shows and magazine it is now a new network that will target 70 million homes
9. Brenda Barnes, Chairman and CEO Sara Lee (SLE) – responsible for shedding underperforming units that accounted for 40% of revenue.
10. Ursula Burns, President Xerox (XRX) heir apparent to the Xerox throne.

Lawrence J (Larry) Ellison cofounder and CEO of Oracle Corporation, the computer software giant, enjoys a total compensation upward of 130 million dollars a year. Salary bonus and other compensations make up about 6 million of that with more than $124 million coming from stock gains.

Ralph Lauren, of Polo Ralph Lauren is a fashion icon like no other and his pay packet is over 30 million dollars a year. A 15 million a year salary along with other perks worth 7 million and stock gains of nearly 8 million make him a very rich man indeed!

Rupert Murdoch, the Chairman and CEO of News Corporation, has a net worth of about 6 billion and makes about 15 million dollars a year. His money comes from salary and bonuses mainly – about 13 million and another 2 million in other compensation. We don’t know if he makes anything from stock gains.

Leslie Wexner, Chairman and CEO of Limited Brands, also makes his money from salary and bonuses rather than stock gains. His total compensation is 8.8 million dollars a year, with a 6.8 million dollar yearly salary.

J. Willard Marriott Jr., the Chairman and CEO of Marriott International, has the comparatively modest salary of $1.2 million, with other compensations of $1.6 million and stock gains of $4.1 million totaling to a yearly compensation of nearly 7 million dollars.

Apart from these worthies Fredrick Smith of FedEx, Michael S Dell of Dell, Charles W Ergen of DISH Network, Jeffrey P Bezos of Amazon, and Sheldon G Adelson of Las Vegas Sands are the among the list of seriously well paid American leaders of industry.

One may well wonder why the guys at Apple and Google did not get a mention here. The reason for that would be that Steve Jobs of Apple and Eric Schmidt of Google take home the princely sum of $1 to run their companies! How’s that for rich!

Dhirubhai Ambani’s was the original rags to riches story. When he died some years ago he left a staggeringly vast empire but no will and two sons; each ambitious and believing that he deserved a portion of the pie that was being usurped by the other.   Enter the mother. Kokilaben Ambani the tycoon’s widow helped arrive at a pact and there was a division of assets resulting in an uneasy peace being brokered between the bickering brothers.

However now the squabbling siblings are once again at loggerheads and this time it is natural gas that is causing the rift. And this time the murky world of politics is also involved with Anil accusing the minister of petroleum in India of siding with his brother Mukesh. According to a settlement brokered Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) was to supply 28 million cubic meters of gas a day at $2.34 per million units to Anil Ambani’s Reliance Natural Resources Limited (RNRL) for 17 years.

However $4.20 per million units was the price set by the government in 2006 for all buyers of gas from the basin. This was not acceptable to younger brother Anil since a lower price was fixed inter se between the brothers under their family pact. Of course there is the entire legal tangle to sort out and the matter is now before the Supreme Court; and Anil is shouting foul play and partisanship by the Ministry of Petroleum, who is saying this is a natural resource and does not belong to either of the brothers. Whew!

A fascinating story there about big money, big business, charged with emotion, featuring estranged brothers and even a legal battle and a dash of politics thrown in. Sidney Sheldon and Jeffery Archer are probably wishing they had thought of this story first!

Now if I were to pick one divorce settlement that is to my mind the most famous, I would it was the Donald Trump / Ivana Trump divorce with its high profile showdowns on ski slopes and massive settlements. After all it was Ivana who made that classic line her own when she said in the First Wives Club, ‘Don’t get mad, get everything!” Though the exact amounts paid out in the divorce were sealed by the Courts, according to Wiki, rumors estimated that Ivana received $20 million, the $14 million family estate in Connecticut, a $5 million housing allowance, all of her jewelry and 49% of Mar-A-Lago, the family home in Palm Beach which also serves as a private club for the Palm Beach elite. Ivana’s next marriage; to Riccardo Mazzucchelli didn’t last either and she filed a $15 million breach of contract suit against him as well.

Perhaps the most famous, but the Trump divorce has hardly the biggest in terms of money. Steven Spielberg, for instance paid Amy Irving a whopping $100 million when they hit Splistville in 1989.

Neil Diamond (my fave balladeer of all time) was unusually cordial when he divorced his wife of 25 years, Marcia Murphy and cheerfully paid up $150 million, saying ‘She’s worth every penny’! Perhaps Neil told her I still wanna be friends.

All these high profile celebrity divorce settlements however, do not compare to a relatively lesser known divorce settlement of Chelsea soccer club owner Roman Abramovich when he paid what is touted as the biggest divorce settlement in history, a $2.5 billion payout to his former air hostess wife Irina.

And I think this qualifies as one of the costliest divorces when you consider that the couple were never legally married: Mick Jagger ‘divorced’ Jerry Hall after a 21 year relationship and paid $25 million! Not bad!

I do think it a big unseemly to evince a ghoulish interest in the demise of other people’s marriage, but when such staggering sums of money are involved, well I can really help but be fascinated!

TV Guide however, has this list, which puts Seinfeld right at the top as the Top TV show of all time. This is followed by I love Lucy, The Honeymooners, All in the Family, The Sopranos, 60 Minutes, The Late Show with David Letterman, The Simpsons, The Andy Griffith Show and Saturday Night Live. I have to admit that I was rather relieved to see that there are no reality TV shows in that list. I agree with a post I read here, that Reality TV is the nadir of TV.

ClassicTV.com has another list that includes more of my favorite shows. At the top are two of my favorites I Love Lucy and M.A.S.H. These are followed by Star Trek (this dates me a bit, but I can remember a time I used to love that show), The Andy Griffith Show, Cheers (still don’t mind watching the reruns) The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Bewitched, The Twilight Zone and All in the Family.

Now here is a the longest running TV poll which declares the top TV shows as Firefly, Xena: Warrior Princess, Bonanza, Gunsmoke, Battlestar Galactica (2004), Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Farscape, Jericho, Angel, Combat!, and The X-Files. Cannot say I fancy any of them all that much.

As for Forbes, they have a highest earning list, which of course has Chat Queen Oprah as TV’s highest earner, with $260 million earned in a year! Although Jerry Seinfeld’s show ended years ago, he is the second highest earning person on TV, thanks in large part to reruns and makes about $60 mil a year! Then there’s the acerbic Simon Cowell (No. 3 at $45 million), David Letterman (No. 4 at $40 million) and Jay Leno (No. 6 at $32 million). And just FYI Donald Trumps’ earning only from TV is $32 mil (his net worth is $3 Billion).

Well you know what they say, There’s No Business Like Show Business!

Rather predictably, the top, most powerful celebrity is Oprah Winfrey, in terms of pay, web rank, press rank and TV/radio rank. With her daytime talk show, satellite radio show, magazine and Broadway musical the media queen is the most influential and powerful celeb around.

The next of the list is, a little more surprisingly, a sportsperson: Golfer Extraordinaire, Tiger Woods. Apparently the guy makes all his really big bucks from endorsements, most notably the Nike endorement. Woods is the first athlete to have made $100 million a year. Well nice to be paid to play!

Obviously pop diva Madonna with her talent for constantly reinventing herself finds a place in this list. In addition to the fingers she has in all the other pies, she also started her own clothing line.

Now the Rolling Stones guys still command a hefty clout no matter if they are the Methuselah among Rockers and look like the ‘before’ pic of an anti wrinkle cream advert. They had the highest-grossing tour in North America raking in $139 million. They earned double of that abroad! Good going wrinklies.

The scrumptious Bard Pitt of the Brangelina combine is next on the top celebrity list, these days even more in the news for becoming the proud papa of twins, whose first photos reportedly fetched the obscene amount of $20 million – all to be given to charity.

Johnny Depp is next on the list, and people if you will pardon me, I really can’t understand this man’s allure. Forbes lists his top attributes at talented and interesting; we’ll just leave it at that!

Another aging but interesting rocker finds his way into this list; Elton John, known for his flashy clothes and flashy shows is over 60 but with his never say die attitude, commands respect and adulation still!

In his heyday Tom Cruise graced the top of the Forbes top 100 list, and is now relegated to a mere 8^th spot. Being dumped by Paramount caused a reversal of his fortunes, but he was able to salvage a comeback nevertheless.

Jay-Z, hip-hopper, businessman and Beyonce’s significant other is both talented and a trend setter in his own right, and comes in at no 9.

Everyone’s favorite filmmaker, and one of the most influential people ever in Hollywood comes in only at no 10 on this list.

I listed out the top ten for you here, if you want you can go here and see all the 100! Happy celeb spotting!

It has been a while since I did my Rich, Richer, Richest post. Since then much water has flowed under the bridge and with Bill Gates stepping down from the Chairpersonship of Microsoft just recently, I thought I would do a recap of the richest.

For quite some time now, our man Bill Gates, computer whiz, philanthropist, business magnate, nice guy, chairman of Microsoft etc., had tenaciously clung to the number one spot and the ‘richest man in the world’ title. The definitive Forbes’ list tells us that not only has the king been dethroned (after 13 years no less), he has been relegated to the third spot! Ah how the mighty have fallen!

So the new title bearer for the ‘richest man in the world’ is Warren Buffet, investor, businessman and philanthropist with a personal fortune of $62.0 billion. Buffet, incidentally, often plays bridge with Bill Gates; birds of a feather, it would seem, play bridge together. He is known as much for his personal frugality as for his immense wealth.

The number two spot is occupied by Carlos Slim Helu (‘and family’ according to Forbes) the Mexican who made his billions chiefly in the telecommunication sector. He is worth $60 billion.

Turns out that Gates would have continued unvanquished at the top of the heap if Microsoft had not made the unsolicited (and ill-advised) bid for the Yahoo takeover earlier this year. It is thus that he is left with a personal fortune of a mere 58 billion dollars! A mere bagatelle!

Lakshmi Mittal is appropriately named, because the word ‘Lakshmi’ in Hindi means wealth or riches and this is also the name of the goddess of wealth in India. He comes in at number 4 with a personal fortune of $45 billion. He is perhaps the face of Global India, announcing to the world the emergence of the third world countries and India in particular on the world stage as an economic power house to contend with.

At number 5 is another Indian, Mukesh Ambani with a personal worth of $ 43 billion; he heads Reliance Industries, India’s biggest company by market cap. His personal fortune has seen a steep rise in the recent past. He is followed by his brother Anil Ambani at no 6 on the list.

Following the Ambanis is Ingvar Kamprad (& family) the Swedish retail king with $31 billion. At no. 8 on the list is one more Indian, the Indian real estate king K P Singh with $31 billion. At no. 9 is Oleg Deripaska the Russian aluminum trader with $28 billion. At no. 10 is German Karl Albrecht, retailer with a personal who is worth $27 billion.

The mind boggles at the immense wealth that these people have. It would be worth asking them all: “Did all the money make you happy?”