Collisons lead the Irish on Forbes billionaires list

Stripe brothers’ combined wealth outstrips total fortune of four other Irish billionaires

(l-r) Patrick and John Collison of Stripe

Jon Ihle

April 06 2021 06:15 PM

Stripe founders Patrick and John Collison have a combined real-time net wealth nearly twice that of the other four Irish billionaires, according to estimates included in the annual Forbes billionaires list.

The Tipperary-born brothers, who started Stripe together in 2010 while studying in Cambridge, Massachusetts, are each worth $9.5bn (€8bn), the magazine says.

The $19bn between the pair far exceeds the combined $9.8bn wealth total for Denis O'Brien, John Dorrance, Eugene Murtagh and Dermot Desmond, all of whom have had careers longer than the Collisons have been alive.

Just two weeks ago, Stripe was valued at $95bn making it the most valuable private company in Silicon Valley.

While the Collisons' stake in Stripe is the main source of their current wealth, the brothers were already millionaires as teenagers after selling their company, Auctomatic, for a reported $5m in 2008.

Now as CEO and president of the company, they are running arguably the hottest technology business in the world.

Stripe's meteoric rise has been characterised by rapidly increasing valuations each time the company has sought funding from investors.

A $250m funding round in September 2019 put the value of the company at $35bn. By November of last year, commentators were estimating it was closer to $100bn – a figure confirmed last month when it raised another $600m.

The Irish Strategic Investment Fund was one of the backers in that transaction, which was followed by a commitment from Stripe to add 1,000 jobs at its Irish offices.

Digicel owner Denis O'Brien is the next biggest Irish billionaire on the list, with an estimated net worth of $4.6bn derived from his 94pc stake in the telecoms company.

Mr O'Brien's wealth rebounded sharply in the last year after Digicel negotiated a major restructuring of company debt, including a $1.6bn writedown and the extension of payment terms for some bonds.

Mr O'Brien sold his stake in Independent News & Media, the publisher of the Irish Independent, to Mediahuis in 2019 at a loss of hundreds of millions of euro. Last month he agreed to sell radio group Communicorp to Bauer Media Audio.

The Irish list is rounded out by Campbell's Soup heir John Dorrance at $2.6bn, Kingspan founder Eugene Murtagh at $2.5bn and entrepreneur and investor Dermot Desmond at $2.1bn.

The Irish billionaires are dwarfed by the top 10 richest people on the list, whose personal fortunes in some cases exceed $100bn.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos tops the list, with a net worth of $177bn even after his $38bn divorce settlement with ex-wife MacKenzie Scott in 2019.

Elon Musk stands in second place with $151bn after the value of Tesla shot up in 2020, moving him up from 33rd place last year.

Technology entrepreneurs Bill Gates (Microsoft), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), Larry Ellison (Oracle), Sergey Brin and Larry Page (both Google) round out the list, along withLVMH's Arnault family and India's Mukesh Ambani.

Eight of the top 10 are Americans, showing that the USA is still the biggest generator of individual wealth in the world, notwithstanding the rise of China as the world's second biggest economy.