The 2024 Forbes Billionaires List reveals that the world’s top 25 youngest billionaires are aged 33 or younger and have collectively amassed a staggering $110 billion in wealth. While this youth-centric trend signals a new era of wealth accumulation, a closer look reveals that much of this wealth has been inherited rather than self-made.
Topping the list of young billionaires under 30 are Zahan and Firoz Mistry, sons of the late Cyrus Mistry, with a combined net worth of $9.8 billion ($4.9 billion each). The brothers, aged 25 and 27, inherited the property after their father, the former chairman of Tata Sons, died in a car accident in 2022.
The brothers, who are citizens of Ireland but live in Mumbai, inherited part of the family’s 18.4% stake in Tata Sons, putting them in the elite circle of young billionaires.
After working in various sectors of the family business for more than 18 months, they took on executive roles at the company in December 2022. Zahan Mistry is a graduate of Yale University and Firoz Mistry studied at the University of Warwick.
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The Mistry brothers’ grandfather, Pallonji Mistry, played a key role in establishing the family legacy in the business. Their uncle Shapoor Mistry currently serves as the chairman of the family’s Mumbai-based construction giant Shapoorji Pallonji Group.
In a bid to ease debt pressures, the Mistry family plans to raise around $850 million by listing privately held construction and engineering firm Afcons Infrastructure.
However, the Mistry brothers are not the only beneficiaries of inherited wealth among the 18 heirs on the list. Clemente Del Vecchio, a 19-year-old from Italy, inherited a major stake in EssilorLuxottica, an Italo-French eyewear conglomerate, after his father died, becoming the youngest billionaire to date, beating Livia Voigt, a Brazilian student and heir to electrical equipment manufacturer WEG .
Vecchio is two months older than Voigt and has a net worth of $1.1 billion.