Forbes released their World's Most Powerful People of 2013 list yesterday. I love this list and I'm always interested to see who makes the Top 10.
Did Oprah make it? What will the world leader-to-billionaire-to-philanthropist ratio be this year? Will any Irish make the list? And the one question everyone wants answered, did at least one drug trafficker make the list this year?
I was disappointed from the get-go. When filtering the list by 'country' Ireland doesn't even make that list! So there are definitely no Irish in the World's Most Powerful People.
Again, disappointment....Oprah hasn't made the list. I thought she was powerful but maybe I'm getting that confused with rich. But she's only 184th in the Rich List. She is 13th in the World's Most Powerful Women list so she is powerful, but just not powerful enough it seems.
Finally, I'm not disappointed. A drug trafficker did make the list this year, Joaquin Guzman Loera. He dropped from 56 last year to 67 this year so not a great year for him all-in-all but he still made it!
I also thought Forbes lists were all a good, healthy Top 100 but the 2013 list has shrunk to a meager Top 72 Most Powerful. So there was room for Oprah after all...
Forbes World's Most Powerful People List
1 Vladimir Putin
President, Russia
2 Barack Obama
President, United States
3 Xi Jinping
General Secretary, Communist Party, China
4 Pope Francis
Pope, Roman Catholic Church
5 Angela Merkel
Chancellor, Germany
6 Bill Gates
Co-Chair, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
7 Ben Bernanke
Chairman, Federal Reserve, United States
8 Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud
King, Saudi Arabia
9 Mario Draghi
President, European Central Bank
10 Michael Duke
CEO, Wal-Mart Stores
11 David Cameron
Prime Minister, United Kingdom
12 Carlos Slim Helu & family
Honorary Chairman, América Móvil
13 Warren Buffett
CEO, Berkshire Hathaway
14 Li Keqiang
Premier, China
15 Jeff Bezos
CEO, Amazon.com
16 Rex Tillerson
CEO, Exxon Mobil
17 Sergey Brin
Cofounder, Director Of Special Projects, Google
17 Larry Page
CEO, Google
18 Francois Hollande
President, France
19 Timothy Cook
CEO, Apple
20 Dilma Rousseff
President, Brazil
21 Sonia Gandhi
President, Indian National Congress, India
22 Jamie Dimon
CEO, JPMorgan Chase
23 Ali Hoseini-Khamenei
Grand Ayatollah, Iran
24 Mark Zuckerberg
Cofounder, Chairman and CEO, Facebook
25 Jeffrey Immelt
CEO, General Electric
26 Benjamin Netanyahu
Prime Minister, Israel
27 Lloyd Blankfein
CEO, Goldman Sachs Group
28 Manmohan Singh
Prime Minister, India
29 Michael Bloomberg
Mayor, New York City, United States
30 Li Ka-shing
Chairman, Hutchison Whampoa
31 Charles Koch
CEO, Koch Industries
31 David Koch
Executive Vice President, Koch Industries
32 Ban Ki-moon
Secretary-General, United Nations
33 Rupert Murdoch & family
Chairman and CEO, News Corp
34 Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan
President, United Arab Emirates
35 Christine Lagarde
Managing Director, International Monetary Fund
36 Xuedong Ding
Chairman, China Investment Corp, China
37 Enrique Pena Nieto
President, Mexico
38 Mukesh Ambani
Chairman, Reliance Industries
39 Haruhiko Kuroda
Governor, Bank of Japan, Japan
40 Ali Al-Naimi
Oil Minister, Saudi Arabia
41 Lee Kun-Hee
Chairman, Samsung Group
42 Larry Fink
Cofounder, CEO, BlackRock
43 Bill Clinton
Chairman, Clinton Global Initiative
44 Akio Toyoda
CEO, Toyota Motor
45 Masayoshi Son
CEO, Softbank
46 Kim Jong-un
Supreme Leader, North Korea
47 Elon Musk
Founder, CEO, Space Exploration Technologies Corp.
48 Terry Gou
CEO, Hon Hai Precision
49 Martin Winterkorn
Chairman, Volkswagen Group
50 Jim Yong Kim
President, World Bank
51 Lakshmi Mittal
Chairman and CEO, ArcelorMittal
52 Geun-hye Park
President, South Korea
53 Dmitry Medvedev
Prime Minister, Russia
54 Bernard Arnault & family
Chairman and CEO, LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton
55 Bill Gross
Cofounder and Co-Chief Investment Officer, Pacific Investment Management Company LLC
56 Virginia Rometty
CEO, IBM
57 Shinzo Abe
Prime Minister, Japan
58 Larry Ellison
CEO, Oracle
59 Margaret Chan
Director-General, World Health Organization
60 Igor Sechin
Chairman, Rosneft
61 Robin Li
Founder and CEO, Baidu
62 John Roberts
Chief Justice, U.S. Supreme Court, United States
63 Alisher Usmanov
Founder, Metalloinvest
64 Aliko Dangote
CEO, Dangote Group
65 Reid Hoffman
Partner, Greylock Partners
66 John Boehner
Speaker, U.S. House of Representatives, United States
67 Joaquin Guzman Loera
Drug Trafficker, Sinaloa Cartel
68 Jill Abramson
Executive Editor, New York Times Co.
69 Joseph Blatter
President, FIFA
70 Yngve Slyngstad
CEO, Norges Bank Investment Management, Norway
71 Mohammed Ibrahim
Founder, Mo Ibrahim Foundation
72 Janet Yellen
Vice Chairman, Federal Reserve, Washington, United States
