Assets minus liabilities, shown with the math.

Current calculation version: calc-1.1.0. Latest estimate date: September 4, 2026. Profiles tracked: 32.

Coverage and inclusion

The leaderboard covers the people tracked under this methodology. It is not a complete census of private wealth. A person may be included only when they are living, independently notable, already a public figure, and at least one material source of wealth is documented in public records or reliable official disclosures. Publication never relies on private addresses, leaked credentials, nonpublic account data, anonymous gossip, or lifestyle inference. Opaque fortunes stay out of the ranking even when other publishers report them, because a central estimate without adequate evidence would mislead.

Identity resolution

Every person has a stable internal identifier that never depends on the display name or URL slug. Citizenship, residence, and ranking attribution are separate recorded facts with a stated attribution reason; none is inferred from another. Aliases are tracked to prevent duplicate profiles.

Listed shareholdings

A listed holding is valued as owned economic units multiplied by the unadjusted market close, then converted to US dollars at the official reference rate for the estimate date. Ownership quantities come from filings and official documents and keep their own effective date even when the price updates daily. Stock splits and corporate actions are handled in ownership quantities; an adjusted historical price is never combined with a current share count.

Share classes, options, derivatives, and splits

Economic units are counted, not voting rights, unless the two are identical. Multiple share classes are valued at their own market prices where they trade, or at the economic ratio documented in filings. Options and derivative positions enter the model only when exercise price, vesting, expiry, and exercisability can be documented; otherwise they are excluded and noted as a limitation. Depositary receipt ratios are applied before valuation.

Direct and indirect ownership

Direct, indirect, and beneficial interests are modeled explicitly. A personal holding and a holding-company stake that contains it are never both counted. Pledged or restricted shares keep a documented treatment: where loan economics are disclosed, either the pledged shares or the loan is deducted, never both without checking for double-counting.

Private-company valuations

A private component keeps its reviewed evidence value until a new financing, transaction, filing, audited statement, or approved comparable model provides a defensible update. Funding raised is not company value, and a headline post-money number may apply only to a preferred share class; preferences, options, convertibles, and dilution are accounted for when known. In enterprise-value models, company net debt is subtracted before applying personal ownership, and never subtracted twice.

Private-company valuations may be based on an older financing, transaction, filing, or comparable-company model and can be less current than listed holdings.

A private valuation older than 18 months is flagged stale. At 24 months a human review is required before it can remain in the central estimate.

Cash, dividends, and sale proceeds

Cash appears only when a transaction, dividend, distribution, or filing supports it. Historic dividends are not accumulated forever without modeling taxes and disposition; version one favors conservative, explicitly documented cash events. Unknown spending is treated as an uncertainty source, not as zero.

Real estate and other assets

Personal assets are included only when material, publicly documented, and reasonably valued through an appraisal, transaction price, official record, or transparent comparable range. Ownership is never inferred from photographs or residence rumors, private addresses are never published, and brand value, fame, future salary, or hypothetical inheritance are never added.

Debt and liabilities

Personal debt is included when attributable, material, and documented. Company debt already reflected in an enterprise value is distinguished from personal debt. A lawsuit claim, tax allegation, proposed fine, or disputed obligation is not automatically a liability at face value; disputed items live in notes or the uncertainty range until resolved.

Unknown liabilities are not evidence that no liabilities exist.

Charitable transfers, trusts, and families

Assets irrevocably transferred to an independent charitable entity leave the estimate; a pledge alone does not. Trusts are modeled only when economic interest and control can be understood. Assets held by relatives are not assigned to the featured person without an explicit ownership rule and reliable evidence, and no family asset is counted twice.

Currency conversion

Non-dollar values convert through euro reference rates published by the European Central Bank: the amount is multiplied by the US dollar rate and divided by the holding currency's rate. The rate date is stored separately from the check date, and weekend or holiday gaps carry the last working-day rate forward. Calculations using these rates are derived values computed by Net Worth Leader.

Low, central, and high estimates

Each component can carry a supported range. Profile totals combine them so that a higher liability reduces the low case: the low total is the sum of asset lows minus liability highs, and the high total is the sum of asset highs minus liability lows. Ranges must come from a defensible valuation model or documented uncertainty; decorative percentage bands are prohibited, and a profile that cannot support a range publishes only its central estimate with an explanation.

Source coverage labels

Coverage measures how much of a profile's absolute gross component value rests on Tier 1 or Tier 2 evidence. Strong coverage requires at least 80 percent with a total supported range no wider than 15 percent of the central estimate and no stale material private component. Partial coverage requires at least 60 percent with a range no wider than 30 percent. Everything else publishable is labeled limited. Thresholds live in versioned configuration; a label change caused by a threshold change records the method version.

Freshness

Coverage and freshness are separate. Each component tracks when its source said the fact was true, when the pipeline last checked, and which market close and exchange-rate dates were used. Components are current, carried forward, stale, or blocked; a weekend carry-forward is not stale when the market was closed. A source failure never turns a holding into zero: the last known good value is carried forward and marked.

Daily-change attribution

A change is computed only against the prior comparable snapshot with a compatible calculation version. Movement is decomposed by component into market price, foreign exchange, ownership filings, corporate actions, private valuation events, documented cash flows, liability updates, corrections, and method changes. The categories must reconcile to the total change within a fixed tolerance or publication is blocked. Anomaly gates also block publication when a single instrument moves more than 35 percent between checks, or when a profile moves more than 15 percent for reasons other than observed closes and exchange rates; a large move that is fully explained by observed closes is published and logged.

A one-day estimate change is not the same as income, profit, or a realized gain or loss.

Ranking ties

People are ranked by the unrounded central estimate. Exact internal ties share a competition rank (1, 2, 2, 4) and are displayed alphabetically. Ties are never broken by fame, editorial preference, traffic, or rounded display values.

Weekends and market holidays

On days without new closes, the site shows the latest comparable market-close change and its date rather than inventing movement. The one-day change means the difference from the prior comparable published snapshot, not necessarily the previous calendar day.

Corrections and restatements

Factual and calculation errors are corrected promptly and logged. Historical snapshots are immutable; a correction appends a restatement record instead of silently rewriting history. Material corrections are published in the corrections log with what changed, why, and whether history was restated. New source information, corrections, and methodology changes are labeled as distinct things.

Historical snapshots

Official history begins when Net Worth Leader starts publishing: one immutable snapshot per successful estimate date, each recording its calculation version and source references. Before the first published snapshot, profile charts may show a labeled modeled reconstruction: today's reviewed ownership records applied to the closing prices of earlier market dates. Reconstructed points are stored separately, marked as reconstructions wherever they appear, and never presented as published history.

Methodology versioning

Calculation versions are semantic and separate from application releases. A breaking method change requires a written rationale, fixture updates, a before-and-after impact report, editorial approval, a restatement decision, and a public change note when material.

Limitations

Private holdings, indirect structures, undisclosed liabilities, and timing gaps mean any single number is less certain than it looks. That is why every profile shows its evidence coverage, dates, range where supported, and a route to the underlying sources. When the evidence cannot support an estimate, the honest answer is to not publish one.