World's Most Powerful Peoples

Forbes Magazine compiles an annual list of the world's most powerful people. The list has one slot for every 100 million people on Earth, meaning in 2009 there were 67 people on the list, in 2010 there were 68, in 2011 there were 70, and in 2012 there were 71. Slots are allocated based on the amount of human and financial resources that they have sway over, as well as their influence on world events.

Forbes' Most Powerful People, 2013 (top 10)

Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (born 7 October 1952) is a Russian politician who has been the President of Russia since 7 May 2012. He previously served as President from 2000 to 2008, and as Prime Minister of Russia from 1999 to 2000 and again from 2008 to 2012. During that last term, he was also the Chairman of the United Russia.

For 16 years Putin served as an officer in the KGB, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel before he retired to enter politics in his native Saint Petersburg in 1991. He moved to Moscow in 1996 and joined President Boris Yeltsin's administration where he rose quickly, becoming Acting President on 31 December 1999 when Yeltsin resigned unexpectedly. Putin won the subsequent 2000 presidential election and was re-elected in 2004. Because of constitutionally mandated term limits, Putin was ineligible to run for a third consecutive presidential term in 2008. Dmitry Medvedev won the 2008 presidential election and appointed Putin as Prime Minister, beginning a period of so-called "tandemocracy".In September 2011, following a change in the law extending the presidential term from four years to six, Putin announced that he would seek a third, non-consecutive term as President in the 2012 presidential election, an announcement which led to large-scale protests in many Russian cities. He won the election in March 2012 and is serving a six-year term. Many of Putin's actions are regarded by the domestic opposition and foreign observers as undemocratic. The 2011 Democracy Index stated that Russia was in "a long process of regression [that] culminated in a move from a hybrid to an authoritarian regime" in view of Putin's candidacy and flawed parliamentary elections.

Barack Obama

Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is the 44th and current President of the United States, and the first African American to hold the office. Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, Obama is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he served as president of the Harvard Law Review. He was a community organizer in Chicago before earning his law degree. He worked as a civil rights attorney and taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School from 1992 to 2004. He served three terms representing the 13th District in the Illinois Senate from 1997 to 2004, running unsuccessfully for the United States House of Representatives in 2000.

In 2004, Obama received national attention during his campaign to represent Illinois in the United States Senate with his victory in the March Democratic Party primary, his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in July, and his election to the Senate in November. He began his presidential campaign in 2007, and in 2008, after a close primary campaign against Hillary Rodham Clinton; he won sufficient delegates in the Democratic Party primaries to receive the presidential nomination. He then defeated Republican nominee John McCain in the general election, and was inaugurated as president on January 20, 2009. Nine months after his election, Obama was named the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Obama was re-elected president in November 2012, defeating Republican nominee Mitt Romney, and was sworn in for a second term on January 20, 2013. During his second term, Obama has promoted domestic policies related to gun control in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, has called for full equality for LGBT Americans, and his administration filed briefs which urged the Supreme Court to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 and California's Proposition 8 as unconstitutional. In foreign policy, Obama has continued the process of ending U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan.

Xi Jinping

Xi Jinping (born 15 June 1953) is the General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, the President of the People's Republic of China, and the Chairman of the Central Military Commission. As General Secretary, he is also an ex officio member of the CPC Politburo Standing Committee, China's de facto top decision-making body.

Son of communist veteran Xi Zhongxun, Xi Jinping rose through the ranks politically in China's coastal provinces. He served as the Governor of Fujian between 1999 and 2002, then as Governor and CPC party chief of the neighboring Zhejiang between 2002 and 2007. Following the dismissal of Chen Liangyu, Xi was transferred to Shanghai as the party secretary for a brief period in 2007. Xi was promoted to the Politburo Standing Committee and Central Secretariat in October 2007 and was groomed to become Hu Jintao's successor.Xi is now the leader of the People's Republic's fifth generation of leadership. He has called for a renewed campaign against corruption, continued market economic reforms, an open approach to governance, and a comprehensive national renewal under the neologism "Chinese Dream".

Xi joined the Communist Youth League in 1971 and the Communist Party of China in 1974. In 1982, he was sent to Zhengding County in Hebei as Deputy Secretary to the CPC Zhengding County Committee, and was promoted in 1983 to Secretary of the CPC Zhengding County Committee. Xi subsequently served in four provinces during his political career: Shaanxi (during the Cultural Revolution, 1969–1975), Hebei (1982–1985), Fujian (1985–2002), and Zhejiang (2002–2007).Xi held Party positions in the CPC Fuzhou Municipal Committee, and became the president of the Party School in Fuzhou in 1990. In 1999, he was promoted to the Deputy Governor of Fujian, and then became Governor a year later. While there, he made efforts to attract investment from Taiwan and to boost free market economy. In February 2000, he and provincial Party Secretary Chen Mingyi were called before the top four members of the Party Central Politburo Standing Committee – General Secretary, President Jiang Zemin, Premier Zhu Rongji, Vice-President Hu Jintao and Discipline Inspection secretary Wei Jianxing to explain aspects of the Yuanhua scandal.

In 2002, Xi took up senior government and Party positions in Zhejiang, and eventually took over as party chief after several months as acting Governor, becoming the first-in-charge in the province. Xi was then made an alternate member of the 15th CPC Central Committee and holds the membership of the 16th CPC Central Committee, marking his ascension to the national stage. While in Zhejiang, Xi provided the economic environment which secured growth rates averaging 14% per year. His career in Zhejiang was marked by tough and straightforward stance against corrupt officials, which earned him a name on the national media and drew the attention of China's top leaders.Following the dismissal of Shanghai Party Chief Chen Liangyu in September 2006 due to a social security fund scandal, Xi was transferred to Shanghai in March 2007 to become the new Party Chief of Shanghai. Xi's appointment to one of the most important regional posts in China was clearly a sign of confidence from the Central Government. While in Shanghai he was careful not to touch any controversial issues while largely echoing the line of the central leadership. Xi's career is notable in that during his regional tenures, he was never implicated in any serious scandals, nor did he face serious political opposition.

Pope Francis

Francis (born, 17 December 1936) is the 266th and current Pope of the Catholic Church, in which capacity he is Bishop of Rome and absolute Sovereign of the Vatican City State.

Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Bergoglio worked briefly as a chemical technician and nightclub bouncer before entering the seminary. He was ordained a Catholic priest in 1969, and from 1973 to 1979 was Argentina's Provincial Superior of the Society of Jesus. He became the Archbishop of Buenos Aires in 1998, and was created a Cardinal in 2001. Following the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI on 28 February 2013, the subsequent papal conclave elected Bergoglio as his successor on 13 March. He chose his papal name in honour of Saint Francis of Assisi. Francis is the first Jesuit Pope, the first Pope from the Americas, the first Pope from the Southern Hemisphere and the first non-European Pope since Pope Gregory III in 741, 1272 years earlier.

Throughout his public life, both as an individual and as a religious leader, Pope Francis has been noted for his humility, his concern for the poor, and his commitment to dialogue as a way to build bridges between people of all backgrounds, beliefs, and faiths. He is known for having a simpler and less formal approach to the papacy, most notably by choosing to reside in the Domus Sanctae Marthae guesthouse rather than the papal apartments of the Apostolic Palace formerly used by his predecessors. In addition, he is known for favoring simpler vestments void of ornamentation, by starting to refuse the traditional papal mozzetta cape upon his election, choosing silver instead of gold for his piscatory ring, and keeping the same pectoral cross he had when he was cardinal.

Pope Francis has affirmed Catholic doctrine on abortion, contraception, and homosexuality. Whilst maintaining the church's teaching against homosexual acts, he has said that gay people should not be marginalized. As a Cardinal, the Pontiff opposed gay marriage in Argentina, citing it as a "destructive attack on God's plan by the Father of Lies".In addition, he maintains that he is a "Son of the Church" regarding loyalty to Church doctrine, and has spoken against abortion as "horrific",insisted that women be valued, not clericized. Summarily, Pope Francis reiterates that "It is absurd to say you follow Jesus Christ, but reject the Church.". Accordingly, he urged Bishop Charles J. Scicluna of Malta to speak out against adoption by same-sex couples, maintained that divorced and re-married Catholics may not receive Holy Communion, as well as excommunicated a former Catholic priest for Eucharistic sacrilege and heretical views. Furthermore, he emphasized the Christian obligation to assist the poor and the needy in an optimistic tone, as well as promoting peace negotiations and interfaith dialogue.

Angela Merkel

Angela Dorothea Merkel (born 17 July 1954) is a German politician and former research scientist, who have been the Chancellor of Germany since 2005 and the leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) since 2000. She is the first woman to hold either office.

Having earned a doctorate as physical chemist, Merkel entered politics in the wake of the Revolutions of 1989, briefly serving as the deputy spokesperson for the East German Government. Following reunification in 1990, she was elected to the Bundestag for Stralsund-Nordvorpommern-Rügen in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, a seat she has held since. She was later appointed as the Federal Minister for Women and Youth in 1991 under Chancellor Helmut Kohl, She was promoted to become Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation, and Nuclear Safety in 1994. After the CDU/CSU coalition was defeated in 1998, she was elected Secretary-General of the CDU, before being elected the party's first ever woman as leader in 2000.

Following the 2005 federal election, she was appointed Germany's first female Chancellor at the head of a grand coalition consisting of her own CDU party, its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). In the 2009 federal election, the CDU obtained the largest share of the vote, and Merkel was able to form a coalition government with the support of the CSU, and the Free Democratic Party (FDP). At the 2013 federal election, Merkel led the CDU/CSU to a landslide victory with 41.5% of the vote and formed a second grand coalition with the SPD, after the FDP lost all of its representation in the Bundestag.

In 2007, Merkel was President of the European Council and chaired the G8, the second woman (after Margaret Thatcher) to do so. She played a central role in the negotiation of the Treaty of Lisbon and the Berlin Declaration. One of her priorities was also to strengthen transatlantic economic relations by signing the agreement for the Transatlantic Economic Council on 30 April 2007. Merkel is seen as playing a crucial role in managing the financial crisis at the European and international level, and has been referred to as "the decider." In domestic policy, health care reform and problems concerning future energy development have been major issues of her tenure.

Angela Merkel has been described as the de facto leader of the European Union, and was ranked as the world's second most powerful person by Forbes magazine in 2012; the highest ranking ever achieved by a woman, and is now ranked fifth.

Bill Gates

William Henry "Bill" Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate, investor, programmer, inventor and philanthropist. Gates is the former chief executive and chairman of Microsoft, the world’s largest personal-computer software company, which he co-founded with Paul Allen.

He is consistently ranked in the Forbes list of the world's wealthiest people and was the wealthiest overall from 1995 to 2009—excluding 2008, when he was ranked third; in 2011 he was the wealthiest American and the world's second wealthiest person. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires List, Gates is the world's richest person in 2013, a position that he last held on the list in 2007. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions of CEO and chief software architect, and remains the largest individual shareholder, with 6.4 percent of the common stock. He has also authored and co-authored several books.

Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. Gates has been criticized for his business tactics, which have been considered anti-competitive, an opinion which has in some cases been upheld by judicial courts. In the later stages of his career, Gates has pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, established in 2000.Gates stepped down as chief executive officer of Microsoft in January 2000. He remained as chairman and created the position of chief software architect for himself. In June 2006, Gates announced that he would be transitioning from full-time work at Microsoft to part-time work, and full-time work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. He gradually transferred his duties to Ray Ozzie, chief software architect, and Craig Mundie, chief research and strategy officer. Gates's last full-time day at Microsoft was June 27, 2008. He stepped down as chairman of Microsoft in February 2014, taking on a new post as technology advisor to support newly appointed CEO Satya Nadella. 

In April 2010, Gates was invited to visit and speak at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he asked the students to take on the hard problems of the world in their futures. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Gates was the world's highest-earning billionaire in 2013, as his fortune increased by US$15.8 billion to US$78.5 billion. As of January 2014, most of Gate’s assets are held in Cascade Investment LLC, an entity through which he owns stakes in numerous businesses, including Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts and Corbis Corp. On 4 February 2014, Bill Gates stepped down as Chairman of Microsoft to become Technology Advisor alongside Satya Nadella. 

After being named one of Good Housekeeping's "50 Most Eligible Bachelors" in 1985, Gates married Melinda French on January 1, 1994. They have three children: daughters Jennifer Katharine (b. 1996) and Phoebe Adele (b. 2002), and son Rory John (b. 1999). The family resides in the Gates's home, an earth-sheltered house in the side of a hill overlooking Lake Washington in Medina. According to King County public records, as of 2006 the total assessed value of the property (land and house) is $125 million, and the annual property tax is $991,000.Gates's 66,000 sq ft (6,100 m²) estate has a 60-foot (18 m) swimming pool with an underwater music system, as well as a 2,500 sq ft (230 m²) gym and a 1,000 sq ft (93 m²) dining room. Gates was number one on the Forbes 400 list from 1993 through to 2007 and number one on Forbes list of The World's Richest People from 1995 to 2007 and 2009. In 1999, his wealth briefly surpassed $101 billion, causing the media to call Gates a "centibillionaire". Despite his wealth and extensive business travel Gates usually flew coach until 1997, when he bought a private jet. Since 2000, the nominal value of his Microsoft holdings has declined due to a fall in Microsoft's stock price after the dot-com bubble burst and the multi-billion dollar donations he has made to his charitable foundations. In a May 2006 interview, Gates commented that he wished that he were not the richest man in the world because he disliked the attention it brought. In March 2010, Gates was the second wealthiest person behind Carlos Slim, but regained the top position in 2013 according to the Bloomberg Billionaires List. 

Gates has several investments outside Microsoft, which in 2006 paid him a salary of $616,667 and $350,000 bonus totalling $966,667. He founded Corbis, a digital imaging company, in 1989. In 2004 he became a director of Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company headed by long-time friend Warren Buffett.

Ben Bernanke

Ben Shalom Bernanke (born December 13, 1953) is an American economist at the Brookings Institution who served two terms as chairman of the Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States from 2006 to 2014. During his tenure as chairman, Bernanke oversaw the Federal Reserve's response to the late-2000s financial crisis. Before becoming Federal Reserve chairman, Bernanke was a tenured professor at Princeton University and chaired the department of economics there from 1996 to September 2002, when he went on public service leave.

From 2002 until 2005, he was a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, proposed the Bernanke Doctrine, and first discussed "the Great Moderation" — the theory that traditional business cycles have declined in volatility in recent decades through structural changes that have occurred in the international economy, particularly increases in the economic stability of developing nations, diminishing the influence of macroeconomic (monetary and fiscal) policy.Bernanke then served as chairman of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers before President Bush appointed him on February 1, 2006, to be chairman of the United States Federal Reserve. Bernanke was confirmed for a second term as chairman on January 28, 2010, after being renominated by President Barack Obama.

Abdullah of Saudi Arabia

Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (born 1 August 1924) is the King of Saudi Arabia. He ascended to the throne on 1 August 2005 upon the death of his half-brother, King Fahd.Abdullah, like Fahd, was one of the many sons of Ibn Saud, the founder of modern Saudi Arabia. Abdullah has held important political posts throughout most of his adult life. In 1961 he became mayor of Mecca, his first public office. And, in 1962, he was appointed commander of the Saudi Arabian National Guard, a post he was still holding when he became king. He also served as deputy defense minister and was named crown prince when Fahd took the throne in 1982. After King Fahd suffered a serious stroke in 1995, Abdullah became the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia until claiming the throne a decade later.

Abdullah is the sixth king of oil-rich Saudi Arabia, thus controlling 18% of the world's oil. As of 2013 the kingdom boasts a GDP of over $900 billion making it among the 20 richest countries worldwide. The kingdom has been categorized as a high-income economy along with high human development. Abdullah has during his regime maintained close relations with United States and Britain and bought billions of dollars worth of defense equipment from both states. Abdullah has also pushed toward more rights for women in the kingdom by giving them the right to vote and to compete in the Olympics. Furthermore, Abdullah successfully maintained the status quo during the waves of protest in the kingdom during the Arab Spring. In November 2013, a BBC report claimed that Saudi Arabia could obtain nuclear weapons at will from Pakistan due to a long-standing relationship.

The King has already outlived two of his crown princes. Conservative Interior Minister Nayef bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud was named heir to the throne on the death of Sultan bin Abdulaziz in October 2011, but Nayef himself died in June 2012. Abdullah then named the more liberal 76-year-old defense minister, Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, as crown prince. According to a 2001 report, Abdullah "has four wives, seven sons, and 15 daughters". To placate Saudi Islamists, the king did not allow U.S. Iraq War forces to use bases in Saudi Arabia. The king has a personal fortune estimated at US$18 billion, making him the third wealthiest head of state in the world.

Mario Draghi

Mario Draghi (born 3 September 1947) is an Italian banker and economist who succeeded Jean-Claude Trichet as the President of the European Central Bank on 1 November 2011. He was previously the governor of the Bank of Italy from January 2006 until October 2011. In 2013 Forbes nominated Draghi 9th most powerful person in the world.

In December, 2011, Draghi oversaw a €489 billion ($640 b.), three-year loan program from the ECB to European banks. The program was around the same size as the US Troubled Asset Relief Program (2008) though still much smaller than the overall US response including the Federal Reserve's asset purchases and other actions of that time. Draghi's ECB also promptly "repealed the two foolish rate hikes made by his predecessor ...Trichet [and] ... stepped up the bond purchases from struggling euro-zone nations" to help with the debt crisis, commentator Steve Goldstein wrote in mid-January, 2012. At that time, "Draghi and all of his colleagues (the decision was unanimous) chose not to cut the price for private-sector loans [below the 1% achieved with the "repeal"], even when he forecasts inflation to fall below the targeted 2% later this year." As such, Goldstein concluded, Draghi would leave more moves to national leaders Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel and central banks, contrasting Draghi's actions with those of the Fed's Ben Bernanke.

In February 2012, Nobel prize laureate in economics Joseph Stiglitz argued that, on the issue of the impending Greek debt restructuring, the ECB's insistence that it has to be "voluntary" (as opposed to a default decreed by the Greek authorities) was a gift to the financial institutions that sold credit default insurance on that debt; a position that is unfair to the other parties, and constitutes a moral hazard. Late in February, 2012, a second, somewhat larger round of ECB loans to European banks was initiated under Draghi, called long term refinancing operation (LTRO). One commentator, Matthew Lynn, saw the ECB's injection of funds, along with Quantitative easing from the US Fed and the Asset Purchase Facility at the Bank of England, as feeding increases in oil prices in 2011 and 2012. In July 2012, in the midst of renewed fears about sovereigns in the Eurozone, Draghi stated in a panel discussion that the ECB "...is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the Euro. And believe me, it will be enough." This statement led to a steady decline in bond yields (borrowing costs) for Eurozone countries, in particular Spain, Italy and France. In light of slow political progress on solving the Eurozone crisis, Draghi's statement has been seen as a key turning point in the fortunes of the Eurozone. In April 2013, Draghi said in response to a question regarding membership in the Eurozone that "These questions are formulated by people who vastly underestimate what the euro means for the Europeans, for the euro area. They vastly underestimate the amount of political capital that has been invested in the euro."

Mike Duke

Michael Terry Duke (born December 7, 1949) is an American businessman. He served as the fourth chief executive officer of Walmart from 2009 to 2013.

Duke joined Wal-Mart in 1995, and most recently served as the executive in charge of the company's international operations. He became the CEO of Wal-Mart in February 2009.Duke also serves on the board of directors for the Retail Industry Leaders Association and Arvest Bank's community advisory board. He formerly held positions with a number of retailers, including Federated Department Stores, May Department Stores, and Venture Stores. Duke earned a BS in Industrial Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1971, where he was a member of the Delta Sigma Phi Fraternity, and now serves as a member of the institution's advisory board. He sits on the Board of Directors of the Consumer Goods Forum. In 2012, his salary was $18.2 million. In 2013, press reports indicated that the total value of Duke's pension, deferred compensation and other retirement accounts totalled over $113 million.

Duke ranked No. 10 on Forbes list of The World’s Most Powerful People in 2013. That same year, Wal-Mart ranked No. 15 on Forbes list of Most Patriotic Brands—and the only retailer on the list—as voted by U.S. consumers. As of November 25th, 2013, Duke's tenure as CEO ended with his sudden replacement by the board of Walmart.