Canada's super-rich

If it's true that "money talks," then the bank accounts of Canada's wealthiest citizens are doing a lot of blabbing these days.

First, let's define wealthy. Are millionaires automatically wealthy? At one time, a million really meant something. But then real estate values started exploding and stock markets began soaring and before you could say "uber-rich," the ranks of Canadian millionaires began to swell.

Cap Gemini Ernst & Young estimated there were 315,000 millionaires in Canada at the start of 2001. In that survey, "millionaire" meant $1 million in investable assets, excluding real estate. The consulting firm forecast that the number of Canadian millionaires would grow to 900,000 by the year 2010.

Impressive numbers. But super-rich? In most cases, they aren't even close. No … we're talking about the tiny sliver at the very top of the money pile – the ultra-high net worth club whose members are referred to as billionaires.

Financial publications, which love to track the rise and fall of the super-rich, agree that the money gods have been especially generous towards this small but affluent group.

In its annual tracking of billionaires, Forbes magazine's writers and researchers declared that 23 Canadians had cracked the billionaire threshold in 2006 (U.S. dollars, too).

That's 23 out of 946 billionaires worldwide. The world's billionaires had a total net worth of $3.5 trillion US. That's more than Germany's GDP. Remember, we're talking about fewer than 1,000 people here. Canada's share of the billionaire booty: $84 billion US.

Canadian Business magazine does its own annual tracking of the richest 100 Canadians.

The two lists agree that the richest of the rich Canadians are the members of the Thomson family. Forbes says number two is grocery magnate Galen Weston and his family, and the Irving clan from New Brunswick is third. But Canadian Business magazine says recent rises in the value of Rogers Communications shares have vaulted Ted Rogers Jr. into second place, with a net worth of $7.6 billion.

The Thomson family's wealth simply boggles. Canadian Business pegs the Thomson fortune at $25.4 billion. Forbes magazine put it at $22 billion US in March 2007 – good enough for 10th place in the world. That's only $34 billion US behind Bill Gates. (Net worth: $56 billion US, depending on the value of Microsoft shares).

In July 2007, a Mexican financial website said that magnate Carlos Slim Helu had passed Bill Gates to become the world's richest person. On its website, Sentido Comun pegged Slim's wealth at the end of June at $67.8 billion US, while Gates was worth an estimated $59 billion US.

In April, Forbes moved Slim ahead of Warren Buffett, but still behind Gates, on its annual rich list. Forbes said it won't revalue Slim's wealth until March 2008.

So what can we say about Canada's billionaires? Well, they're a mixed bag. Some are old money; some are very new. Most are in their later years, but five are in their 40s and steel baron Alexander Shnaider is just 37. They hail from all regions of the country. Some are big-money families; others are bachelors. And they made their money in vastly different ways. Drugs (the legal kind), media, oil and gas, food retailing, printing, money management, construction, the BlackBerry.

But the roots of some fortunes may surprise. Calvin Ayre's would fit into that category. Ayre made it onto both of the richest-of-the-rich lists because of an online gambling business that he started for less than $10,000 in 1995. A Costa Rica-based site he launched in 2000, Bodog.com, now takes in more than $200 million US a year in bets. Not bad for a 44-year-old party animal who was once fined $10,000 and barred from the Vancouver Stock Exchange for 20 years for violating insider trading rules.

John MacBain's fortune came one classified ad a time. MacBain is the controlling interest behind Trader Classified Media – which publishes many Auto Trader titles and hundreds of other similar publications around the world. He began it all with the purchase of Auto Hebdo in 1987. Net worth: $1.24 billion, according to Canadian Business.

Then there's Guy Laliberté. You may not have heard of Guy. But you've heard of his company. Back in 1984, it was just Laliberté and a group of street performers in Quebec. Now it's 10 dazzling companies of acrobats and artists showcasing their talents around the world. The collective name for the enterprise that Laliberté now owns: Cirque du Soleil. His almost total ownership has given him a net worth of $1.18 billion, Canadian Business says.

A final note about all this talk of money. Unlike fictional billionaires like Scrooge McDuck, the super-rich do not keep most of their fortune in cash. Their money is usually tied up in shares of the companies they started, so their fortunes rise and fall with the market. How well Canada's billionaires fare in the years to come may depend more on investor sentiment than their own business acumen. Not that this crowd is terribly short on that.

That doesn't mean that the rich don't have things to worry about. A survey by Sensus Research of 165 Canadians worth more than $10 million showed that almost a quarter are worried that lazy children or grandchildren will squander the family fortune. About a third of them worry they won't be able to maintain their lifestyle.

It's a tough world out there.

Sources: Canadian Business, Forbes, B.C. Securities Commission, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, Sensus Research