Forbes Releases its 2015 List of the Most Powerful People on the Planet

Every year Forbes magazine rates and ranks the most powerful people on Earth. So, who made it to the top this year?

Forbes magazine has recently released its 2015 list of the most powerful and influential people on planet Earth. According to Forbes, these people make up less than one percent of the population yet they are the ones who rule the world for the most part.

Forbes compiled a list of hundreds of candidates from financiers, billionaires, heads of state, entrepreneurs and philanthropists from all over the world. Forbes made their decision based on four criteria with regard to how influential a person really is. The first consideration was if the person has a great amount of influence over a significant amount of people. This would include many heads of states or even CEO’s at major Fortune 1000 companies.

Next Forbes took into consideration a persons overall wealth and access to significant financial resources. How wealthy are they relative to their peer group? When the magazine considered heads of state they looked at the country’s GDP. When evaluating a CEO or entrepreneur, they looked at such things as assets and revenues. They also looked to see if they controlled a vast amount of resources especially natural resources like oil or diamonds. For those that are simply rich, they looked at how much the person is really worth overall.

Finally, Forbes looked to see if a person had influence in other spheres of influence beside their own and were they wielding that power on a regular basis. These criteria were ranked and rated by the magazine to come up with their final list of 74 people. Just 74 people out of six billion.

Here is the short list:

25 – Rex Tillerman

24 – Jeffrey Immelt

23 – Christine Lagarde

22 – Jack Ma

21 – Benjamin Netanyahu

20 – Jamie Dimon