Young, rich and wired

Margaret Kane ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 06 Sep 1999 14:03 BST

They're young, they're billionaires, and they're techno-savvy.

Fortune Magazine in the US has produced a list of the richest Americans under 40, and the results would seem to indicate that the Internet may be the best road to riches.

The list was topped by 34-year-old Dell Computer CEO Michael Dell, whose worth Fortune calculated at $21.49bn (£13.3bn).

Virtually every other man on the list -- and they're all men -- has some connection to the technology industry. The notable exceptions are producer and No Limit chief Percy "Master P" Miller (ranked 28th with a net worth of $361m) and basketball legend Michael Jordan (ranked 29th with a net worth of $357m).

The top 10 reads like the guest list to a Silicon Valley cocktail party. Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos comes in second at $5.74bn, and Dell's chief rival Gateway CEO Ted Waitt is third, at $5.44bn. EBay founder Pierre Omidyar ($3.69bn) and the Yahoo! duo of David Filo ($3.12bn) and Jerry Yang ($3.05bn) round out the top six.

Yahoo! isn't the only firm to have two guys in the top ten -- eBay vice president Jeff Skoll came in at number 10 with a net worth of $1.35bn.

EBay's CEO Meg Whitman would have ranked number 14 on the list, but missed the age cut-off by two years, the magazine said.