Good Bad Billionaire

The woman behind the brand that revolutionised the way the world shopped and dressed. Doris Fisher and her husband Don founded The Gap together and made basics cool – their pocket t-shirt was worn by both Mick Jagger at Live Aid and Marty McFly in Back to the Future, while Sharon Stone donned a $25 Gap black turtleneck for the Oscars. Simon Jack and Zing Tsjeng follow Doris Fisher and The Gap’s rollercoaster story, from its birth i...

Carlos Slim Helú's financial might has led some people to nickname his native Mexico ‘Slimlandia’. He dominates the country’s businesses, from telecoms to construction. But how did a man whose hero happens to be the Mongol warlord Genghis Khan get to be the richest person in the world? Many have blamed his monopolist business empire for Mexico’s slow economic development. Simon Jack and Zing Tsjeng tell the story of a baseball fan ...

Roman Abramovich was known as the "stealth oligarch" before he stepped into the limelight as Chelsea football club’s sugar daddy owner. The man loves a yacht: his largest cost $427m, and has bullet-proof windows and an escape submarine. Abramovich made his fortune from post-Soviet privatisation, aided by a man known as the “Godfather of the Kremlin”, Boris Berezovsky, and close ties to Vladimir Putin in the early years of his presi...

Mukesh Ambani caught the world’s attention when he forked out $600m on his son’s wedding, including a performance by Rihanna – but how did he become Asia’s richest person?

Mukesh grew his father’s polyester trading company, Reliance Industries, into a conglomerate. But when he died without a will, Mukesh had to fight his brother for control of the family business. BBC business editor Simon Jack and journalist Zing Tsjeng follow Muk...

Metal man and football fan Patrice Motsepe rose out of post-apartheid South Africa to become the country’s first black billionaire. Under apartheid, Patrice had to get a special permit to study at an ‘whites-only’ university - the same that Nelson Mandela attended in the 1940s - becoming a lawyer before following the gold into the mines. When the racist regime finally crumbled, he benefited from Black Economic Empowerment initiativ...

Jack Ma is the king of ecommerce in China. Nicknamed 'Daddy Ma', the former school teacher even appeared alongside martial arts legend Jet Li in a kung fu movie. But how did a scrawny, belligerent child, who was the only person who failed to get hired at his local KFC, become the chairman and CEO of online mega-platform Alibaba? BBC business editor Simon Jack and journalist Zing Tsjeng explain how a crazy trip to America, where Jac...

The story of how Yvon Chouinard, a reluctant billionaire who only wanted to climb and surf, harnessed his passions to create outdoor apparel brand Patagonia - before giving it all away to fight climate change. BBC business editor Simon Jack and journalist Zing Tsjeng discover how the self-proclaimed "existential dirtbag" went from jumping freight trains and eating cat food to leading the charge for businesses to commit to environme...

Whitney Wolfe Herd, the “queen of the swipes”, launched a female-led dating app after a public scandal around her sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuit against Tinder.

BBC business editor Simon Jack and journalist Zing Tsjeng follow her story from a popular student with a flair for marketing, to carving her own path in the male-dominated tech world. Owning the ‘girlboss’ image, she took her company Bumble public aged just 31...

Industrialist Aliko Dangote is known as a mild-mannered cement tycoon who often drives himself to business meetings. How did he become the world’s richest black person? Dangote rapidly dominated Nigeria’s cement, sugar, flour and fertiliser markets. He says his mission is to make Nigeria’s economy self-reliant, without requiring Western investment or imports. BBC business editor Simon Jack and journalist Zing Tsjeng look back on Da...

How is freshly minted billionaire Sam Altman shaping our future through his company OpenAI and ChatGPT? He made his fortune by investing in huge tech start-ups like Reddit and Airbnb, before turning his attention to artificial intelligence - being fired and re-hired by his own company in the process. Altman believes that OpenAI, with him in charge, can make the world a better place. Yet he’s also preparing for the apocalypse, just ...

How did an unassuming software engineer become one of the richest people on the planet? This is the story of how Zhang Yiming transformed social media by creating TikTok, and how the Chinese tech company ByteDance became a multi-billion dollar business. BBC business editor Simon Jack and journalist Zing Tsjeng explore Yiming’s various successes with different apps before he hit the jackpot with TikTok. Then they decide whether they...

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw built a pharmaceutical empire after failing to get a job brewing beer. She also overcame gender bias to become India’s first self-made female billionaire. Her company Biocon is now Asia's biggest insulin producer. BBC business editor Simon Jack and journalist Zing Tsjeng follow her story, from a childhood living on a brewery compound in Bangalore to adventures in Australia and Ireland. How did Kiran Mazumdar-Sha...

George Soros escaped Nazi occupation in Hungary, before becoming one of the most successful investors in history. After making his name on Wall Street and setting up the hedge fund Quantum, he also become known as “the man who broke the Bank of England” after making a billion dollars in a day by “betting against” the pound. BBC business editor Simon Jack and journalist Zing Tsjeng track the incredible life of one of the world’s mos...

Jerry Seinfeld has a life-long obsession with jokes, but his smash hit sitcom turned the New York stand-up into the richest comedian of all time. Seinfeld was the most watched programme in America when it ended in in 1998, but it’s what came next that made the real Jerry Seinfeld mega rich – streaming and syndication. Simon Jack and Zing Tsjeng find out how transcendental meditation, a top Hollywood agent, the unexpected death of a...

How did Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson become one of only four filmmakers worth a billion dollars, and one of just three billionaires from New Zealand? BBC business editor Simon Jack and journalist Zing Tsjeng find out how a childhood obsession with movies led to a booming film industry in Jackson’s homeland. From Bad Taste to King Kong and The Hobbit, he went from shooting home movies and directing low budget horror film...

How a communist mime artist became the billionaire boss of a luxury fashion house. Miuccia Prada changed her name, then made it famous with one of the runway’s biggest brands. BBC business editor Simon Jack and journalist Zing Tsjeng explain how the Italian fashion designer turned her grandfather’s shop into a fashion powerhouse. Alongside her husband, she’s run her empire from Milan for over four decades, becoming known affectiona...

By founding Google, tech titan Sergey Brin helped shape the internet. He also got very, very rich, as his company Alphabet became one of the biggest in the world. BBC business editor Simon Jack and journalist Zing Tsjeng tell the story of the billionaire who partied on planes after escaping prejudice in Russia. Sergey Brin and his best friend Larry Page became two of history’s biggest tech giants by building the planet’s most popul...

Golfing superstardom made him incredibly rich. Personal disasters nearly took it all away. How did Tiger Woods go from a child golfing prodigy to the world’s highest paid athlete for a whole decade? BBC business editor Simon Jack and journalist Zing Tsjeng explain how one of the greatest golfers of all time broke barriers in his sport, winning 15 major golf championships and 82 PGA Tour events. He’s an inductee into the World Golf ...

How one social media site birthed an empire. The story of Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook.

BBC business editor Simon Jack and journalist Zing Tsjeng take us from his childhood to joining the billionaires club soon after, at just 23, then on to his current status as one of the four richest people on the planet. He dropped out of Harvard to mix with other founders in Silicon Valley and still retains absolute control over his company, now...