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Grizzly Bulls’ Billionaires Index

⬅ # 188 Chris Xu|# 190 Lui Che Woo ➡

# 189 Ernesto Bertarelli 

$11.1B

Real Time Net Worth
as of 5/13/2024
$5.0M (0.04%)

# 189 Ernesto Bertarelli 

$11.1B

Real Time Net Worth
as of 5/13/2024
$5.0M (0.04%)
OccupationChair, B-Flexion
Source of WealthBiotech, Investments
Age58
ResidenceGstaad, Switzerland
Marital StatusDivorced
Children3
EducationBS, Babson College; MBA, Harvard University
Age-Adjusted Net Worth$12.8B
Ernesto Bertarelli
Ernesto Bertarelli
Switzerland
Net worth: $11.1B

Self-Made Score 

Wealth History

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Biography

Biography

Ernesto Silvio Maurizio Bertarelli was born on September 22, 1965, in Rome, Italy, and later moved to Switzerland with his family in 1977.
He graduated from Babson College in 1989 and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School in 1993.

Career

Ernesto's grandfather, Pietro Bertarelli, joined Serono, a pharmaceutical company founded in 1906, and became its managing director in 1935.
Ernesto became CEO of Serono in 1996 and, along with his sister Dona, inherited ownership in 1998 upon the death of their father, Fabio Bertarelli.
Under Bertarelli's leadership, Serono's focus shifted from pharmaceuticals to biotechnology, leading to a revenue increase from $809 million in 1996 to $2.8 billion in 2006.
The family sold Serono to Merck KGaA for $13.3 billion in January 2007, and Bertarelli co-chairs the Bertarelli Foundation with his sister, focusing on marine conservation and neuroscience research.
Bertarelli served as a board director of UBS AG between 2002 and 2009.
He manages the family's wealth through B-Flexion, overseeing investments in various sectors such as real estate, technology, hedge funds, and life sciences.

B-Flexion

B-Flexion, headquartered in Geneva, manages investments in Kedge Capital, Crosstree, Gurnet Point Capital, Stallergenes-Greer, Corium, and other asset management businesses.
The family's wealth is invested through separate specialist investment partnerships, with a focus on diverse sectors and locations.

Campus Biotech

Bertarelli led a consortium that acquired the former Merck Serono site in Geneva in 2013, creating Campus Biotech, a center of excellence in healthcare, biotechnology, and life sciences.
The initiative includes collaboration with EPFL and the University of Geneva, contributing to the Swiss neuroscience valley.

Sailing

In 2000, Bertarelli founded Team Alinghi, winning the America's Cup in 2003 and successfully defending it in 2007.
Alinghi now competes in the Extreme Sailing Series and the D35 championship on Lake Geneva.
Bertarelli was named Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur in 2003.

Philanthropy

The Bertarelli Foundation, established in 1999, focuses on research and development in infertility, assisted reproduction, and various philanthropic initiatives in charity, health, sciences, sport, and culture.
Bertarelli pledged $75 million to Harvard Medical School in 2023 to advance scientific discovery and entrepreneurship.

Honorary Doctorate

Bertarelli received an Honorary Doctorate of Marine Sciences from Plymouth University in 2013.

Personal Life

Ernesto Bertarelli met Kirsty Roper in 1997, married in 2000, and has three children.
The couple announced their divorce in October 2021.

How long would it take you to become as rich as Ernesto Bertarelli?

If you started with $10,000 and invested an additional $500 each month at a 44.01% CAGR, it would take you 5 years to reach Ernesto Bertarelli's net worth of $11.1B.

Is this realistic? It depends how closely the VIX-TA-Macro Advanced model performs to its history in the future. Since Grizzly Bulls launched on January 1, 2022, it's returned 40.45% compared to 10.08% for the S&P 500 benchmark.

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Ernesto Bertarelli is very wealthy, but what's stopping you from reaching that same level of success? As summarized in our five fundamental rules to wealth building, becoming wealthy in a modern capitalist economy is not complicated. There's actually only three variables:

  1. Your starting capital
  2. Your earnings after expenses
  3. The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of your savings

Most people start with zero or very little, so if you weren't born into wealth, don't fret! The majority of the fortunate folks listed in our Grizzly Bulls’ Billionaires Index came from middle class or lower backgrounds. The most distinguishing characteristic of the group is their ability to consistently earn a high CAGR on their savings.

Every billionaire has a unique strategy to achieve high CAGR. For Ernesto Bertarelli, Biotech and Investments are the primary sources. Whether you choose to invest your savings in your own businesses or the businesses of others is not as important. The salient piece of the puzzle is ensuring that your hard-earned savings are generating sufficient CAGR to reach your long term goals.

Most people simply invest their money in index funds and call it a day. There's nothing wrong with this approach, but it guarantees relative mediocrity. To achieve greatness, you need to invest your money to earn higher than average returns. In the long run, better investors will always finish ahead of better earners.

Source: Grizzly Bulls reporting

Methodology: Grizzly Bulls' Billionaires Index is a daily ranking of the world's billionaires and richest people. Grizzly Bulls strives to provide the most accurate net worth calculations available. We pull data from public equity markets, SEC filings, public real estate records, and other reputable sources.

The index is dynamic and updates daily at the close of U.S. stock market trading based on changes in the markets, economy, and updates to Grizzly Bulls' proprietary algorithm of personal wealth calculation. Stakes in public companies are tracked daily based on the relevant closing prices of the underlying securities. Additionally, stakes in private companies, cash, real estate, and other less easily valued assets are updated periodically through careful analysis of insider transactions, comparable public company sales / EBITDA multiples, etc.

Edited by: Lee Bailey