Five Danes on Forbes Billionaires List

Lego boss top of the pile

Being a billionaire in Denmark is one thing, but being a billionaire in US dollars and ending up on Forbes magazine's Billionaires List is quite another feat. That narrows the list down to five.

The annual  list (here in English) is led by the usual suspects Bill Gates, Carlos Slim Helu and Warren Buffet etc, but a little further down the list – ranked the 129th wealthiest person in the world – is Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, the richest Dane.

Kristiansen's fortune of about 65.1 billion kroner comes from his 75 percent ownership of toy giant Lego and 30 percent stake in Merlin Entertainment, which owns Legoland, the London Eye, Madame Tussauds and the Heide Park resort in Germany.

The second-richest Dane on the list is Anders Holch Povlsen (ranked 271st in the world), who has accrued a fortune of 36.5 billion kroner through his ownership of clothing giant Bestseller.

READ MORE: Six Danes among world's richest people

Swede at the top
No rich Dane list would be complete without the king of bedding, Lars Larsen, whose Jysk empire has netted him a fortune of 25.9 billion kroner, making him the 435th richest person on the planet.

Tied with 'Dyne Larsen' at 435th is Niels Peter Louis-Hansen, the co-owner, majority share holder and deputy head of the medicinal company Coloplast.

Finally, ranked 690th in the world and as the 79th richest woman on the list, Hanni Toosbuy Kasprzak enjoys a fortune of 17.9 billion kroner. Kasprzak is the owner and head of the Danish shoe producer ECCO, which sold over 20 million pairs of shoes in 2013.

But the Danes can only look with envy across the Øresund Sound to find the richest Scandinavian person. Stefan Persson, the owner of H&M, has a fortune of 163 billion kroner, making him the 28th richest person on the globe.

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