Hungarian businessman among the world’s wealthiest investors

Thomas Peterffy was the 6th on the list, with a net worth of 22.9 billion dollars.

The first place on the list is occupied by Warren Edward Buffett (net worth of 105.5 billion dollars), followed by Carlos Slim Helu (77.3 billion dollars), Michael R. Bloomberg (70 billion dollars), Stephen A. Schwarzman (37.4 billion dollars), James Harris Simons (24.4 billion dollars), Thomas Peterffy (22.9 billion dollars), Eduardo Saverin (18.4 billion dollars), and Alwaleed bin Talal (18.3 billion), writes Ceoworld Magazine.

The Hungarian businessman leads Interactive Brokers, the largest global electronic broker. The firm is based in Greenwich, Connecticut, and executes equities, futures, and foreign exchange trades.

Peterffy is a Hungarian immigrant who fled Hungary during the Communist rule, in 1965, according to Florida500. The Hungarian businessman had almost no money back then, but he is one of the wealthiest people right now. Florida500 suggests that he is the wealthiest person in his home state of Florida, and one of the 50 wealthiest people in the United States. His company, Interactive Brokers, was among the first to trade stocks electronically. According to the website, “reclusively, he has been a donor to Republican candidates and causes.”

“I grew up in socialist Hungary that was under Russian occupation. When I was 21 years old, I was able to come to the United States. I did not speak English. I had to get a job, and the only job that I could do was computer programming. I was able to read the manuals, and the vocabulary was only about 100 words, so it was a lot easier to learn than English,” Peterffy said in an interview.

He also talked about how he started off in his new home country.

At first, Peterffy worked for a highway designing firm as a computer programmer. Then, he got a job at a little consulting firm that was building computer programs for Wall Street brokers. From there, he said he moved to a commodity trading firm. Meanwhile, he saved money and managed to buy a seat at the American Stock Exchange. Eventually, he became a market maker. He even hired people to work for him. “Around 1993, I began to realise that there would be other people in this business, and I would not be able to compete because they would hold onto the order flow, so I decided to branch into the brokerage business while keeping the option market-making business. That’s when we started Interactive Brokers. The idea always was that we’ll automate everything that a broker has to do and that will enable us to do our work extremely inexpensively so that we can share the benefits with our clients. That is still the idea today,” he said in an interview.